For the past two decades, Americans have consistently exhibited a “winner’s effect” in judging whether votes were counted fairly in elections. The 2018 election broke that pattern.
In particular, prior to 2018, it was common for voters who identified with the prevailing party in a federal election to acquire much greater confidence post-election that votes were counted as intended. Conversely, members of the vanquished party became much less confident.
Not in 2018.
In a nationwide survey of adults I conducted in the days immediately after the 2018 federal election, 84% of voters stated they were either “very” or “somewhat” confident that their vote was counted as they intended. (Throughout this post, I will refer to these respondents as “confident.”) This is virtually identical to the response they gave a month before the election. In contrast with patterns from past elections, the results of the election had no effect on overall levels of confident, and essentially no effect on differences between the parties.
The data in this post were taken from two surveys I conducted before the election (during May 14–16 and October 5–7) and one after (on November 7–9). In each case, the surveys interviewed 1,000 adults as a part of the YouGov Omnibus survey. The research was supported by a grant from NEO Philanthropy, which bears no responsibility for the results or analysis. I will contrast the results I found in 2018 with similar research I performed in the 2014 and 2016 federal elections, plus a peer-reviewed article I published in 2015 with Mike Sances, which examined the history of voter confidence from 2000 to 2012.