It’s been well-known and -reported during the past decade that a substantial number of Republicans have doubted the legitimacy of national election results when their side has been on the losing end. But according to one new finding, overall trust in the process has fallen among both independents and Democrats, as well — and in the latter case, severely.
Based on a University of California, San Diego, survey concluded last month and just released, belief that results in the coming election will be accurate is down with both groups from 2024 to 2026. Sixty-five percent of independents said so two years ago, compared with fifty-seven percent now. And among Democrats, the number has fallen sharply from 89 percent to 64 percent — basically the same number as Republicans currently (65 percent).
After the 2024 election ballots were tallied and President Trump was certified as the winner, UCSD found that roughly equal numbers of Republicans (82 percent), Democrats (77), and independents (73) said the votes were counted right. Expectations of similar trust in the count in 2026 have declined from that number similarly among all three groups.
The national poll reflects a survey out of Georgia by the Atlanta Journal Constitution late last year. The AJC poll showed the number of Democrats that lacked faith in the coming election’s accuracy had fallen by half between June 2024 (55 percent) and October 2025 (28 percent).
Each party’s leaders are providing their voters with reasons.
What’s new with Democrats?
“My issues with the confidence in our voting system . . . has everything to do with the constant barrage of efforts to manipulate voting based on districting,” one Georgia voter told the AJC in their October research.
And that could be what’s ringing in the ears of Democrats. Former President Barack Obama warned voters in an advertisement for redistricting in California last year that the GOP wanted to “steal” the 2026 election. “Republicans want to steal enough seats in Congress to rig the next election and wield unchecked power for two more years,” he said in the ad. “With Prop 50,” the California redistricting measure that eventually passed, “you can stop Republicans in their tracks.”
Former House speaker Nancy Pelosi echoed Obama in a Facebook post, saying that Republicans were trying “to rig the 2026 elections in their favor by stealing enough seats to control Congress regardless of how the people vote.”
Democratic leaders have altered between accusatory and defensive rhetoric in other contexts. In the former case, former President Biden called a Georgia voting law enacted in 2021 “Jim Crow for the 21st century,” even though the eventual data completely invalidated the criticism. A post-2022 election survey conducted by the University of Georgia found that only 25 percent of the state’s voters said the law decreased their confidence in the process, and 99 percent of voters reported no problems voting. In the latter case, national Democrats have widely used the talking point “our democracy is at stake” to describe partisan voting legislation that stood no chance of passing.
Earlier this year, Texas Senate candidate and U.S. rep Jasmine Crockett told lawyer Marc Elias on his podcast that it would be “really important for us to educate all [the] states that we can, to make sure that their secretary of states are like, ‘Mm-mm, we don’t want the Dominion machines,’” after Dominion Voting was purchased and rebranded by a former St. Louis Republican elections official. “I personally believe that that ally purchased Dominion so that he could potentially play with the machines,” she said. That official’s former Democratic colleagues rebutted the assessment.
What’s old with Republicans?
Crockett, whose claims were echoed widely and continue to circulate on social media, was, in a way, merely mimicking Republicans who made far louder, far more prevalent — and legally costly — allegations about the legitimacy of Dominion machines in 2020. More generally, congressional Republicans continue to use existential rhetoric to describe their own election reform ideas, as well, naming their signature legislation on the issue the “SAVE America Act.” Allied activists have said the party would lose the Midterm elections without it passing, an unfathomably partisan rationale. President Trump said days ago that Democrats oppose Republican-led congressional efforts on elections because “[t]hey want to continue to cheat,” and that “[t]here will be Voter I.D. for the Midterm Elections, whether approved by Congress or not.”
Thirty-six of fifty states require or request some sort of voter ID at polling places, and the definition of “voter ID” itself can vary widely — to the point that what is called “voter ID” is actually a request for proof of citizenship at the time of registration. The SAVE America Act would necessitate it, going far beyond federal law and most state laws; only Arizona, New Hampshire, and Wyoming have active, blanket proof of citizenship requirements for registration (similar requirements have been invalidated legally or not implemented in a handful of other states). It remains the case that actual, documented cases of voter fraud are found in isolated and minuscule numbers as a fraction of registrations and votes. This includes instances of noncitizen voting.
There are Democrats who would contest, not without persuasive arguments, that Republican messaging about election legitimacy this decade has been far more damaging to the country’s political health than theirs, if they would concede any faults in their own at all. If only this issue were scored like a boxing match. The goal isn’t for one side to beat the other on points. It’s for them not to stage the fight in the first place.
Miranda Combs contributed.