Seventy-four percent of likely voters are confident the midterm vote count will be accurate, according to a New York Times/Siena poll. Other pollsters put that confidence as low as 46%. Eight days before Election Day, the real story is the gap between those numbers.
What this means for you: Americans can’t agree on whether the results are trustworthy, and the split follows party lines. So don’t wait for Election Night to settle it. Learn your state’s rules for mail ballots and certification now, because a slow ballot count is not a broken one.
Local TV sites, including The National News Desk and NBC16, are running a reader vote on whether you trust the results. It has no scientific value (think of it as a conversation starter, not a measurement). But the real polling behind it is worth your time, because the numbers are all over the map.
How much trust is there in the midterm vote count?
Let’s start with the highest reading. A New York Times/Siena poll of likely voters, reported by Yahoo News, found 74% are confident the results will be accurate. Another 23% are not, up from 17% before the 2024 presidential election.
An ABC/Post/Ipsos poll lands lower. It found 65% of all Americans are confident the vote counting will be accurate, and 72% of registered voters. Even so, only 26% of Americans are very confident.
Then there is AP-NORC, which found just under half of registered voters have a great deal or quite a bit of confidence. Meanwhile, a NewsNation/Decision Desk HQ survey found 46% of likely voters believe the ballot count will include all votes accurately.
So is trust at 74% or 46%? Both can be true. Pollsters word the questions differently, and the bar is not the same. “Confident” is not “a great deal” of confidence, and “accurate” is not “all votes.”
The trust gap in the election count has flipped
The bigger story is who trusts the count. According to AP-NORC, 55% of Democrats and 38% of Republicans are confident. Since the 2022 midterms, confidence has fallen among Democrats and risen among Republicans.
ABC/Post/Ipsos shows a similar split. Confidence in accurate counting runs 76% among Democrats, 68% among Republicans and 55% among independents. In other words, independents, the voters who decide close races, are the least sure of all.
The worries differ too. In the NYT/Siena poll, 50% of likely voters worry Republicans might illegally try to overturn the results, and 31% worry Democrats might. Among Republicans, 85% worry more about illegal voting than about blocking eligible voters. Among Democrats, 86% worry more about blocking eligible voters.
Overall, more voters now worry about eligible Americans being unable to vote than about fraud, a reversal from 2024, according to the Times. Election officials have consistently found no evidence of widespread fraud, as The Hill noted in its coverage of the Siena findings.
Why are voters worried beyond the election count?
It isn’t only about how officials count the votes. A Washington Post report on the ABC/Post/Ipsos poll found about 7 in 10 Americans are not confident President Trump would accept the results if Republicans lose. That is a poll about expectations, not a prediction of what will happen.
AP-NORC also found about 7 in 10 voters call AI-generated misinformation and partisan gerrymandering major problems. About 6 in 10 say the same of foreign influence and presidential interference in outcomes. For a look at how one battleground state’s voters are leaning, see our piece on women voters in the Maine Senate race.
What happens next in the election count
Election Day is Nov. 3. The forecasts bear on the trust question, because a lopsided call raises the stakes on whether the losing side accepts it. Silver Bulletin gives Democrats a 95% chance of winning the House and a 76.4% chance of Senate control, per Newsweek’s roundup. Other averages show a closer Senate race.
Many states take days to finish counting mail ballots, and close races can wait on certification. If you’re searching for results that look odd or incomplete, our explainer on Florida election results shows why. Geoffrey Skelley, chief elections analyst at Decision Desk HQ, said Republicans “have shown in recent years more doubt about election results,” tied in part to the 2020 election and Trump’s rhetoric about it.
Here’s the thing: the practical advice is boring, and it works. Look up your state’s mail-ballot deadline and its certification calendar. Vote early if you can, and expect some races to stay open past Tuesday night. The economy is also on voters’ minds, and Main Street is telling two different economic stories right before the midterms.
The poll question will keep running. The one that matters is what the losing side does when the count is done.
