Alternative Futures Forecast: Confidence in Election Results and Support for Candidates
Methodology Note: Alternative Futures Forecasts 09-12
X-Axis Degree of Prior Support for Winner intersected with Y-Axis Confidence in Validity of Voting Results
To challenge the flaws in conventional forecasting methods, Girl Security’s forecasts are based on drivers whose intersections fail to receive mainstream attention. The drivers themselves are derived from trends that Girl Security’s communities identify as being of special concern to them, rather than from trends based on traditional economic and societal indicators. For more on the systemic data gaps and flawed assumptions embedded in conventional futures forecasting that our approach seeks to mitigate, please see the introduction to Girl Security’s Alternative Futures Forecasts.
Key Findings:
- Despite generalized concerns about the reliability of the upcoming elections, the widespread trust Americans have in the integrity of their own ballot could be the key to unlocking a more universal respect for the validity of the election results.
- And despite the extreme poles evident in the rhetoric of party leaders, the data indicating that most Americans are more centrist in their ideological leanings is another bulwark against debilitating polarization going unchecked.
- If enhanced, these two levers could shift America’s future toward more positive trajectories that lead to greater respect for elections held across the country and more engaged citizens holding party strategists and elected representatives accountable to citizens’ priorities.
- Nonetheless, the November 2024 elections are too soon to place America firmly on alternative pathways. For this election’s outcome to be accepted by the American people requires that the candidates across the board to respect its outcome.
- To ensure post-election acceptance of both winners and losers, candidates should publicly commit, now, to specific measures of free and fair elections. Such metrics might include:
Statistical Analysis: Identifying a mutually agreed upon academic or nonpartisan think tank to apply the guide published by the National Academy of Sciences for using statistical analysis to detect systematic election irregularities;
Prioritizing Close Races: Agreeing to limiting scrutiny to those districts where the difference in votes for opposing candidates is a certain number or less (such as 10,000 votes);
Election Monitoring: Agreeing to procedures for monitoring voting in close-race districts, according to the types of voting systems used;
Ballot Counting: Likewise, agreeing to standards for counting and recounting; and,
Party Ticket Analysis: Consensus on how to handle the validity of split-party ballots (i.e. If losing presidential candidate’s party wins in other races on the same ballot).
These are the key findings from the results of Girl Security’s third Alternative Futures Forecast. Forecasts 09-12 project futures that would result from the intersection of two trends that are of pressing concern to our community. These trends are expressed in the chart below as they currently exist, but as per the Alternative Futures Forecast method, turned into drivers that describe them in both positive and negative directions to create four distinct possible futures depending on whether the current trends hold or change in any number of ways.
TREND: Citizens Don’t Trust Elections When Their Candidate Loses | TREND: Partisan Divisiveness Enabling Dehumanizing People, not Just Parties |
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Y Axis: Degree of homogeneity and conventionality in thrY Axis: Confidence in the validity of voting resultseats posed to the US | X Axis: Prior support for the candidate who won |
Russian operatives and propagandists are planning to “covertly use social media” in an attempt to sway public opinion and undermine support for Ukraine in swing states during the 2024 US elections, according US intelligence officials. | In 2022 Pew Research found that increasingly, Republicans and Democrats viewed people in the opposing party in a negative way, calling them closed-minded, dishonest, immoral and unintelligent. 72% of Republicans regarded Democrats as more immoral, and 63% of Democrats said the same about Republicans. |
The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll finds that only 22% of Republicans have high confidence that votes in the upcoming presidential election will be counted accurately compared to 71% of Democrats. Overall, the survey finds that fewer than half of Americans – 44% — have “a great deal” or “quite a bit” of confidence that the votes in the next presidential election will be counted accurately. | Northwestern Professor Eli Finkel, the lead author of “Political Sectarianism in America,” warned that “Polarization in the United States is no longer just about policy differences—it is undergirded now by actual antipathy and disdain for supporters of the opposing party.” In the report, the authors identify “three key elements of political sectarianism, which, when combined, form the sentiments we see today. They include seeing the other side as different (othering), as dislikeable (aversion), and as immoral (moralization).” |
Thad Kousser, a political scientist at UC San Diego and co-director of the Yankelovich Center for Social Science Research said in response to polling and survey work in 2023 on the issue of trust in elections, “…people trust the elections that they directly experience.” 82% percent believed their own vote would be counted accurately. The majority of people of every party trust elections in their own state, but don’t trust other states. “So, it’s not about direct experience. It’s about what they’re hearing from leaders, most often leaders in their own party,” said Kousser. | A 2023 Carnegie Endowment for International Peace study in seeking to answer whether polarization is dangerous to democracy, identified five “facts” about polarization based on survey/polling and other data. The research reveals that Americans are not as ideologically divided over issues as they think, but politicians are; Americans are emotionally polarized – in that they dislike members of the other party; and finally, while this phenomenon is not directly causing violence, it can foster an environment that allows politicians to increase violence targeted at politicians, election officials, women, and many types of minorities. |
Girl Security’s Analysis: At best, Americans largely will continue to abide by the outcome of national-level elections because, as they have so far, they will continue to believe in the validity of their local and state voting procedures. At worst, Americans give up on the credibility of elections at all levels of government and no longer feel elected officials represent their wants and needs, casting the future of America’s representative democracy into serious question. | Girl Security’s Analysis: At best, Americans will channel their bitter partisanship into activism on behalf of their preferred candidates and elected officials. At worst, Americans will continue to slide down the slippery slope of dehumanizing members of the opposing political party and increasingly tolerate or justify and engage in violence, believing the “other” poses an existential threat to their way of life and America. |
The Four Alternative Futures that Result from the Intersection of these Drivers