Election Distrust Fuels Conservative Activism, Study Finds

Political scientists Erin B. Fitz and Kyle L. Saunders of Colorado State University examined how underlying policy preferences shape non-voting political activity. Their research, published in *Party Politics*, builds on earlier work that linked operational ideology—concrete policy views—to political behavior across the 2020 and 2024 U.S. elections, periods dominated by former President Donald Trump’s voter-fraud narrative.

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Using the American National Election Study, the authors analyzed 4,256 respondents from the 2024 survey. Operational ideology was measured by averaging self-reported preferences on seven policy issues, creating a liberal-to-conservative scale. Trust in elections combined pre-election answers about confidence in officials and vote-count accuracy. Non-voting participation tallied engagement in twelve activities such as protests, petitions, donations, and meetings. Models controlled for age, education, income, race, and party identification. A longitudinal subset of 1,857 participants who answered both the 2020 and 2024 surveys allowed the team to track attitude changes over time.

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• Operational liberals consistently displayed higher overall non-voting participation, unaffected by election-trust levels.

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• Operational conservatives showed the lowest participation when they trusted the election process, but markedly increased activity when they reported low trust.

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• A liberal operational ideology in 2020 predicted greater trust and higher participation in 2024, whereas a conservative ideology predicted lower trust and lower participation.

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• Ideology remained a stable predictor; prior trust or participation did not significantly reshape operational ideology.

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The authors caution against generalizing the results beyond the 2020-2024 cycle, noting that Trump’s emphasis on fraud may have uniquely energized conservative distrust. Reliance on self-reported survey data introduces potential social-desirability bias, and the statistical models cannot prove causation, only reliable association. Future work should test whether similar patterns emerge in state or local elections lacking national fraud rhetoric.

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• “The findings indicate that conservative voters tend to become more politically active when they distrust election systems, whereas liberal voters tend to participate at higher rates regardless of their trust levels.” — Erin B. Fitz, Political Scientist

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• “Operational conservatives who trusted the election process engaged in the lowest levels of non-voting political participation.” — Kyle L. Saunders, Political Scientist

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• “However, conservatives who reported low trust in elections engaged in significantly more of these political activities.” — Kyle L. Saunders

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• “Specifically, holding a more liberal operational ideology in 2020 was associated with greater trust in elections and higher non-voting political participation four years later.” — Erin B. Fitz

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• “Holding a more conservative operational ideology in 2020 predicted lower trust and lower participation in 2024.” — Erin B. Fitz

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