Election Trust Falls as Federal Control Is Contested

Democratic voters’ confidence in accurate ballot counts fell from 75% before the 2022 midterms to 55% this year, an AP-NORC poll found. The decline came as President Donald Trump sought greater federal authority over elections, although the Constitution assigns voting processes to states and Congress.

The survey, conducted Oct. 8-12 among 1,119 adults, including 925 registered voters, found that 45% of voters had a great deal or quite a bit of confidence in vote accuracy, down from 50% in 2022. Confidence among Republicans climbed from 26% to about 38%, while it held at 34% among independents. The margin of sampling error was plus or minus 3.9 percentage points for all adults and 4.2 points for registered voters.

Who Controls the Vote

Trump urged federal prosecutors to look for fraud and suggested legal challenges if election results didn’t go his way. His administration sued California officials over alleged noncitizens on voter rolls and warned election workers who process noncitizen ballots that they could face criminal investigation and prosecution. The administration said it had no plans to send military or immigration agents to patrol polling places, while the head of the Department of Homeland Security said immigration officers could conduct targeted operations, such as making an arrest with a warrant.

Critics warned of voter intimidation and pointed to a Justice Department plan to send 1,000 monitors to voting locations. The Supreme Court blocked Trump’s executive-order plan to change the Postal Service and restrict mail voting from proceeding for the midterms. About half of registered voters planned to vote on Election Day; the rest planned to vote early or by mail. About 13% said they’d already voted.

Democrat Daemien Williams, 50, of Centreville, Illinois, said, “I don't put anything past these people,” adding, “My trust level is at its all-time low.” He said he’d still vote, calling it the only power he had to choose representatives. “If you take that away from America, you pretty much take away the foundation of this country,” he said.

Republican Alan Curtis, 67, of Grove, Oklahoma, said he felt better about the process this year and saw Trump’s position as a deterrent. “I think the election officials will be running scared,” Curtis said. “The people in other political parties are afraid of what Donald Trump might do.” Curtis said he believed Democrats could cheat and expected Trump to step in if anything looked suspicious. Just 17% of registered voters were extremely or very confident the Supreme Court would handle a midterm-related case fairly and without partisanship.

Voters Signal Demand for Change

A CNN poll conducted by SSRS found Democrats leading Republicans 49%-39% among registered voters in the choice for Congress in their districts. More than three-quarters viewed the election as a chance to change Washington, and roughly 6 in 10 said their midterm vote would send a message about Trump. By a 2-to-1 margin, that message opposed him. The poll was conducted Oct. 15-18 among 1,701 U.S. adults, including 1,206 registered voters.

Democrats led by 70 percentage points among Black voters, 40 points among Latino voters, 21 points among women and 31 points among younger adults. They led independents by 15 points and voters who said they were extremely motivated to vote by 18 points. Among those who’d already voted, Democrats led 70%-29%; among those who hadn’t yet voted, Democrats led 46%-41%.

The cost of living remained voters’ top issue. Democrats led 46%-37% among registered voters who named the economy as their main concern. About 3 in 10 voters said neither party would do a good job on the economy and cost of living, and a similar share said neither had the right priorities. Government corruption, cited by 19%, and the state of U.S. democracy, cited by 18%, were the only other issues named as top concerns by more than 10%.

California’s Contradictory Verdict

In California, a Citrin-POLITICO poll found that most voters rated Gavin Newsom’s tenure “poor” or “fair” and wanted his successor to take the state in a different direction. Only 36% rated his performance over the last eight years “good” or “excellent,” and 28% wanted the next governor to continue his policies. Yet Xavier Becerra led Republican Steve Hilton by 20 percentage points.

“Becerra basically wins everyone — the third of the electorate that wants to continue the policies — and picks up nearly a third of those who want change,” said Jon Cohen, founder and CEO of TrueDot, whose firm conducted the poll. Jack Citrin, a University of California, Berkeley, political science professor and co-director of the UC Berkeley Citrin Center for Public Opinion Research-POLITICO poll, said, “If you look at the evaluations of him going out, they're not all that positive.”

The California voter survey ran Oct. 9-14 among 1,149 registered voters, including 909 likely voters. A parallel survey of political and policy influencers included government employees, political staffers, lobbyists, policy advisers, consultants, business decision-makers and subject-matter experts. Its results had no calculable margin of error.