Voter Confidence: How to Measure It and How It Differs from Government Support

Abstract

Voters are often trusting of elections, but distrustful of government. We test whether voter confidence represents a different measure of system support from trust in government and external efficacy. Theoretically, we describe the inherent differences in these measures as one reason to suspect they are so. Empirically, we consider frequency distributions, crosstabs, exploratory factor analysis, reliability tests, and regression analysis to determine the independent validity of each system support measure. We find strong theoretical and empirical evidence to support that voter confidence is different from other system support measures previously studied and examined. As such, it is an important new area of scholarship.

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