Estimated read time: 5-6 minutes
- Nearly 90% of Utah Republicans trust state election officials in 2024, up from 2022.
- Democratic confidence decreased by 20 percentage points since 2022, reflecting election outcome dissatisfaction.
- Republicans' election security confidence rose post-2024, while Democrats' trust slightly declined nationally.
SALT LAKE CITY — Nearly 9 out of 10 Utah Republican voters trust that state election officials conducted the 2024 general election fairly and accurately compared to 7 out of 10 Utah Democrats, according to a new Deseret News/Hinckley Institute of Politics poll conducted by HarrisX.
The poll found that the vast majority of Utahns have confidence that their state and local election officials ensured a fair and accurate election this year. Republicans and self-identified conservatives had more confidence than the state overall.
This high level of trust among Republicans closely mirrors Deseret News polling results on the same question from the last election cycle in 2022. But it appears that confidence has decreased among self-identified Democrats.
Election confidence flip-flop
Between 2022 and 2024, Utah Democrats' confidence in state election officials fell by 20 percentage points. In November 2022, 91% of Democrats expressed confidence, including 69% who said they were "very confident" that their state or local government conducted a fair and accurate election.
Two years later — following a less favorable election for Democratic candidates nationwide — 70% of Democrats expressed confidence that their state government conducted a fair and accurate election, with less than half of Democrats saying they are "very confident."
While the Deseret News/Hinckley Institute of Politics poll asked a different question after the 2020 election, it appears that Republicans may have shifted in the opposite direction toward greater confidence this year.
A poll from January 2021 found that more than 4 in 10 Utah voters thought there was widespread voter fraud in the 2020 election, after Donald Trump lost that election to Joe Biden. That proportion increased to 65% among self-identified Republicans and 68% among self-identified conservatives, and fell to just 2% among Democrats and 3% among liberals.
A Gallup poll conducted in March found an equally dismal view of the 2020 presidential election among Utah conservatives. The poll found that 60% of Utahns who identify as "conservative" were not confident that President Joe Biden was the legitimate winner of the 2020 presidential election, including 30% who were "not at all confident."
The latest Deseret News/Hinckley poll shows "that trust in elections is not something that is set in stone," Hinckley Institute director Jason Perry said. "It is influenced by the comfort level voters have with the process and ultimately whether their candidate wins."
"For Utah Republicans, having trusted local officials in charge and seeing a favorable election outcome eased earlier doubts tied to distant, national controversies," Perry said. "On the other hand, Democrats, who had previously shown strong confidence in the state system, became more skeptical after facing a disappointing result. Election confidence seems to align with success, and perceptions of fairness can shift quickly."
Republicans more confident in state election officials
The poll found that 47% of Utah voters are very confident that state government officials conducted a fair and accurate election in 2024, 34% are somewhat confident, 10% are not very confident, 4% are not at all confident and 5% don't know. The results for local government officials were nearly identical.
Republicans were six percentage points more confident in how state election officials conducted the 2024 elections than the state overall and 17 percentage points more confident than Democrats, with 87% of Republicans expressing confidence, including 54% who were "very confident," compared to 70% of Democrats expressing confidence, including 45% who were "very confident."
The partisan disparity carried over to ideological identification. Nearly 90% of self-identified conservatives said they are confident that their state government officials conducted a fair and accurate election in 2024. Less than 65% of self-identified liberals felt the same way.
Political independents and moderates fell in between members of the two major parties and their more ideological neighbors, hovering just under the overall Utah confidence level of 81%.
The HarrisX Interactive poll was conducted between Nov. 26 and Dec. 5, 2024, among 826 registered Utah voters with a margin of error of +/- 3.4 percentage points.
A nationwide shift in election confidence
The 2024 election cycle saw multiple Republican candidates criticize state and local election officials after their losses.
The accusations reflected frustration over the transparency of primary nomination packets, the unpredictability of mail-in ballots arriving on time and the subjectivity of vote by mail's signature verification process.
A pair of legislative audits released in October and December have also been used to question the state's election system.
The first found an error rate of roughly 2% in the signature verification process that qualifies candidates for the primary ballot. The second found 1,400 deceased voters still on Utah voter rolls and identified areas where county clerks failed to meet election security standards.
Despite questions surrounding Utah's vote-by-mail system, 75% of Utah voters said they trust that votes cast by mail in Utah are counted as voters intended, including 92% of Democrats and 72% of Republicans, according to an October Deseret News/Hinckley poll.
Post-election polling across the country has repeatedly affirmed the findings of the latest Deseret News/Hinckley poll.
Republican confidence in election integrity cratered following the 2020 presidential election. Before and after his loss to Biden, Trump made false accusations of wide scale election fraud that were repeated or left uncontested by many of his supporters in public office.
But following Trump's win in 2024, Republicans' view of election security has greatly improved, while Democrats' faith in elections has fallen slightly.
A survey commissioned by Bright Line Watch following the 2024 general election found that 90% of Republican voters had confidence that their vote was counted as intended at the national level, compared to just 30% of Republican voters who felt that way after the 2020 election.
Democrats shifted in the opposite direction. The share of Democrats who express confidence in national election results fell from 87% after the 2020 general election to 81% of the 2024 general election. Republicans and Democrats also reversed rolls as the more election-skeptical party when asked about confidence in state and local elections, the survey found.
A Pew Research Center poll released earlier this month found that 93% of Republican voters thought the 2024 general election was run and administered "somewhat" or "very well," up from just 21% of Trump voters in 2020. The same survey also found that confidence among Democratic voters has fallen 10 percentage points, from 94% in 2020 to 84% in 2024.
