That’s because past polling has been so inaccurate. Just look at the Brexit polls!
About six in 10 Americans are confident that votes will be accurately cast and counted in the coming election. This is similar to their confidence level in 2008, but down from levels from 2004 to 2007 when confidence ranged between 71% and 75%.
Despite the controversy over ballot accuracy in the 2000 election, Gallup’s trend shows that the highest level of voting confidence was in 2004 — the first time Gallup polled on this question — four months before that year’s presidential election. Confidence remained similarly high in the 2006 midterm and in December 2007, shortly before the 2008 presidential primaries and caucuses started. Before the 2008 election, confidence in the accuracy of vote counting had dropped sharply, perhaps as an indirectly related response to the global financial crisis that sent Americans’ satisfaction with the way things were going in the U.S. into the single digits. Eight years later, the confidence level in voting accuracy is not much higher.
Prominent political figures and former federal security officials raised concerns about a compromised vote count leading up to Gallup’s latest measurement, taken in an Aug. 15-16 poll.
