Most likely voters in six key battleground states express at least some confidence in their state’s election process, according to recent CNN polling conducted by SSRS. But far fewer of them have high confidence in the process, with that mistrust driven largely by voters who support former President Donald Trump.
Overall, two-thirds or more of likely voters in each of the six states – Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin – say they’re at least somewhat confident that votes in their state will be cast and counted accurately, ranging from 68% in Arizona to 79% in Wisconsin. Wisconsin is the only state where a majority – 52% – say they’re very confident about the accuracy of their state’s voting process, with 46% in Michigan and only about 4 in 10 in the remaining states expressing similarly high confidence.
But the results in each state also show a wide and continuing political gulf on faith in the electoral system, echoing Trump’s repeated efforts to undermine confidence in it. At Tuesday’s debate with Vice President Kamala Harris, Trump again refused to acknowledge his election loss in 2020 – a stance that follows social media posts made last week in which he threatened to prosecute election officials if he retakes the presidency and raised baseless attacks on the validity of mail-in voting in Pennsylvania.
While 71% of Harris supporters in the six states are, on average, very confident that votes in their state will be accurately cast and counted, an average of just 15% of Trump supporters across these states feel the same way. And sizable shares of Trump voters lack even modest confidence in the system.
A 61% majority of Trump supporters in Georgia and 58% of Trump supporters in Wisconsin say they’re at least somewhat confident that their states’ votes will be accurately handled, but that falls to 50% in Nevada and lower in Pennsylvania (47%), Arizona (46%) and Michigan (44%).
In Georgia, where the Republican-controlled state election board recently approved new rules that critics say form a framework that could be used to contest the election results, the gap between backers of Harris and Trump in confidence is significantly smaller. Harris supporters here in the Peach State are less likely than those in other states to express at least some confidence in the system – 82% do so, compared with 92% or more in each of the other five states. That’s only about 20 points above the level of confidence among Trump’s backers in Georgia, compared with gaps between 40 and 50 points in each of the other five states.
The findings are similar to the overall picture two years ago, when between 40% and 48% of likely midterm voters in five of the same states said they were very confident in election accuracy. (The same question was not asked in Georgia that year.)
The results echo other recent polling on attitudes toward the country’s election system, including a national ABC News/Ipsos poll released just before Labor Day weekend that found a 92% majority of Harris-supporting adults saying that they were prepared to accept the election outcome, falling to 76% among Trump-supporting adults. In a July CNN poll, 71% of Americans said they doubted Trump would concede if he loses this year, up from the 58% who said the same in October 2020, ahead of that year’s presidential election. The same poll also found that 85% of registered voters and 77% of voters who support Trump said the loser of the presidential election had an obligation to accept the results and concede.
Harris supporters’ expressions of confidence in the election process come amid a campaign that many of her backers view as a referendum on democracy itself. In each of the six states, Harris supporters choose “protecting democracy” as the most important issue in this year’s election, with an average of 43% in each state calling it their top voting issue. By contrast, only 9% of Trump supporters, on average, say the same.
Interviews for the CNN polls were conducted August 23-29, 2024, online and by telephone with registered voters, including 682 voters in Arizona, 617 in Georgia, 708 in Michigan, 626 in Nevada, 789 in Pennsylvania and 976 in Wisconsin. Results for likely voters, which include all registered voters in the poll weighted for their predicted likelihood of voting in this year’s election, have a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 4.7 points in Arizona, Georgia and Pennsylvania; plus or minus 4.9 points in Michigan and Nevada; and plus or minus 4.4 points in Wisconsin. More methodological details are available here.
