November 1, 2024
Registered voters have more confidence that the 2024 presidential election will be counted accurately by their local election officials and in their state than nationwide. They are most confident that votes will be counted accurately if cast using electronic voting machines that provide paper receipts or using paper ballots that are scanned into a machine. Voters have less faith in paper ballots counted by hand and mail ballots returned using a drop box or by mail. And they are least confident in electronic voting machines that do not provide paper receipts.
About six in ten registered voters have a great deal or quite a bit of confidence that ballots cast in the presidential election will be counted accurately in their state or by their local election officials. People are slightly less confident that accurate counting will happen nationwide. Roughly half are confident votes will be counted accurately nationwide and a quarter are only a little or not all confident.
Democrats are more confident than Republicans at every level that the votes for president this year will be counted accurately.
Registered voters are not terribly confident that votes will be counted accurately across all methods. Only about half feel extremely or very confident in the accuracy of electronic voting machines that provide paper receipts or paper ballots that are scanned into a machine. Fewer are confident in paper ballots where every vote is counted by hand. About a third are confident in mailed ballots returned both via drop box and U.S. Postal Service, or electronic voting machines that do not provide paper receipts.
Democrat voters are more confident in the accuracy of all methods of voting than Republican voters. Mailed ballots returned via drop box showed the largest gap in confidence between Democrats and Republicans.
The majority of registered voters consider the drawing of legislative districts that intentionally favor one political party, often called gerrymandering, a major problem. Half think that the possibility that a presidential candidate could win the electoral college and lose the popular vote is a major problem. About four in ten think people who are eligible not being allowed to vote and people voting who are not eligible are major problems. Republicans and Democrat voters are similarly concerned about gerrymandering. Democrats are more likely than Republicans to consider a candidate winning by the electoral college and losing the popular vote a major problem. Democrats are also more likely to be concerned about voter suppression whereas Republicans are more concerned about voter fraud.
Registered voters are more likely to favor ID requirements for voting than measures to make voting easier. Large majorities, especially among Republican registered voters, support requiring valid photo ID to vote and requiring proof of U.S. citizenship to register.
Democrats are more likely than Republicans to support measures that make voting easier including automatically registering people to vote when they get a driver’s license or allowing voters to register on the same day as the election.
Few registered voters are confident that the Supreme Court will deal with election related cases in a fair and nonpartisan manner. Thirty-eight percent of Republican voters are confident in the Supreme Court’s ability to deal with election cases compared to a quarter who are not while 61% of Democrat voters have little or no confidence.
The nationwide poll was conducted October 11-14, 2024 using the AmeriSpeak® Panel, the probability based panel of NORC at the University of Chicago. Online and telephone interviews using landlines and cell phones were conducted with 1,072 adults, of whom 957 say they are registered to vote. The margin of sampling error for registered voters is +/- 4.2 percentage points.
Suggested Citation: AP-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research. (October 2024). “Voters have more confidence in an accurate vote count in their own state or locality than nationwide” https://apnorc.org/projects/voters-have-more-confidence-in-an-accurate-vote-count-in-their-own-state-or-locality-than-nationwide/
