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]