Will this year's presidential election create another debacle over the way votes are cast and counted in this country? No one knows for sure, but most Americans tell Gallup that they are confident in the nation's voting process. Democrats tend to be slightly more skeptical than Republicans that their votes will be accurately tallied, but most Democrats still are confident in the system.
It's been nearly four years since Americans went to the polls to cast their votes for president. Many political analysts predicted the 2000 election would one of the closest in the nation's history -- and it was, especially in the Sunshine State. After weeks of disputed "butterfly ballots" and "hanging chads," Florida Secretary of State Katherine Harris certified George W. Bush, with a razor-thin 537-vote lead over Al Gore, as the winner of Florida's 25 electoral votes. But the election outcome was not determined there. The case eventually found its way to the U.S. Supreme Court, which ruled, in a 7-2 vote, to stop the manual recount in Florida because it was not treating all ballots equally and with due process. Gore shortly thereafter conceded the presidency to Bush.
Confidence in Nationwide Voting Process
A recent CNN/USA Today/Gallup poll*, conducted July 19-21, finds that three-quarters of Americans are at least somewhat confident that votes for president will be correctly cast and counted, including 34% who say they are very confident. Roughly one in five Americans are not too confident (15%) or not at all confident (6%) in the nation's voting process.
Democrats are less confident than Republicans that votes will be cast and counted precisely, perhaps because of the controversy surrounding the 2000 vote count in Florida that cost Gore the state and probably the presidency. Although a majority of both Republicans (92%) and Democrats (67%) express some degree of confidence in the nation's voting system, the percentage saying they are very confident is twice as high among Republicans as it is among Democrats, by 49% to 24%.
What About the Florida Vote?
Fewer Americans express confidence in Florida's voting accuracy than express confidence in voting accuracy for the country as a whole. Two-thirds of Americans say they are either very (34%) or somewhat (33%) confident that the presidential votes in Florida will be cast and counted accurately, while nearly a third are not too confident (19%) or not at all confident (13%).
Responses to this question also reflect partisan differences, with Republicans expressing a greater degree of confidence in the Florida vote than Democrats. Half of Republicans, 52%, say they are very confident that the votes in Florida will be cast and counted precisely this November, compared with only 17% of Democrats.
Despite the intense negative publicity surrounding the 2000 election, Florida voters themselves also express confidence in the voting process in their state, and to a somewhat higher degree than those in the nation as a whole. A separate July 19-22 CNN/USA Today/Gallup poll of Florida** found that 73% of registered voters in Florida are confident that their votes will be cast and counted accurately, including 41% who say they are very confident. Only about a quarter of registered voters in Florida express little or no confidence. That compares with the 68% of registered voters nationwide who believe the Florida votes will be handled appropriately this year.
*Results are based on telephone interviews with 1,005 national adults, aged 18 and older, conducted July 19-21, 2004. For results based on the total sample of national adults, one can say with 95% confidence that the margin of sampling error is ±3 percentage points. For results based on the 499 national adults in the Form A half-sample and 506 national adults in the Form B half-sample, the maximum margins of sampling error are ±5 percentage points.
**Results are based on telephone interviews with 869 registered voters in Florida, aged 18 and older, conducted July 19-22, 2004. For results based on this sample, one can say with 95% confidence that the margin of sampling error is ±4 percentage points. Approximately 3% of all interviews in Florida were conducted in Spanish.
