Polarization in state voter confidence

… Lots of people make claims about voter confidence, particularly what causes it to go up or down, oftentimes tying these claims to support for some type of election reform.

In fact, the literature on voter confidence suggests that very little in the way of election reform can move voter confidence. What does move it is the election results. If your guy wins, you’re more confident than if your guy loses.

I came across a nice example of this as I was preparing for some talks at upcoming summer election conferences. The underlying measure of voter confidence is the percentage of respondents to the Survey of the Performance of American Elections (SPAE) who stated they were “very confident” that votes were counted accurately in their state in 2016. CONT.

Charles Stewart III (MIT), Election Updates

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