Results That Matter: Building Trust in Elections

The Yankelovich Center's Building Election Trust: Enhancing Election Official Capacities Through Researcher-Practitioner Partnerships program is aimed at equipping election officials with resources and information to build trust among the electorate and bolster trustworthy practices.

Through this program, we aim to provide clear, empirical guidance about effective communication strategies. We're doing this by:

Supporting a convergent research program to address important, actionable questions about communicating with voters to build trust in the electoral process.
Identifying best practices to answer two questions: What should election officials say to the public to bolster confidence? What media and modalities work best in communicating with the public?
Sponsoring some of the first rigorous research into the effectiveness of strategies aimed at political elites, “local notables,” and influential high-information voters.

Research

Can election facility tours increase trust in elections?

Can informational videos increase trust in elections?

Can prebunking messages convince voters to trust delayed results?

Peer-reviewed paper in the British Journal of Political Science on 2022 surveys showing that videos increase trust in their own states, "Can Official Messaging on Trust in Elections Break Through Partisan Polarization?"

Peer-reviewed paper in PNAS Nexus showing that “Voters Distrust Delayed Election Results, But a Prebunking Message Inoculates Against Distrust”

Peer-reviewed paper in Political Research Quarterly, “The Racial Gap over Trust in Elections (and how to close it)”

Academic working paper on 2023 surveys showing that videos increase trust in other states, "How Federalism Plus Polarization Create a Recipe for Distrust in American Elections (and Experimental Evidence for a Potential Solution)"

Electionline article, Can Information Campaigns Restore Public Trust?, summarizing our survey experiments showing that viewing videos produced by Texas, Colorado, Georgia, California, Virginia and Maricopa can increase trust in election.

Review of the academic literature on what drives trust in elections, “Communicating with Voters to Build Trust in the U.S. Election System: Best Practices and New Areas of Research ”

Peer-reviewed paper in Electoral Studies, "Are Elite Cues Necessary to Drive the 'Winner Effect' on Trust in Elections?"

2024 Post-Election Yankelovich Survey Report, How Did Trust in Elections Change After the 2024 Presidential Contest?

2022 Yankelovich Survey Report, After the 2022 Midterms, Do Americans Trust Elections?