The 2024 elections saw unprecedented turnouts around the world in democratic elections for parliamentary bodies, local governments and national legislatures. The results were often surprising, in part because previous research has shown that electoral expectations are heavily influenced by partisan biases, and are especially strong when voters are exposed to discrepant polling information (Delavande and Manski 2012).
The fact that so many races were unexpected also speaks to the challenges of making sense of complex election data. The aggregators of vote totals are constantly updating their projections as they get new data. In addition, the actual voting process may take days or even weeks to finish, and this is often a mystery to voters. Despite these challenges, the EAC’s work on this issue has contributed to a more transparent and accurate election night reporting process.
After the polls close, news outlets will make their predictions about the results based on their own vote counting systems. These projections are often updated throughout the night and into the days and weeks after Election Day, and they check against full results that will be certified once every ballot has been counted.
In the ANES surveys, respondents are asked about their perception of the fairness of this process by rating how often they believe votes are counted fairly: very often, fairly often, sometimes, or not at all often. Across all these years, we have seen that voters are increasingly dissatisfied with the way their votes are counted, including in places where they are confident that elections are fair and accurate.