Gallup poll finds widespread unease over election integrity before midterms

Gallup said concern about election integrity is running high ahead of the 2026 midterms, with worries centered on ballot manipulation and political pressure on election officials. The result lands in a political climate shaped by repeated fights over mail voting, ballot counting, local election administration and the role of state and federal officials in certifying outcomes.

The split between fear and procedure is the heart of the problem. Elections are still administered through layered, local systems that verify ballots, count votes and certify results, but those routine steps have become prime targets for suspicion. The Brennan Center for Justice has warned that false fraud claims are driving attempts to interfere with independent, nonpartisan counting and certification, which helps explain why election workers have faced more scrutiny, more threats and more pressure over ordinary administrative decisions.

Gallup has long found a deep partisan divide over whether votes will be accurately cast and counted, and it said that gap widened in 2024 as Republicans’ faith in the accuracy of the vote count fell. Gallup’s election issues topic page groups election integrity with other voting concerns, reflecting how frequently the subject now returns to the center of national politics. A March 2026 PBS News/NPR/Marist poll found Americans’ confidence that elections will be run fairly had dropped to its lowest point in years, even as a March 11, 2026 Marist Poll page said more than six in ten Americans still believed ballots would be counted accurately.

That combination of broad unease and residual trust has made election integrity a durable campaign issue rather than a short-lived post-election flare-up. States United Democracy Center tracked attitudes about elections and political violence in an August 15, 2024 report, underscoring how closely election distrust and public-safety concerns now overlap. Research from MIT Election Lab has argued that public belief in election legitimacy is essential to democratic stability, while the Harvard Law Review has warned about the risk posed by election subversion and stolen-election claims.

The practical stakes are clear for the people who run elections. In states such as Maine and Michigan, as well as in local offices from Portland to Lansing, routine disputes over counting rules or certification can now be cast as evidence of systemic fraud. That leaves campaigns, election officials and voters operating in a political environment where the mechanics of voting are inseparable from the message surrounding them.