Bonus

 About a month ago, I discovered that I am listed as the editor of the "EON International Journal of Arts, Humanities & Social Sciences."  In fact, I had never even heard of this journal, so I sent an e-mail to them telling me to remove my name.  I never heard back and am still listed as editor, so I decided to take further action.  They give their mailing address as:

 2055, Limestone Rd Ste 200C, Zip Code 19808 Wilmington,
Delaware, USA

I suspect that they are actually based outside the United States, since they clearly aren't familiar with American conventions for writing addresses, but Google Maps shows a building at 2055 Limestone Rd, so I wrote to them.  The concluding sentences in my letter are:

"Falsely claiming that I am the editor of a predatory journal is defamatory.  If you do not remove my name from the listing by October 15, I will consult with my attorney about the possibility of legal action."

Let's see if that has any effect.

Focused on the future, part 3

My last two posts were about answers to a question on confidence that "votes will be accurately cast and counted accurately" in elections, which has been asked a number of times since 2004.  As far as I know, there were no comparable questions before then.  However, a question on "dishonesty in the voting or counting of votes in your district" was asked in 1959 and 1964, and since 2004 there have been several "accurately cast and counted" questions that specified "at the facility where you vote."  I showed the overall results in a previous post,  and will look at party differences in this one.  There's a general tendency for people to be more positive about things that are closer to them, but my question is whether partisan differences in views on local elections might track partisan differences in views on national elections.    Here is average confidence in "the facility where you vote" by party:

It has declined for all groups, although the decline seems smaller for Democrats.  Independents are the least confident, which is probably because they tend to be more suspicious of politics in general.  Comparing confidence in national and local elections for each partisan group (red is local, blue is national):

They changes aren't parallel:  for Democrats and Independents, the gap between confidence in the national and local vote has become smaller; for Republicans, it's become bigger.  The results for Republicans aren't surprising, since their claims of fraud have focused on heavily Democratic places, like Philadelphia, Detroit, and Atlanta.  The general tendency seems to be for confidence in local voting to vary less than confidence in national voting.  

[Data from the Roper Center for Public Opinion Research]

Focused on the future, part 2

 In 2004, Gallup asked "How confident are you that, across the country, the votes for president will be accurately cast and counted in this year’s election – very confident, somewhat confident, not too confident or not at all confident?"  They have repeated the question a number of times, most recently just two weeks ago.  Their report says that the overall level of confidence has stayed about the same since 2008, but with a growing partisan division--Democrats becoming more confident and Republicans less confident.  The report merged "very confident" and "somewhat confident," which is a potentially important distinction, so I calculated the average, which is shown below:

The red dots indicate midterm elections (of course, those questions omitted the words "for president").  There was a substantial decline between 2004 and 2008--there were two surveys in 2004, with an average of about 3.0, two in 2006, with an average of about 2.85, one in 2007, also at 2.85, and two in October 2008, which averaged about 2.65 (about the same as the average in September 2024).   Why would this have happened?  I would have figured that confidence among Democrats would be low in 2004 because of  memories of 2000, and would rise as more time went by (especially after Democratic success in the 2006 midterms).  On the Republican side, it didn't seem like there was anything that should cause a dramatic change.  That would suggest an increase in overall confidence, not a decline.  

Breaking it down by party:

Relatively little change from 2004 to 2007, and then a large decline in Republican confidence between December 2007 and October 2008.  I could only get complete data for two surveys after 2008 but they showed further declines among Republicans.  The next figure shows the gap between Democrats and Republicans:

What might have caused the change in 2007-8?  Thinking back, I remembered that there were news stories about fraud in ACORN voter registration drives.  Also, in December 2007 Hillary Clinton was the frontrunner for the Democratic nomination, so it's possible that the decline among Republicans was a reaction to Obama--maybe his race, or his roots in Chicago politics.   The decline in confidence among Republicans meant that confidence was about the same in both parties.  Unfortunately, there don't seem to be any comparable questions before 2000, so we can't say if the lack of partisan difference was a return to normal.    

[Data from the Roper Center for Public Opinion Research]

Focused on the future

During the 2016 election campaign, Donald Trump refused to give a definite answer when asked whether he would accept the results if he lost:  as I recall, his usual response was something like "we'll see what happens."   A Fox News survey from late October of that year asked "If your candidate loses the presidential election in November, will you accept that his or her opponent won fair and square and will be the legitimate leader of the country?"  87% of the people who intended to vote for Hillary Clinton (or were leaning towards Clinton) said that they would; only 56% of those who intended to vote for Trump or were leaning towards Trump said that they would (34% said they would not and 10% weren't sure).  But it may be easier to say that you would be a good loser when you don't expect to lose.  The same survey asked "who do you think will win in November":  64% said Clinton, 26% Trump, and 10% weren't sure.  What if we adjust for expectations?  

Nearly all Clinton supporters expected her to win (93%), so it doesn't make much difference on that side:  for what it's worth, 88% of those who expected her to win and 79% of those who weren't sure or thought she would lose said they would accept Trump as the legitimate leader.  Among Trump supporters, 34% expected Clinton to win, 12% weren't sure, and 55% expected Trump to win.  64% of those who expected Clinton to win, 58% of those who weren't sure, and 51% of those who expected Trump to win said they would accept Clinton as the legitimate leader if she won.  That is, the gap in willingness to accept the other candidate as the legitimate leader is even larger when you adjust for expectations by comparing Clinton supporters who expected to win with Trump supporters who expected to win.  

Of course, the "fair and square . . . legitimate leader" question is open to interpretation:  someone might believe that a candidate had really gotten the votes, but had used unfair tactics.  Since 2004, Gallup has asked about confidence that votes "will be accurately cast and counted in this year’s election."  I'll look at that question in my next post.  

[Data from the Roper Center for Public Opinion Research]