Voter fraud and voter suppression have become partisan issues
Most Democratic and Republican voters agree that their own vote was counted last Tuesday, according to the latest Economist/YouGov poll, but more than one in ten aren’t sure about that, and one in twenty voters pretty sure their vote didn’t get counted.
Americans have other questions about the fairness and the accuracy of the counting this election.
Both Republicans and Democrats see problems with voting this year, but they see different ones. More than a third of Republicans believe there is a lot of vote fraud, with ineligible people voting, while more than a third of Democrats believe there were many instances of voter suppression this year. Republicans see less vote suppression, Democrats less of what could be called voter fraud.
The partisan difference in perceptions of election accuracy and fairness reflect opinions about what happened in the 2016 election. What people believe about the vote in 2016 is what they believe about the latest election, too. Two in three Republicans say that there were millions of illegal votes cast in the 2016 presidential election. And about the same percentage say millions of illegal votes were also cast in 2018.
A third of Democrats agree when asked about 2016, but just one in four think it could have been the case in 2018.
For Democrats, the problem in 2016 was Russian interference. Nearly nine in ten Democrats say that happened, compared with only a quarter of Republicans. Far fewer in both parties think Russia happened in the 2018 elections.
