New piece from OLIVIER BERGERON-BOUTIN • KATHERINE CLAYTON • THAD KOUSSER • BRENDAN NYHAN • LAUREN PRATHER. Summary:

The stability of democracy depends in part on public belief in the legitimacy of elections, which has been called into question in the U.S. We review the factors that affect confidence in elections, identifying relevant findings from academic studies conducted here and around the world and discussing the limitations of existing research.

Attitudes toward elections are based on people’s experiences and what they hear from the media, elites, and experts. Losers are more prone to distrust election results, but the level and persistence of distrust is shaped by elite messages and electoral expectations. One approach to reducing distrust would be to strengthen election security, but public opinion is only weakly responsive to changes in policy or outcomes, especially for low salience issues. The effects of such changes on the behavior of elites are thus crucial.

Messages about elections can affect public confidence, but it seems easier to damage confidence than to strengthen it. Promising approaches include affirming messages from co-partisans, factual information about election security, and non-partisan observers. Reporting of election results faces challenges given delays in counting and shifts in vote margins that are
often highlighted in news coverage. Explaining the timelines on which votes are counted and the reasons for delays are important steps to take and to study.

Finally, Black Americans and other racial and ethnic minorities often express lower trust that their own vote was counted accurately. However, their confidence in the national vote count varies with respect to other groups depending on the electoral context.

We highlight several areas in which more research is needed. In particular, we know little about the real-world effects of various proposed reforms and messages on voter trust. We suggest that collaborations between election officials and academics would be a fruitful way to provide this much-needed evidence. These collaborations would marry the real-world context of reforms with the power of randomized experiments.