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Pew Research Center: Skepticism about U.S. vote counts hasn't abated in the past two years

10.11.2022
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https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2022/10/31/two-years-after-election-turmoil-gop-voters-remain-skeptical-on-elections-vote-counts/

The majority of registered voters supporting Republican congressional candidates in their districts (56%) believe the US midterm elections will go very or fairly well, with only 11% thinking they will go very well. This is a modest increase from 2020, when 50% of Republican voters expected the presidential election to go well (9% very well). But that's far lower than the 87% of GOP voters who said so in October 2018, shortly before the last midterm elections.

Democratic voters, by contrast, have become more confident that the elections will go well. An overwhelming proportion of voters supporting Democratic House candidates (88%) say the midterms will go very well or well, up from 72% in 2020 and 79% four years ago. The gap in these opinions, which was only 8 percentage points in 2018, has widened to 32 points in the current survey.

Among all voters, 70% say that the elections will go very well or well; this is higher than the share that said so shortly before the 2020 elections and lower than in October 2018 (81%).

A new nationwide Pew Research Center poll conducted Oct. 10-16 of 5,098 American adults, including 3,993 registered voters, found that Republican voters, who already lacked confidence in absentee and mail-in voting, now also aren't very confident. that the ballots left in person at the polling stations will be counted as the voters intended.

Nearly eight in 10 Republican congressional voters (79%) say they are very or somewhat confident that in-person votes will be counted accurately, but only 26% are very confident. Two years ago, about twice as many GOP voters (48%) had a high degree of confidence that votes cast at the polling stations would be counted accurately (92% were very or somewhat confident).

Most Republicans continue to question whether absentee ballots and mail-in ballots will be counted the way voters want. Only about four in ten supporters of Republican candidates (37%) are very or somewhat confident that such ballots will be counted accurately, and only 10% said they are very confident.

Democrats are overwhelmingly confident that in-person votes will be counted accurately and have become more confident in absentee and mail-in voting. About four in ten Democratic voters (43%) say they are very confident these ballots will be counted accurately, up from 30% two years ago.

 

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