Resources

This survey / research report focuses on election misinformation, fraud narratives, or public misperceptions and their effects on confidence in U.S. elections. It is relevant because beliefs about fraud and exposure to misleading claims are central mechanisms through which confidence in election outcomes rises or falls. For this dataset, it adds evidence on one of the recurring drivers of election trust: experience, information, partisanship, security, or institutional performance.

The past two decades have seen a decline in trust in American elections that has primarily been driven by a slow but steady decline in trust among Republicans. Surprisingly, the increased polarization in trust most recently has been due more to Democrats suddenly becoming more trusting. Election officials must continue to try to overcome attacks on trust in the system, but it is unclear how long they can sustain the legal system guaranteeing free and fair elections without broad-based public trust in how elections are administered.

This National Task Force on Election Crises resource explains how election officials communicate results, conduct canvasses and audits, and confirm outcomes to build public trust.

Employing national surveys from 2012, 2016, 2018, and 2020, this paper that beliefs in election fraud are common and stable across time, and only occasionally relate to partisanship.

This evaluation report examines philanthropy & trust-building in relation to the entry’s stated focus on election security; confidence; field-building. It is relevant to the dataset because it connects election rules, information environments, or administrative performance to public confidence and perceived legitimacy.

This research finds that a majority of Trump voters in the survey sample falsely believed that election fraud was widespread, and that Trump won the election. It also finds that Trump conceding or losing his legal challenges would likely lead a majority of Trump voters to accept Biden’s victory as legitimate, although 40% said they would continue to view Biden as illegitimate regardless.

This survey report focuses on election misinformation, fraud narratives, or public misperceptions and their effects on confidence in U.S. elections. It is relevant because beliefs about fraud and exposure to misleading claims are central mechanisms through which confidence in election outcomes rises or falls. For this dataset, it helps explain why the 2020 election became a turning point in public debates over fraud, mail voting, certification, and legitimacy.

This academic article studies how messages from political elites influence public confidence in elections and acceptance of democratic norms.

Report offering solutions on how public information campaigns by state election officials could mitigate polarized trust in election integrity.

This MIT Election Data + Science Lab analysis explains the 2020 “blue shift,” where later-counted ballots disproportionately favored Democrats, and why that pattern mattered for public interpretation of results.

This research summary addresses how mail voting, absentee-ballot procedures, or claims about mail-ballot fraud affect voter confidence and perceived legitimacy. It is relevant because beliefs about fraud and exposure to misleading claims are central mechanisms through which confidence in election outcomes rises or falls. For this dataset, it helps explain why the 2020 election became a turning point in public debates over fraud, mail voting, certification, and legitimacy.

This study uses an experiment to examine how voting method impacts voter confidence. Voters were randomly assigned to either an in-person or absentee voting condition. Participants assigned to the absentee condition expressed lower levels of confidence that their votes would be counted correctly than those assigned to the in-person voting condition