Just 20% of voters are highly confident the Supreme Court would be politically neutral if it rules on legal issues in 2024 election
Pew Research Center conducted this study to understand Americans’ views of voting and their expectations around the 2024 presidential election.
For this analysis, we surveyed 5,110 U.S. adults – including 4,025 registered voters – from Sept. 30 to Oct. 6, 2024. Everyone who took part in this survey is a member of the Center’s American Trends Panel (ATP), a group of people recruited through national, random sampling of residential addresses who have agreed to take surveys regularly. This kind of recruitment gives nearly all U.S. adults a chance of selection. Surveys were conducted either online or by telephone with a live interviewer. The survey is weighted to be representative of the U.S. adult population by gender, race, ethnicity, partisan affiliation, education and other factors. Read more about the ATP’s methodology.
Here are the questions used for this report, the topline and the survey methodology.
With voting underway in the 2024 presidential race, majorities of American voters are at least somewhat confident that the election will be run smoothly, that votes will be counted accurately and that ineligible voters will be prevented from casting ballots.
But supporters of Kamala Harris and Donald Trump have sharply different expectations for how this year’s election may unfold. In many cases, these differences are as wide as they were in the lead-up to the 2020 election.
Harris supporters are more optimistic about the way the election will be run: 90% say they are at least somewhat confident that elections across the United States will be administered well. This compares with 57% of Trump supporters who are confident the election will be run smoothly.
This pattern in views extends to other aspects of the presidential race:
- Harris supporters are more confident than Trump supporters that, after all the votes are counted, it will be clear who won (85% vs. 58%).
- Harris supporters are much more confident that mail-in ballots will be counted as voters intend (85% vs. 38%).
- Harris supporters also are more confident that election systems across the U.S. are secure from hacking and other technological threats (73% vs. 32%).
The latest national survey by Pew Research Center, conducted among 5,110 U.S. adults (including 4,025 registered voters) from Sept. 30 to Oct. 6, 2024, finds that voters who support Harris are more confident in the way the 2024 election will unfold than President Joe Biden’s supporters were four years ago.
And those who support Trump are deeply skeptical about the way the election will be conducted – expressing even less confidence on some election issues than his supporters did four years ago.
Wide partisan gaps in election confidence since 2020
In 2018, Republican candidate supporters were 8 percentage points more likely than Democratic candidate supporters to say that year’s midterm election would be run well. By 2020, Biden’s supporters were 22 points more likely than Trump’s to expect the election to run smoothly. The gap this year is even wider: 33 points between Harris and Trump supporters.
Harris, Trump supporters differ on whether votes will be counted accurately
As was the case four years ago, Trump supporters are particularly skeptical that absentee and mail-in ballots will be counted as voters intend.
Harris supporters are more than twice as likely as Trump supporters to say they are very or somewhat confident that absentee and mail-in ballots will be counted accurately (85% vs. 38%).
By contrast, sizable majorities of both coalitions (93% of Harris supporters, 77% of Trump supporters) are at least somewhat confident that in-person votes will be counted accurately.
However, far more Harris (57%) than Trump (24%) supporters are very confident this will happen.
There is broad confidence among voters overall that local poll workers and state election officials will do a good job during the upcoming election.
Yet Harris supporters are more likely than Trump supporters to express a high degree of confidence in these administrators.
Read more on views of election administration and vote counting in Chapter 1
Related: Key facts about U.S. poll workers
Voters’ views of illegal voting, access to voting
Roughly nine-in-ten among both Trump and Harris supporters are confident that eligible voters will be able to cast a ballot if they want to.
But there are bigger divisions on whether people who are ineligible to vote will be prevented from doing so.
Today, 87% of Harris voters are at least somewhat confident that ineligible voters will be prevented from casting ballots. Just 30% of Trump supporters say this.
Most voters are at least somewhat confident that it will be clear which candidate won the election after all the votes are counted. But here again, Harris backers (85%) are much more likely than Trump supporters (58%) to express confidence that the winner will be clear.
Do voters think election systems in the U.S. are safe from hacking?
Overall, 52% of voters are at least somewhat confident that U.S. election systems are secure from hacking and other technological threats. Nearly as many voters (47%) are not confident about this.
- 73% of Harris supporters say they are confident that election systems are secure. This is higher than the share of Biden supporters who said this in the weeks before the 2020 election (53%).
- The pattern is reversed among Trump supporters: 32% now say election systems are secure from hacking and other technological threats, down from 60% four years ago.
Other findings: Voters’ plans for casting ballots, confidence in Supreme Court to be politically neutral if it must resolve 2024 election challenges
A smaller share of voters plan to cast ballots by mail compared with 2020. Four years ago, during the COVID-19 pandemic, a record share of voters cast ballots by mail in the presidential election. Today, a much smaller share of voters plan to vote by mail (39% then, 28% today). But as in 2020 amid the Biden-Trump matchup, Harris supporters are about twice as likely as Trump supporters to say they plan to cast a ballot via mail.
Read more on voters’ expectations around voting in Chapter 3
Trump backers who plan to vote by mail are more confident that mail-in ballots will be counted accurately. Though most Trump supporters plan to cast a ballot in person, 17% say they plan to vote absentee or by mail. These voters express far more confidence in the accuracy of mail-in ballots than do those who plan to vote in person (67% vs. 31%).
Most voters are not confident the Supreme Court would be politically neutral if it had to resolve legal challenges related to the 2024 election. Overall, just 20% of voters are extremely or very confident the court would remain politically neutral if it had to resolve any legal challenges that stemmed from the 2024 election. But Trump voters express more confidence than Harris voters do (34% vs. 6%).
