Who Voters Trust for Election Information in 2024

Impossible Tradeoffs with Katie Harbath

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This week, we are diving deep into elections and specifically where people go to get information on the election. Rachel Orey is the Bipartisan Policy Center’s Senior Associate Director where they are responsible for the organization’s election administration policy development, state and federal advocacy efforts, and the BPC Task Force on Elections. Their research focuses on evidence-based and data-driven reforms that meaningfully improve our elections ecosystem.

As many of you know, I was a fellow on Rachel’s team for nearly three years and one of my last acts as both a BPC and Integrity Institute fellow was to help get this survey off the ground. We did a similar one in 2022 as well.

Some of the findings include:Most Americans have confidence in the 2024 presidential election. They are more confident that votes in their community and state will be counted accurately than votes across the country.

* A majority of respondents (69%) are confident their votes will be counted accurately in the 2024 election. This includes majorities of Republicans (60% very or somewhat confident), Independents (59%), and Democrats (85%).

* Across all groups, Americans are most confident about an accurate count of votes in their community (74%). Just 64% are confident in an accurate count across the country.

* This difference is most pronounced among Republicans. Only 50% of Republicans express confidence that votes will be counted accurately at the national level compared with 66% at the local level—a gap of 16 percentage points.

* The confidence gap between local and national counting is an opportunity for voter education about how the counting and certification process works at all levels of our election system. While election officials may be doing a good job building confidence in their community, this gap shows the need for national and state media outlets, candidates, and political elites to help voters understand the robust processes and security measures that are present in every state.

Rachel digs into that and more in this week’s podcast.

Here’s the link to the security and integrity protections that make American elections strong, resilient, and trustworthy in every jurisdiction.

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