Report Shows Two Thirds Of Americans Believe Elections Are Rigged

A recent Rasmussen poll indicated that of the Americans surveyed, over two thirds believe that incumbents are able to successfully rig elections to keep themselves in office. Over 68 percent of the responses indicated that they believe Congress’ high retention rate is due to the fact that lawmakers are able to exploit elections and use favorable advantages to keep themselves in office, not because their constituents are happy with the service they provide.

In addition to suspicions of a rigged system, almost half of the voters, a full 48 percent, believe that the American election system is unfair to votes. This is the highest response rate to this question since 2004. In this same survey, only 39 percent of the voters indicated that they believed elections were actually fair, and 14 percent decided that they were unsure.

House and Senate elections since 2012 has resulted in the incumbent being reelected to office almost 90% of the time. An incumbent president has only lost election four times over the past century. Incumbents do have a natural advantage because they do not have to campaign as much to get their name out there, and many voters will typically vote for the name they recognize without reason to do otherwise. These numbers, however, do indicate that a change in election processes may need to occur, even if the only result is that voters feel more confident in the officials that are elected in office.

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