Americans massively fear foreign interference in midterm elections: investigation

A week before polling day, two-thirds of Americans believe that Russia or other foreign governments will try to influence the mid-term talks, according to a new national survey by the Pew Research Center.

Two years after Russia mingled with the 2016 presidential election, Pew found that party membership had a strong impact on worry, with 80 percent of Democrats expressing concern over the interference. , against 53% of Republicans.

Overall, there is little thought that the federal government is "making serious efforts to protect electoral systems" against piracy and other technological threats, with only 13% of the very confident efforts underway and 42% somewhat confident.

Foreign piracy fears that transcend partisan lines with 45% – whatever their party – are very or rather confident that electoral systems are protected from piracy and only 8% say they are very confident about the security of electoral systems. across the country.

In addition, the major US technology companies have little confidence in preventing electoral interference.

Companies such as Facebook, Google and Twitter have the responsibility to prevent misuse of their platforms to influence the intermediate objectives, according to a large majority of the public, 76%, including significant actions of both. parts. But only one-third, 33%, said they were very or somewhat confident in achieving this goal by the Silicon Valley giants.

From September 24 to October 7, Pew conducted the main survey of public attitudes towards voting and elections in the United States with 10,683 adults, with a margin of error of plus or minus 1 , 5 percentage point.

Despite the concern over the interference and security of the elections abroad, Americans have a very positive opinion of the vote. In all, 91% of them said it was "important" to vote in elections, while 68% said "voting gives those who, like me, the power to government"

A majority of Americans have shown confidence at the local level. Nearly nine out of ten people, 89%, trusted electoral agents in their communities to do a good job, and the majority said the same thing about local election officials and the state. .

Among other key findings of the survey, it appears that Republicans were far less likely than Democrats to favor an easier voting process.

Nearly two-thirds of Americans, or 65%, said they were in favor of automatically registering all eligible citizens to vote and make election day a national holiday.