Democratic voters in the United States have lost faith in the country's election results since the last midterm elections, according to a new poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research.

Source: Associated Press

The share of registered voters who identify as Democrats and say they have confidence that votes will be counted accurately has dropped from 75% in 2022 to 55% this year, the poll found. The survey was conducted less than a month before the November 3 midterm elections.

55%Democrats confident in accurate count, down from 75% in 2022
38%Republicans confident, up from 26% in 2022
45%All voters confident, down from 50% in 2022
34%Independents confident, unchanged in both years

Republican voters' confidence has risen since 2022 but remains below Democrats', AP reported. About 38% of Republican voters now say they have a great deal or quite a bit of confidence in the results, up from 26% four years ago. Slightly fewer than half of all U.S. voters — 45% — express that level of confidence, down from 50% in 2022, while independents have held steady at 34% in both years. A second report of the same poll carried the same figures.

Source: News24 (AP-NORC poll report)

The two parties see different problems. About 9 in 10 Democratic voters say the president attempting to influence election outcomes is a major problem, compared with about 2 in 10 Republican voters, AP reported. About 7 in 10 Republican voters say people voting when they are ineligible is a major problem, compared with 25% of Democratic voters.

Few voters trust the courts to settle a disputed result: just 17% of registered voters said they were extremely or very confident the U.S. Supreme Court would handle a case related to the midterm elections in a fair and nonpartisan manner, according to AP.

AP said the survey signals how opinion has changed since President Donald Trump returned to the White House and began an effort to expand federal authority over elections, even though the Constitution gives states and Congress control over voting processes. The administration has said it has no plans to send the military or immigration agents to patrol polling places, although the head of the Department of Homeland Security said immigration officers could be sent there for targeted operations such as an arrest with a warrant, AP reported.

The AP-NORC poll of 1,119 adults, including 925 registered voters, was conducted October 8-12 using NORC's probability-based AmeriSpeak Panel. The margin of sampling error is plus or minus 3.9 percentage points for adults overall and plus or minus 4.2 points for registered voters.