We often imagine the future as an extension of our immediate circumstances. On Election Day, before any result is known, we already have expectations about what the day will mean. Where we stand shapes which changes we notice and which futures seem plausible. Pew’s September–October survey shows how differently voters understand election protection. Among supporters of Republican congressional candidates, 45 percent were confident that noncitizens who tried to vote would be stopped, compared with 90 percent of Democratic supporters. Confidence that all legally qualified voters could cast ballots ran in the other direction: 90 percent among Republican supporters and 72 percent among Democratic supporters. These figures measure expectations about safeguards. They do not measure the incidence of wrongdoing.
People can also share a mood without sharing an explanation. AP-NORC’s October survey found that 62 percent of adults were pessimistic about the state of American politics. That pessimism alone cannot tell us what respondents believe has gone wrong. Concern about democracy can accompany opposing beliefs about its greatest threat. In discussing Rationality (2021), Steven Pinker describes “my-side bias”: the tendency to favor beliefs that make our own group look wise and its opponents look corrupt. An elaborate argument about fraud or suppression may serve that affiliation. Analysts need to investigate how such beliefs shape behavior while assessing their factual claims against evidence.
