Gallup finds Democrats more confident than Republicans in US election honesty

Gallup reported on October 7 that Democrats in the United States were much more likely than Republicans or independents to express confidence in the honesty of US elections ahead of November’s midterms. The survey also found an unusual reversal: Americans who disapproved of national leadership were more confident in elections than those who approved. The findings describe voters’ views, not the integrity of any election.

In Gallup’s 2026 results, 63% of Democrats said they were confident in election honesty, compared with 37% of Republicans and 35% of independents. Across Americans overall, 49% expressed confidence and 51% did not. Gallup said the overall confidence figure was the same as in 2022, the year of the previous midterms.

How US election confidence changed by party

Gallup said the gap between Democrats and Republicans stood at 55 percentage points in 2024, narrowed to four points in 2025 and widened again this year. Its World Poll has asked respondents in the United States about party identification only since 2024, limiting how far that particular comparison can be extended into the past.

The overall figure tells a different story from the party breakdown. Gallup said confidence in the honesty of elections has averaged 45% since 2006. Its 2026 finding of 49% therefore does not, by itself, mark a new low. What stands out in this report is which groups express confidence and how their views relate to their assessment of the country’s leadership.

Why Gallup calls the leadership divide unusual

From 2006 to 2020, Americans who approved of national leadership consistently expressed more confidence in elections than those who disapproved, Gallup said. It reported average gaps of 35 percentage points under George W. Bush, 30 under Barack Obama and 35 during Donald Trump’s first administration. The relationship widened after Joe Biden won the 2020 election, whose result Trump challenged.

During Biden’s presidency, confidence averaged 81% among people who approved of national leadership and 30% among those who disapproved, according to Gallup. Since Trump returned to the White House in 2025, the difference has largely disappeared: across the past two years, the corresponding averages were 46% and 48%. The 2026 figures put disapprovers ahead by 11 points.

Gallup attributed part of that shift to changes in who belongs to each leadership group. Approvers became more Republican-leaning under Trump, while disapprovers became more Democratic-leaning. It also said Democrats’ election confidence is lower under Trump than it was under Biden, while Republicans’ confidence is higher under Trump than it was under Biden. Those changes help explain why a change in governing party did not simply reverse the earlier gap.

The comparison extends beyond the United States. In more than 100 countries where Gallup annually measures both election confidence and approval of national leadership, approvers nearly always report greater confidence. Gallup said no other country in the preceding 15 years had shown the specific pattern of significantly higher election confidence among people who disapproved of their national leadership.

For 2025, the latest year for which Gallup said global data collection was complete, the median confidence figure across those countries was 70% among leadership approvers and 30% among disapprovers. That comparison concerns expressed confidence in the honesty of elections; it is not a ranking of how elections are administered or a finding that one country’s results are more reliable than another’s.

What the poll can say about November’s midterms

Gallup said the divide raises questions about whether some voters will regard the November election results as legitimate. That is a possible implication identified by the polling organization. The survey does not establish how respondents will vote, whether they will accept a particular result or whether the elections themselves will be conducted honestly.

Al Jazeera reported that the White House did not respond to its request for comment. Semafor separately reported the party figures and described Democratic warnings about election administration, but its brief account relied on links to other outlets for those underlying claims. The poll findings do not establish those warnings as fact or connect any particular action to respondents’ answers.

Gallup said its US results came from telephone interviews with a random sample of 1,000 adults conducted from May 1 to June 10, 2026. It gave a margin of sampling error of 4.1 percentage points for the overall sample at the 95% confidence level and cautioned that question wording and practical difficulties can also affect a poll. The results are a snapshot of stated views during that period, published as the midterms approached.