{"id":544882,"date":"2022-12-22T10:30:48","date_gmt":"2022-12-22T15:30:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/newscenter\/?p=544882"},"modified":"2023-01-23T12:35:21","modified_gmt":"2023-01-23T17:35:21","slug":"2022-midterm-elections-show-silver-lining-for-us-democracy-544882","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/newscenter\/2022-midterm-elections-show-silver-lining-for-us-democracy-544882\/","title":{"rendered":"2022 midterm elections show a silver lining for US democracy"},"content":{"rendered":"

New Bright Line Watch poll finds increased trust in the fairness of elections.<\/h2>\n
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What are midterm elections?<\/strong><\/h3>\n

US midterm elections\u2014called so because they occur in the middle of the US president\u2019s four-year term\u2014determine who will hold each of the seats in the US House of Representatives during the subsequent two years, and who will hold each of about one-third of the seats in the US Senate for the subsequent six years, says Stuart Jordan<\/a>, an associate professor of political science and the associate director of the Democracy Center at the University of Rochester. In any given midterm election, seats in state governments are also up for grabs.<\/p>\n

When are midterm elections held?<\/strong><\/h3>\n

Midterm elections are held at the end of the second year of every US president\u2019s four-year term. The next US midterms are due to take place on November 3, 2026.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

According to the most recent<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0Bright Line Watch survey\u2014Rebound in Confidence: American Democracy and the 2022 Midterm Elections\u2014<\/em>which was fielded right after the November elections, more voters in the United States now trust the integrity and fairness of elections than they did prior to the midterms, according to previous Bright Line Watch polls.<\/p>\n

The post-election survey, conducted by a team of academics who have been polling experts and the public at regular intervals about the health of US democracy since 2017, finds a notable increase in trust from before to after the 2022 midterm elections among Republican voters\u2014from 68 to 78 percent in terms of their individual votes, and from 67 to 73 percent in terms of all votes in statewide elections. Confidence in the national vote among Republicans, which was already much lower than the confidence level of Democrats, rose slightly from 49 percent in October to 51 percent in November.<\/p>\n

\u201cI am heartened by the fact that those red lines for Republicans are not tilting downward the way they did in 2020 before and after the election when we saw a real decline in Republican confidence,\u201d says Bright Line Watch cofounder\u00a0Gretchen Helmke<\/a>\u00a0who is the Thomas H. Jackson Distinguished University Professor and the faculty director of the\u00a0Democracy Center<\/a>\u00a0at the\u00a0University of Rochester<\/a>. That came despite the fact that Republican candidates didn\u2019t perform as well in the midterms as anticipated, says Helmke, who studies political instability, constitutional crises, the rule of law, and Latin American politics. \u201cConfidence did not decrease. To me, that was surprising and really encouraging.\u201d<\/p>\n

But US democracy isn\u2019t out of the woods yet. While the numbers are indeed \u201cencouraging,\u201d there\u2019s still reason to be concerned, says Bright Line Watch cofounder Brendan Nyhan<\/a>, the James O. Freedman Presidential Professor and a professor of government at Dartmouth College. Nyhan, who researches political scandal and corruption, conspiracy theories, and political communications and the media, cautions that those slightly lower levels of perceived voter fraud in the November data are \u201cstill uncomfortably high\u201d and still \u201cvastly outstrip any credible estimates [of voter fraud], based on expert judgments or criminal proceedings.\u201d<\/p>\n

The same post-election survey also finds that the majority of polled political scientists see the Democratic Party\u2019s strategy of supporting election denier candidates in\u00a0the GOP\u00a0primaries as ultimately a threat to democracy, even as those election deniers ended up underperforming<\/a> in the midterm elections.<\/p>\n

\"Graphic<\/p>\n

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Bright Line Watch\u2019s key findings in the post-midterm poll:<\/strong><\/h3>\n