On January 6, 2021, the belief that voter fraud was to blame for Trump’s 2020 loss led thousands of people to storm the Capitol during election certification, aiming to occupy it by force to stop this process. While only thousands participated, millions more voiced their support for the insurrection, and this begs the question: What explains perceptions of voter fraud and support for the January 6 insurrection? Recent studies establish that White conservatives are more likely to believe that voter fraud is a rampant problem, linking these perceptions to state efforts to expand access to voting systems where racial minority groups stand to gain equality. Using a combination of pre-election, post-election, and post-insurrection survey data, we examine the link between White racial attitudes and perceptions of voter fraud and views toward the insurrection. We argue that White racial attitudes are pivotal in explaining the perceptions of voter fraud that led to the January 6 insurrection. We find that White Americans with a bias for their own racial in-group over racial out-groups are likelier to doubt the election results after Donald Trump was declared the loser, though not before. We find these same attitudes are statistically associated with sympathy for the insurrection and insurrectionists.

While scholars are revitalizing political history, they continue to neglect the formal yet dynamic institutional framework that shaped not merely the traditional subjects of election campaigns and governance but also newer concerns dealing with political participation, representation, power, legitimacy, and conflict. This article focuses on the 1893 senatorial elections in the six states where neither major party held the legislative majority on joint ballot necessary to elect a U.S. senator. This fraught situation derived from the success of the new Populist party and threatened the customary Republican control of both state politics and the U.S. Senate. By examining the previously overlooked actions and interactions of election and canvassing boards, state courts, and party committees with electoral rules, judicial norms, and legislative procedures after the general election of 1892, this article demonstrates that election outcomes were often contingent upon factors other than electoral mobilization, great issues, and popular opinion. Partisanship and the search for power produced “conspiracies” that corrupted basic electoral institutions, subverted voting results, denied rightful representation, violated democratic norms and practices, and provoked popular unrest.

This paper contributes to a growing body of research on voting technology and voter confidence, which generally concludes that voters are less confident in technology—particularly in developed democracies. Using a unique survey experiment, this paper demonstrates that far fewer individuals are concerned about election fraud involving electronic voting, compared with other potential forms of election fraud such as registering ineligible voters or voter suppression. Other interesting findings emerge from the data: Older individuals are more concerned about fraud with electronic voting but the effects of age appear to be conditioned on political polarization. This paper advances our understanding of the impact of voting technology on electoral confidence, and raises important substantive and methodological questions about priming.