Confidence in elections among U.S. local officials: Effects of social trust, partisanship and political ambition

Abstract

The U.S. public’s confidence in elections is intensively studied in the last decade but little is known about election confidence among locally elected officials, whose roles and community status may influence public opinion. Using a nationally representative survey of local election officials, we compare election confidence among local elected officials with that of the general public. Local elected officials are more likely to trust both local and national elections. We theorize factors that affect local officials’ trust in elections, including partisan context, state leadership election denial levels, and political ambition. We show how social trust, partisan identity, and ambition significantly influence local officials’ confidence that local and national results reflect the intention of voters. We conclude by showing how the relative lack of intensive partisan polarization among local elected officials is especially important at keeping election distrust low among local officials.