IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/osf/osfxxx/pe2zg.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Who are the Election Skeptics? Evidence from the 2022 Midterm Elections

Author

Listed:
  • Grimmer, Justin
  • Holliday, Derek

    (Stanford University)

  • Lelkes, Yphtach
  • Westwood, Sean

Abstract

Faith in American elections is eroding, with politicians frequently questioning the legitimacy of election results and spreading misinformation about voter fraud. Substantial work has been done to refute misinformation and increase confidence in elections, but often without a clear picture of who skeptics are and why they are skeptical. Using extensive polling data from around the 2022 midterm election (N=5,244), we provide a comprehensive profile of election skeptics: their prevalence, views, and justification. We rely on a large nationally-representative survey and use a mix of quantitative and qualitative data. We find that while skepticism is widespread in the American electorate, its underpinnings are not necessarily deep-seated. Over half of skeptics claim they are skeptical because of how elections are run and nearly one-in-five skeptics claim they are skeptical because of the other party's performance in recent elections, which we corroborate through an event study of the 2022 election.

Suggested Citation

  • Grimmer, Justin & Holliday, Derek & Lelkes, Yphtach & Westwood, Sean, 2023. "Who are the Election Skeptics? Evidence from the 2022 Midterm Elections," OSF Preprints pe2zg, Center for Open Science.
    • Handle: RePEc:osf:osfxxx:pe2zg
    DOI: 10.31219/osf.io/pe2zg
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://osf.io/download/64cd83bb2fe496318961b198/
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.31219/osf.io/pe2zg?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Singh, Shane P. & Thornton, Judd R., 2019. "Elections Activate Partisanship across Countries," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 113(1), pages 248-253, February.
    2. Gordon Pennycook & David G. Rand, 2022. "Accuracy prompts are a replicable and generalizable approach for reducing the spread of misinformation," Nature Communications, Nature, vol. 13(1), pages 1-12, December.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Khan, Nuzaina & Rand, David & Shurchkov, Olga, 2024. "He Said, She Said: Who Gets Believed When Spreading (Mis)Information," IZA Discussion Papers 17282, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    2. Aridor, Guy & Jiménez-Durán, Rafael & Levy, Ro'ee & Song, Lena, 2024. "The Economics of Social Media," CEPR Discussion Papers 18821, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    3. Schreiner, Nicolas, 2021. "Changes in Well-Being Around Elections," Working papers 2021/03, Faculty of Business and Economics - University of Basel.
    4. Tobia Spampatti & Ulf J. J. Hahnel & Evelina Trutnevyte & Tobias Brosch, 2024. "Psychological inoculation strategies to fight climate disinformation across 12 countries," Nature Human Behaviour, Nature, vol. 8(2), pages 380-398, February.

    More about this item

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:osf:osfxxx:pe2zg. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: OSF (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://osf.io/preprints/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.