Partisanship, Social Desirability, and Belief in Election Fraud: Evidence from the 2022 US Midterm Elections

Abstract

After losing the 2020 presidential election, Donald Trump publicly asserted that the election was rigged due to voter fraud, and many voters also endorsed this conspiracy theory. This article examines American voters’ belief in election fraud during the 2022 midterm elections, with a particular focus on (1) the propensity of Democrats versus Republicans to believe in voter fraud and (2) the potential for voters to hide their endorsement of such conspiracy theory. For these purposes, we conducted a post-election online public opinion survey in which we asked respondents’ beliefs in voter fraud using both a direct question and a preregistered list experiment. Analysis of the survey data revealed that Republican respondents were far more likely than their Democratic counterparts to believe that election fraud influenced the election outcomes. We also found that the percentage of respondents believing in election fraud was significantly higher when estimated using the direct question method than when using the list experiment, which at least suggests that voters do not conceal their beliefs regarding election fraud out of social desirability concerns. We discuss the implications of this research for the broader literature on American political behavior and public opinion about conspiracy theories.