Trust in Elections Increased in 2024, Especially Among Republicans

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The tail end of 2020 saw Republican voters’ confidence in elections plummet as Donald Trump sowed doubt about Joe Biden’s victory. But that confidence has returned in spades following the president-elect’s victory over Kamala Harris, highlighting the influence that elected leaders have on public sentiment — especially within the partisan camps. 

Trust in U.S. elections among Republican voters increased from 45% to 78% in Morning Consult surveys conducted just before and after the Nov. 5 election, driving the level of trust among all voters up from 63% to 69%.

The improvement among Republicans is larger than the decline we measured after the 2020 result. The share of GOP voters who distrust American elections at least some also fell sharply, from a 51% majority to 17%. 

Like Republicans four years ago, some Democrats have lost faith in U.S. elections since their preferred candidate lost. However, that 18-percentage-point decline is modest by comparison to 2020 trends on the other side of the aisle, when GOP trust dipped by 32 points. And far more Democrats (66%) now say they trust U.S. elections compared with 2020’s post-election GOP share of 34%.

Mirroring the increase in overall election trust, 4 in 5 voters said the 2024 contest specifically was “a free and fair election,” up from 65% who expected it to be so in our survey conducted before ballots were counted.

Similarly to the question gauging trust in the electoral system, Republican voters were far more likely to see a result that was “free and fair” than they expected before the election (from 47% to 92%), while the figures declined by a smaller level among Democrats (from 86% to 69%).

The bottom line

There is a chunk of the Democratic Party that is as willing as the Republican Party to base its confidence in the system on whether their own team won or lost.  But Trump’s swing-state sweep over Harris, popular-vote victory and his opponent’s own quick concession has left voters of all stripes more confident in the electoral process than they were even before the pandemic-era 2020 contest, which featured a number of hasty voting-related changes that gave critics an opening to attack. 

This bodes well for some level of democratic stability in the United States in the near term, but as recent history shows, it doesn’t take much to rock the boat.