On Oct. 31, 2024, Donald Trump posted on his Truth Social site:
We caught them CHEATING BIG in Pennsylvania. Must announce and PROSECUTE, NOW! This is a CRIMINAL VIOLATION OF THE LAW. STOP VOTER FRAUD! CHECK OUT KAMALA’S NEW SLEAZEBAG LAWYER. WE ARE ON THEM ALL THIS TIME! Who would have ever thought that our Country is so CORRUPT?
In 2024, Trump’s pre-election rhetoric was filled with claims like these. He even insisted that if Jesus was counting the votes, he would win California – a state that hasn’t voted for a Republican presidential candidate since 1988.
After Trump’s victory in the 2024 presidential election, Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), one of the Republicans who attempted to prevent certification of the 2020 election results, dismissed concerns about Trump’s earlier allegations. When asked if he thought the 2024 election was free and fair, Jordan simply replied, “I do.” The contrast was stark – Republicans’ election fraud claims largely vanished once Trump’s 2024 victory was confirmed.
Trump supporters listened to his claims about election fraud
After he lost in 2020, Trump spent months claiming the election was stolen, which culminated in the January 6th attack on the U.S. Capitol by some of his supporters. But this type of rhetoric also shapes how ordinary Americans view the legitimacy of their democratic institutions. When political leaders repeatedly claim elections are rigged, many of their supporters listen.
Using the Cooperative Election Study (CES) panel survey, which followed the same group of 6,175 American adults across the 2020, 2022, and 2024 elections, we tracked how confidence in the fairness of America’s elections has shifted over time. Because the survey follows the same individuals, we can directly track how their views changed in response to the outcomes of recent elections.
The results show a striking pattern: For Trump supporters, perceptions of election fairness are closely related to whether their party wins or loses, a general trend political scientists call the “winner’s effect.” After his 2024 victory, Trump supporters became much more likely to say elections are fair. Voters who supported Kamala Harris, on the other hand, were somewhat less likely to agree that elections are fair after her loss. But the shift in the opinions of Harris supporters was much less dramatic – they still expressed far more confidence in U.S. elections after the outcome of the 2024 race than Trump supporters.
Trump supporters’ trust in elections jumped up sharply after November 2024
To measure these attitudes, we asked respondents whether they agree or disagree that elections in the United States are conducted fairly. Prior to the 2022 midterm elections, there was a massive gap between how Harris and Trump supporters viewed election fairness, as shown in figure 1. Just 31% of Trump supporters agreed that elections were fair, compared to 78% of Harris supporters. The 47-point difference likely reflected the deep skepticism among Trump supporters about election integrity, following his 2020 fraud claims.
Figure 1
After the 2022 midterms – where Democrats performed better than expected and Republicans fell short of the “red wave” they had hoped to win – these scores barely budged. Harris supporters saw a slight uptick to 85% agreement with the statement on election fairness. Interestingly, Trump supporters also saw a very small increase to 33% – yet their trust remained much lower compared to people who backed Harris.
But the 2024 survey results told a different story. Before the presidential election, agreement that U.S. elections are fair looked similar to 2022 data – 82% of Harris supporters and 28% of Trump supporters agreed that U.S. elections were fair. After Trump’s victory, agreement in the fairness of elections among his supporters shot up by 27 points, from 28% to 55%. Meanwhile, the CES data showed a small 8-point decline in election confidence among people who backed Harris.
The bottom line? Even after this massive shift, Trump supporters still trust elections far less than Harris supporters do.
Where do most Trump supporters stand on U.S. elections?
The percentage of each group that agrees with the statement that U.S. elections are fair and accurate tells one story. Looking at how individuals actually shifted across the full set of response categories reveals the nuances behind these changes.
Before the 2024 election, Trump supporters were heavily concentrated in the “strongly disagree,” “somewhat disagree,” and “neither agree nor disagree” categories. Only 28% of this group expressed any agreement that elections are fair. After Trump’s victory, the share of Trump supporters who “strongly disagreed” that elections are fair saw a large drop, from 18% to 4%, while those who “somewhat disagreed” fell from 31% to 16%. But rather than moving to strong confidence in U.S. elections, most of this shift went toward “somewhat agree,” a category that jumped from 22% to 45%. Trump supporters remained reluctant to “strongly agree” that elections are fair. Just 11% selected this response even after seeing their candidate win the 2024 presidential race (see figure 2).
Figure 2
Harris supporters, in contrast, became more equivocal after she lost the 2024 election. Before the election, 51% of Harris supporters “strongly agreed” that elections are fair but this dropped to 37% after the election. Still, even after this decline, Harris supporters remained much more likely to strongly agree on election fairness than Trump supporters were.
What happens when trust in elections becomes partisan?
In one sense, Trump’s 2024 victory accomplished something positive for American democracy. The outcome appears to have restored confidence in U.S. elections among millions of Trump supporters who had lost faith in the system. After years of extremely low trust levels, the 27-point increase in the number of Trump supporters who believe elections are fair after the 2024 election represents an important shift away from the deep skepticism that followed the 2020 outcome.
But this also reveals a much more troubling reality. The fact that trust in U.S. elections can swing so dramatically – based purely on who wins – exposes how fragile Americans’ faith in democratic institutions has become.
The most concerning finding may be that even Trump’s decisive victory in 2024 couldn’t fully repair the damage that his own rhetoric appears to have caused. His supporters moved toward trusting elections, but most stopped short of strong confidence – suggesting that years of “stop the steal” messaging created a baseline skepticism that a later victory alone couldn’t overcome. We may be witnessing not just a temporary crisis of confidence, but a more permanent erosion of faith in America’s democratic processes among a significant portion of the electorate.
Caroline Soler is a recent graduate of Tufts University, majoring in political science and mathematics, and is currently a research associate for the Cooperative Election Study.
Brian Schaffner is the Newhouse Professor of Civic Studies in the Department of Political Science and Tisch College at Tufts University. He also serves as a co-director for the Cooperative Election Study.
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