Fewer than half of Americans now believe the upcoming midterm elections will be free and fair, according to a new nationwide poll, with just 49% expecting fairness while 23% say they do not and another 28% remain uncertain. Confidence in the vote count itself has been sliding for nearly two years, and the drop cuts across party lines even as Democrats, Republicans and independents point to very different reasons for their unease.
The survey was conducted by the Center for Transparent and Trusted Elections at UC San Diego, and reported by the Los Angeles Times, which surveyed 5,016 American adults from September 1 through September 9 with a margin of error of plus or minus 1.4 percentage points. Confidence that ballots will be counted accurately nationally has fallen from 77% right after the November 2024 presidential election to 60% in January and 55% by this month, according to tracking data from UC San Diego Today. Researchers there also found that 89% of respondents said they were at least moderately certain of their own level of confidence, suggesting the skepticism is deeply held rather than a passing mood.
Confidence Splits Sharply by Party
The partisan breakdown tells much of the story. Republicans are now 58% confident ballots will be counted accurately and Democrats 63%, both down from 2024, when 82% of Republicans and 77% of Democrats said they trusted the count, per the same Los Angeles Times account. Independents fell further still, from 73% confidence after the 2024 election to just 49% today. Center co-director Lauren Prather said the findings reflect declining trust and differing understandings of what a free and fair election even means, while center co-director Thad Kousser said free and fair elections mean more than correctly tallying votes, and that people receive different signals from political leaders about the trustworthiness of U.S. elections, according to the Los Angeles Times.
Where the two parties diverge is on the source of their distrust. Republicans are far more skeptical that noncitizens are being prevented from voting, with 52% distrusting that safeguard compared to 12% of Democrats, the paper reports. Democrats, by contrast, are more likely to distrust that congressional lines are drawn to fairly reflect voter preferences, with 48% of Democrats and 48% of independents expressing that distrust compared to 36% of Republicans — a divide that traces directly back to fights over mid-decade redistricting, including California's Proposition 50, the constitutional amendment voters approved in November 2025 letting the state legislature bypass the independent redistricting commission to redraw congressional lines in Democrats' favor, a maneuver Hoodline has previously covered in detail. President Trump had urged Texas and other Republican-led states to redraw their own lines during the mid-decade, according to the Los Angeles Times.
Fears of ICE at the Ballot Box
Beyond the mechanics of vote counting, the poll captured a distinct and racially uneven anxiety tied to immigration enforcement. Voters of color are about four times as likely as white voters to expect intimidation from ICE agents at or near polling locations, the Los Angeles Times found, with 49% of Black respondents, 45% of Hispanic respondents, 40% of Asian American and Pacific Islander respondents, and just 11% of white respondents expecting such intimidation. Separate tracking from UC San Diego Today put the broader expectation that ICE officers will be present near polling locations at 37% of all respondents, rising to 45% of Hispanic, 44% of Black, and 41% of Asian American respondents compared to 33% of white respondents.
The fear runs deeper than expectation alone. Roughly 31% of Asian American and 31% of Hispanic respondents, along with 21% of Black and just 8% of white respondents, said they worry that showing up to vote could subject them to questioning by federal immigration officers even though they are U.S. citizens, according to the same UC San Diego Today findings. Reaction to a hypothetical ICE presence at polling places also splits sharply by party: nearly 60% of Democrats said it would lower their confidence in an accurate vote count, while about 46% of Republicans said it would actually increase theirs, and overall 35% of all respondents said an ICE presence would make them less confident versus 23% who said it would make them more confident, per the Los Angeles Times.
Deepfakes and Foreign Interference Add to the Unease
More than three-quarters of Americans say they are concerned that AI-generated misleading audio or video deepfakes will affect the midterm elections, the Los Angeles Times reports. That worry is playing out against a fragmented regulatory landscape: as of June 23, 2026, roughly 29 states had enacted laws regulating or requiring disclosures for AI-generated deepfakes in political campaigns, according to Axios, as cited by Resemble AI, even as federal rules remain unpassed — a patchwork Hoodline examined in a recent look at Michigan.
Distrust of foreign interference safeguards also breaks along party lines, with 48% of Republicans, 42% of independents and 32% of Democrats saying they distrust that U.S. elections are well-protected from potential foreign interference, the Los Angeles Times found. Even among the roughly 28% of respondents who said they were uncertain whether the midterms will be free and fair, 31% still said they were confident the vote would be counted accurately, suggesting that for many, fairness and accuracy are seen as separate questions rather than one and the same. Election experts have denied claims of widespread voter fraud, including those made previously by President Trump and his administration, according to the Los Angeles Times.
What It Could Mean Heading Into November
Trust in accurate vote counting remains a central and dominant part of how Americans define a free and fair election, but respondents also flagged voter access, voter eligibility, freedom from interference and intimidation, and meaningful candidate choice as core election-integrity concerns, per the paper's report. Kousser and Prather both addressed diminished trust, with Prather adding that she does not expect the erosion in trust to reduce voter turnout.
The stakes extend beyond the ballot box itself. Research from UC San Diego's Institute on Global Conflict and Cooperation has found that eroding trust in free and fair elections correlates with a greater willingness among voters to accept political violence and reject democratic outcomes altogether. A May 2026 report from The Conference Board similarly found that public trust in secure, transparent election administration is a prerequisite for business confidence and long-term market stability, underscoring why the slide in voter trust is being watched well beyond political circles. States have taken some steps to protect election workers.
