Are Republicans bound and determined to make Donald Trump's dream come true of routinely stealing elections they've lost? It sure looks that way. Are they the only ones who think think that elections are rigged by their opponents? Um...
The trend here is so obvious that I hardly need to point it out. When Bush was president, Democrats didn't trust the presidential vote. When Obama was president they were more satisfied. When Trump won they became suspicious again. When he lost they relaxed.
The exact opposite happened among Republicans. When your guy wins you think elections are probably fair. When the other guy wins, you don't.
And the overall rate of suspicion over the past couple of decades? On average, 32% of Republicans haven't trusted the election count. Among Democrats, the number is . . . 32%.
Don't get me wrong here. Polls don't measure strength of feeling, and it's obvious that the recent conservative fervor for guaranteeing Republican victories everywhere and at all times has mutated into a depraved monstrosity that's a genuine threat to democracy.
Still and all, they aren't the only ones suspicious of poll results. Democrats are right up there with them. The big difference isn't in our common fears, but in the fact that we're not ready to wreck democracy in service of ours while Republicans are.
Diebold!
Wally "the Red Monster" O'Dell did nothing wrong.
You have a disconnect between your chart and your narrative. You wrote "When Bush was president, Democrats didn't trust the presidential vote."
The Democratic confidence was constant through 2000, 2004, and 2008. Now you can count either 2000 or 2008 as "Bush years," according to whether you are counting them as Bush-victory years or Bush-in-White-House years, but you can't have it both ways. Similar discrepancy between 2016 and 2020. Can't have it both ways.
Edit my own comment. I mistakenly thought the leftmost data point was 2000, and the intervals were 4 years. I see that the year 2000 is not on the chart at all. I wonder what the numbers were that year.
Nevertheless, by the time I got to the right-hand side of the chart, I got the numbers right.
In this case, it's the swing that matters more so than the averages.
An under appreciated reason for suspicion of election results is the terrible polling in recent years.
You, a typical person, hear for *months* that Hillary or Biden are riding high in multiple *independent* polls, only to learn that the election was tight. You might suspect something fishy is going on regardless of political orientation.
In the past, polls tended to conform with election outcomes (except for the famous Literary Digest poll of 1932).
Here, for your entertainment, is a HotAir post about Biden riding high (Oct 7)
Poll: Biden leads by 12 nationally, says ... Rasmussen?
https://hotair.com/allahpundit/2020/10/07/poll-biden-leads-12-nationally-says-
And here is Nate Silver - on October 6 - less than a month before the election
https://twitter.com/NateSilver538/status/1313907135332388876
Our current polling averages in the most likely tipping-point states:
National: Biden +9.4
PA: Biden +6.9
FL: Biden +4.5
WI: Biden +6.9
MI: Biden +7.7
AZ: Biden +4.6
NC: Biden +2.3
MN: Biden +9.5
NV: Biden +6.6
OH: Biden +0.7
GA: Biden +1.0
Whoop. Whoop. That's the sound of defunding the police.
This is just a weird post by Kevin. There is literally nothing in common between the current GQP election fraud mania and the Democrats complaints about both the Supreme Court's selection of Bush in 2000 and the biased results from the Electoral College. So "confidence in accuracy" results are meaningless. Republicans are fostering or actually believing in a complete lie about "stolen elections." Democrats may be pissing into the wind complaining about how elections are conducted, but at least our complaints are based on facts.
The poll may focus on whether votes are “accurately cast and counted,” but I have little doubt that many people who don’t have confidence are thinking of other things besides an accurate count, such as the Supreme Court. .
That drop when Obama won is the problem.
I mean, that's obviously when Republicans just lose it and decide there's only one way for them to win: get rid of elections.
And this is where I think the world-views truly diverge. If, amidst the situation in fall 2008, you didn't think it was plausible that America would turn to an insanely eloquent, insanely smart, world traveling, American, who happened to be (half-)black, then you really just thought it was the white people's country and that should never change.
👍👍👍👍👍
You have that right. Once Obama was elected the Republican's inner racist was let free and they have never looked back.
Trump was a big part of this happening. Remember the birth certificate (he can't be from here, look at him), or his Harvard transcripts (he couldn't possibly be that smart, after all he's basically a monkey in a suit), or the really awful characterization of Michelle - too awful to even put on paper.
That's especially the case because it was the Democrats' turn. The usual pattern for the presidency is that one party (one man, unless he dies in office) gets two terms and then the other party is elected. Roosevelt broke that pattern so badly that the 22nd amendment resulted. Since the 22nd passed, Truman (D) got a second term, Eisenhower (R) got two terms, Kennedy/Johnson (D) got two terms, Nixon (R) got two terms, Carter (D) got one term, Reagan (R) got two terms, Bush Sr. (R) got one term, Clinton (D) got two terms, and Bush Jr.(R) got two terms. The Democratic candidate was expected to win.
Yeah, there's nothing intrinsically wrong with elections besides the packing and cracking, the misinformation, the gauzy pawl money sprinkles over messaging, the continued dilution of voter power and opportunity. Nothing is wrong.
Between all of the losing of the popular vote by Republicans but still "winning" the White House and the 2000 Bush v Gore case it is certainly understandable that Democrats don't trust elections. Republicans, on the other hand, believe batshite crazy conspiracy theories and lies, so I'm not sure there is any useful comparison to be had here.
What about 2008 then? The question is forward-looking, not backward (at least in terms of a presidential election year - the question as worded and 2018 don't seem to align all that well). So, the Republicans' guy had won in 2004. Why then was confidence in the upcoming 2008 election as low as it was?
Bush-Cheney didn't follow thru by declaring martial law & a state of emergency following the economic crisis instigated by James Earl Carter, Jr., making it easier for Blacks to default on their mortgages.
I think Kevin is working pretty hard to both-sides this one. The swing for GOP voters is from 91% to 44% - a 47 point swing. For Dems it's less than half that from 83% to 60% - a 23 point spread. If roughly 32% of voters distrust election results it's a problem. If up to 40% distrust it, as was true for Democrats in 2008, that's an even bigger problem. But that 44% number, meaning well over half of the GOP voters don't trust the election results, THAT's the number that matters and should be the one that concerns us. End of story.
I almost feel like Kevin is testing his readers to see if they notice how he is abusing averages to miss the important issue.
Agree.
This is a weird post because it seems to be the kind of abuse of charts that Drum usually complains about. The Democratic voter variance from when they lost a vote after the Supreme Court shut down the counting of ballots, and won an election is 24%. The variance from when they lost a close election with no counting irregularities and won a close election with no counting variances is 8%.
By contrast, the Republican shift from winning that election, with the help of the Supreme Court, and losing an election was 35%, and from winning a close election to losing one was 34%. (That consistency is a good sign that the problem is the Republican voters generally and not just Trump, Trump's lies didn't create a greater variance than having a black man elected president).
The Democrats have a precentage that is suspicious of elections, with a relatively small variance across elections. Republicans accept election if, and only if, they win them. If you average that out you get a similar percentage, but a very misleading sense of what is going on.
Yes yes yes
Good analysis, thank you.
Duuuuude! Nice job.
I just don't think we're a democracy. Government is not representative of the people. Does that mean I don't trust elections?
In what way is our government not representative of the people?
a. Gerrymandering
b. The Senate
c. The unconscionable abuse of power by the political party leaders of both houses of Congress.
d. The Electoral College.
And that's just 60 seconds off the top of my head as I pack up my desk to go home.
Because your preferences are given more weight than the numbers bear out you are blind. to the flaws or fissures in our system that have been exposed quite a bit lately.
We have a Supreme Court that has 6 nominees from Republican Presidents and 3 from Democratic elections despite the fact that Republicans have won the popular vote just once in the past 30 years. 3 of those justices were nominated by Trump who lost the popular vote (twice actually) by a pretty solid margin and two of those three nominees would not be there without the total hypocrisy of Mitch McConnell and even then they needed to prevaricate about Roe and settled law to be confirmed. That Court has now made several rulings tthat do not reflect the will of the people .
The same patterns of overrepresentation of a minority of the electorate applies in the makeup of the House and Senate and the ability to govern against McConnell's de fact veto.
So, you can argue, and I'm sure you will, that this is because of the peculiar nature of our system, but that's the point. Right now, not unlike the antebellum South, a minority has had disproportionate power in how our country is run. That's why people think our government is not representative.
Always remember: we're a Republica, not a Democratcy.
A rule as immutable as IOKIYAR & IOACIYAD.
Really it's not so important how your sour grapes man on the street responds to a pollster. What really matters is what candidates and elected officials are saying, and as far as that goes, what has happened in the past 18 months is something completely and terrifyingly new.
Sorry Kevin, but your analysis doesn't really hold water.
The poll data shown in the graphs was based on pre-election polls, so it measures how confident people were about the upcoming election results, not about potential sour grapes from the side that lost the election.
Throughout the Bush years and up to the 2008 election Democrats confidence in elections remained constant, and then it did go up a bit during the Obama years, staying high up to the 2016 election, however even during the Trump years, it still remained higher than what it was during the Bush years. Overall this shows that Democrats are more confident in elections now than 20 years ago, this despite there being 12 years of Republican Presidents and only 8 of a Democrat.
On the other side, Republicans were supper high on confidence during the Bush years, but even before the 2008 election their confidence in the result had already sank nearly in half, and under the level of Democrats, probably in anticipation of Obama (who a majority of them always though as an illegitimate candidate) winning.
Then it literally flatlined up to the 2016 election. Only during 2018, when there was no Presidential election, did the Republican confidence went up, before completely tanking once more before the 2020 election, this despite Trump being still in the WH.
To me, the true interpretation of this, is that Democrats generally trust election results regardless of who is in the WH, and regardless of how the party candidate is expected to do. While Republicans, starting before Obama was President became very distrustful of elections, even when their guy was in the WH.
2020 was peak secured elections in the US.
2022 is the start of the fascist "election", where Conservatives have overlaid their control over outcomes, to change elections at their prerogative.
Remember the 2000 presidential race in Florida? The Republicans performed an arbitrary purge of minorities from the voter rolls, called in young Brett Kavanaugh et al to stage the phony Brooks Brothers riot, and finally got their captive Supreme Court Justice Scalia along with his fellow intellectually corrupt justices to hand the big prize to G. W. Bush. Not a big deal, despite being asleep at the switch before the nation's worst terrorist attack, staging an offensive war against another country under false pretenses, and blowing up the economy, G. W. was still a good guy to have a beer with. Dam right I don't trust elections in red states. These people hate democracy and are out to destroy it.
Wasn't the Brooks Brother Riot ploy hatched at a foam party by Roger Stone & Matt Schlapp?
Democrats actually have more reason to be suspicious of elections. 2000 was a pretty good knee in the nuts and the anti-Democratic bias of both the Senate and the Electoral College don’t do much for one’s faith in popular representation. Perhaps if people were asked if elections were administered fairly under the current rules you might get a different result. This is like those “don’t like the way the country is heading” questions. People can have very different reasons for saying no.
Oh, come on, Kevin. The big difference is republicans are actively trying to subvert and corrupt the election process. As is well known and backup up by tons of evidence.
Where are the numbers for 2010, 2012, and 2014?
Without those it looks suspiciously like cherry picking. That straight line from 2008 to 2016 isn't real.