Does Exposure to Election Fraud Research Undermine Confidence in Elections?

Abstract

Abstract Can academic research on election fraud undermine public confidence in elections? As election results become instantaneously accessible all over the world, academic research can increasingly influence perceptions of election integrity. To examine how electoral fraud information from academic research can affect voters’ beliefs about the legitimacy of election results, we conducted a survey experiment following the 2020 general election in South Korea. Using a nationally representative sample of Korean voters and exploiting a unique real-world situation featuring foreign academics considered relatively impartial, we found that exposure to hypothetical election fraud claims undermined confidence in electoral outcomes, measured via both self-reports and behavioral measures. Moreover, the claims’ impact was conditional on voters’ partisan attachments—strongest among supporters of the losing party—which is in line with the logic of motivated reasoning. Our work contributes to the literature on election integrity, using a relatively new yet stable democracy as its test case.