UCSD study finds growing distrust in elections

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Welcome in San Diego. It's Jade Hindman. On this episode of KPBS Midday Edition, a recent study from UCSD found less than half of Americans expect this year's midterm elections to be free and fair. We dig into why. This is KPBS Midday Edition, connecting our communities through conversation. So for the past few years, researchers at UC San Diego have been tracking Americans' trust in our elections and finding a growing distrust. In its most recent study, just under half of those surveyed expect this year's midterm elections to be free and fair. So what's behind this mistrust? Well, two of the researchers behind the study are here to discuss. Thad Couser is a professor of political science at UC San Diego. Thad, welcome back to Midday Edition.

Thanks so much for having me, Jade.

Glad to have you here. And Lauren Prather also here with us. She's an associate professor of political science with UC San Diego's School of Global Policy and Strategy. Lauren, welcome back to Midday. Thanks so much for having me. Glad to have you both here. So, Lauren, less than half say they expect this year's election to be free and fair. That seems like pretty low confidence to me. And you've been researching Americans' trust in elections since 2022. How much has that changed from then until now?

Thanks for asking. Yeah, so we've been surveying Americans about what they think about US elections since about 2022. And in particular, in addition to the question that asked respondents in our survey about whether they think that midterm elections will be free and fair, we drilled down a little bit deeper to ask about whether Americans expected to have confidence in the way votes are counted nationwide. And there, that question we've been asking since 2022, and we've found a significant decline. So since we polled people after the post 2024 presidential election, we recorded in early 2026 a 17 percentage point decline. So at early 2026, we were about 60% of respondents were trusting that votes counted nationwide would be done so accurately, we've since declined a further five percentage points. And what's remarkable about what we've found is that this decline has been experienced across party lines. So Democrats, Republicans and independents have all been declining in their trust. So our latest survey, which was fielded to more than 5000 Americans in early September, found that 63% of Democrats had confidence that votes would be counted accurately nationwide compared to 58% of Republicans and only 49% of independents.

Wow. And Thad, you know, Lauren mentioned that this decline in confidence in elections is really bipartisan. Your research also found that trust among Republicans and independents declined more than for Democrats. What does that tell you?

Well, I think like everything in American politics, sort of what you think about something depends on what party you come from and what information you're getting. So there's