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Originally published by The 19th. Your trusted source for contextualizing the news. Subscribe to our daily newsletter.
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Nearly one in four women — and almost half of Republican women — don’t trust the results of national elections, according to a new poll from the Women & Politics Institute at American University and the Barbara Lee Family Foundation.
The Gender on the Ballot survey released last week looked at women voters’ attitudes and showed just 55% of Republican women trust the results of national elections and 66% trust local elections.
Sixty-three percent of independent women trust national elections and 72% trust local elections. For Democratic women, confidence is much higher: 88% trust national elections and 89% trust local elections.
Election disinformation has spread in recent years, fueled by former President Donald Trump’s attempt to overturn the 2020 election results and encouragement of an insurrection that led to violence at the U.S. Capitol. As he mounts another run, Trump continues to share disinformation about elections that is often amplified by his supporters.
Amanda Hunter, executive director of the Barbara Lee Family Foundation, said it’s important for people of all political ideologies to address election mistrust.
“Regardless of partisanship or background or belief system, everyone should be concerned when there is a lack of trust in elections,” she said. “That obviously affects voting and the health of our democracy.”
Women voters overall trust women in elected office more than men. Seventy-eight percent said women candidates better understand the challenges they face and what it would take to help. Seventy-four percent said more women in political office would help in dealing with the country’s problems.
Forty-one percent of women also said they distrust men in election office, a slight drop from 2022 — but still nearly double the distrust they have for women in elected office (22%, down from 28% last year).
Betsy Fischer Martin, executive director of the Women & Politics Institute, doesn’t know if more women leaders will mean greater trust in elections. But she pointed to the growth of women in elected office in recent years with a record number in Congress and in governor’s offices.
“The more that we are able to see women leaders solving problems, bringing people together — that just instills more confidence that people have about women in office,” she said.
Younger women and Democratic women in the poll say casting a ballot increasingly comes down to ideology rather than gender. And more than 4 in 5 women believe there will be a woman president in the next 20 years — but they’re not necessarily prioritizing it for 2024, with just 42% saying it will be important for a candidate next year to be a woman.
Benenson Strategy Group conducted 811 online interviews from February 10 to 15 among women who are registered voters, including an oversample of younger women ages 18 to 25. The margin of error is 3.4%.
Women without a college degree were more likely to distrust elections, according to the Benenson data. Thirty-nine percent of women without a college degree don’t trust national election results much or at all, compared with 12% of women with at least a college degree. There’s more trust in local elections, but the divide persists: 28% of women without a college degree don’t trust local elections much or at all, compared with 14% of women with at least a college degree.
Of the 45% of GOP women who do not trust national elections much or at all, the majority of them (79%) are non-college educated.
Other polling has also shown that conservative voters are more likely to mistrust elections. The Pew Research Center released polling in October that showed that, since 2018, registered voters who supported Republican congressional candidates had become less confident in how elections will be administered.
Younger and independent voters are more likely to fear that both major parties are dominated by extremists. Martin worried about the implications.
“That can be a turn off politically for women, to just feel, where’s their place in the party on either side, if you’ve got these extremes happening?” she said. “Where do you fit in if you are more in the middle?”
The 2024 presidential race is just beginning to take shape. Democratic President Joe Biden is widely expected to announce a reelection bid, and on the Republican side, other candidates are expected to join Trump and former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley in the field.
The Gender on the Ballot survey captured women’s pessimism about the economy and their anxiety about the country’s direction, offering a glimpse at an array of issues facing women voters about a year before 2024 several general election primaries kick off.
Sixty percent of women voters say they’re feeling more burned out in the past couple of years, up from less than half last year. This was especially pronounced for young women and parents of young children. Black women have experienced a significant increase in burnout.
Sixty percent of women also expressed pessimism about the economy, and 56% said their personal financial situation had worsened in recent years — up from 50% in 2022 and 39% in 2021.
“Overall women are facing significant challenges, and pessimism about the economy as a whole has remained steady,” Lindsay Vermeyen, senior vice president at Benenson, said in an email. “The personal financial situations of specific audiences are being hit harder than others (i.e. younger women) and due to inflation women have cut back on smaller luxuries and almost half have even cut back on necessities like groceries.”
Last year’s poll found more women were disengaging with politics, but that’s shifted. About one in three women who were polled say they talk to their friends and family about politics weekly. And the majority of women think the 2024 presidential election will be more important than most elections, an eight-point increase from how they viewed the 2022 midterm elections.
“It seems to me that women don’t have the luxury of dropping out of the political process given how all of these issues are affecting their lives,” Hunter said. “So while women are paying attention and they’re anxious, it seems that they’re going to vote because politics are showing up in their household and at their front door every day.”
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How many Democratic women think Hillary Clinton beat Trump?
How long are conservatives going to harp on that simple calculation of the popular vote totals?
Pretty much all Democratic women don’t just think, they KNOW that Hillary Clinton beat Trump in 2016. By three million votes.
They KNOW that Biden beat Trump in 2020 by 7 million votes. Trump’s a two-time loser as a presidential candidate. And those ballot numbers are not in dispute, no matter how much Trump keeps trying to sell The Big Lie.
Does any poll ever ask Republican women who are so doubtful about federal elections if they have studied how federal elections are run–like, by local officials (whom they seem to trust)? Do they read anything outside the MAGA silo? Do they KNOW any electoral facts, or are they simply inside Trump’s make-believe world?
I despair for America when pollsters permit their respondents to get away with simply having “feelings” or “beliefs,” without digging into how they came to them.
She definitely won the popular vote, but that is not how we currently elect Presidents. The same in true for Gore in 2000. The Electoral College gives vastly more power to individual voters in small Great Plains and Mountain states with low populations. That simply is not fair. It is affirmative action of the kind Republicans love.
Andy, what do YOU think about Lauren Boebert, R-Colo. stating that women are “lessor vessels”? Could this be why republican women find it hard to accept election results.
But sorry Andy, on a “vote cast” basis, Hillary did beat the judas goat.
Sad how conservatives can’t tell the difference between making a prediction of something that may or may not happen in the future and believing something that has happened in the past and has been shown over and over to be a lie. The concept of past, present, and future is apparently too complex for most conservatives. Sad but not surprising.
Some did at the time. The clear difference is that very few hung into the belief for years following the election, and there isn’t a FOX “not news” and other media feeding the frenzy (despite their knowing the actual truth).
Apples and oranges.
A mixed blessing of findings on the week that Pat Schroeder, one of the last humane politicians, whose only goal was improving lives, leaves us.
Curious, what would make these folks more confident in the election process? Suspect it might be If their person won all the time.
Is the half of Republican women who don’t trust our elections the same ones saying they can lead better than men? I beg to differ.
Perhaps headline should be “More than half of Republican women get all their information from Fox News.”
It strikes me as odd that there is such focus on inflation having worsened women’s financial situations in this survey, but no mention whatsoever of the reduction of the child tax credit. We’ve just memory holed that, I guess.
I’d like to see a more detailed breakdown of the questions and responses; I’ve clicked through to the memo, but even there I’m not really seeing the actual numbers, just percentages.
And ask that 50% of R women if they respect and trust the US Constitution and I’m betting you will get over 90%. How is that explained?
“Of the 45% of GOP women who do not trust national elections much or at all, the majority of them (79%) are non-college educated.”
Meaning they love the Constitution like Apple Pie and understand it about as much as nuclear fusion. I guess that means I will be accused of left wing snobbery and being right…
Twice in this century, the winner of the popular vote for president lost the election. Republican women are not alone in their skepticism about the electoral system.
True, lots of delusional conservative men watch FOX “News” as well.
I’m not saying this is all irrelevant but our media has a habit of exaggerating or promoting the “polarization” narrative in a variety of ways for a variety of reasons. It’s always critical to keep in mind that the “bipartisan” regime is collapsing in a number of ways. Hence, about 25% of American women currently identify as Republicans, meaning that half of them would be around 12%. So another way of describing this headline would be: “13% of American women don’t trust electoral outcomes”. You can decide how alarmed you want to be about that but it’s a lot less alarming than 50% of… whatever.
Or, here’s another headline: “87% of American women still have confidence in electoral outcomes”. Even if ALL republican women had their doubts, it would be 75%.