A new survey from Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Election Lab found that voter confidence increased after the 2022 midterms, even as a partisan divide still exists.
Up from 61% in the lab's 2020 version of the study, 69% of registered voters said they were either very or somewhat confident that votes were counted as intended nationwide.
The growth was primarily driven by Republicans, whose confidence grew by 20 percentage points, from 22% in 2020 to 42% last year.
Democrats, meanwhile, remained mostly unchanged from 2020 to 2022, going from 92% to 93% in those respective years.
The findings show that, although decreasing, a sharp difference in confidence in the election system is still present. The report also noted that "similar responses" were recorded in the 2016 version of the survey.
"Recent patterns in voter confidence, especially at the state and national levels, are a product of the polarization of attitudes about the electoral process along partisan lines," the report read.
Voters also expressed more confidence the more localized the election was, with 85% responding that they were confident that votes in their state were counted as intended. Meanwhile, 89% said the same about their city or county.
Mail-in voters had 98% confidence that their vote was counted as intended, with 97% who voted in person recording no issues at their locations on Election Day. Overall, 93% of voters had confidence their vote went through.
"Partisanship may have played a role in the return to the Postal Service as a mode to return mail ballots," MIT researchers wrote. "In 2020, 58% of Republicans reported returning their mail ballots by mail, compared to 52% of Democrats. In 2022, these rates were 62% for both parties."
The survey of 10,200 registered voters administered by YouGov is the latest in MIT's Survey of the Performance of American Elections. It has covered every presidential election since 2008 and now, two midterms.
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