With control of Congress and a check on the Trump administration at issue in the 2026 midterm elections, the upcoming election cycle may again see claims of voter fraud.
But warning voters beforehand that there may be false claims about the election, and providing them with information on election security measures through “prebunking,” can increase confidence in the results and decrease beliefs in voter fraud, according to a new study published in Science Advances.
“Prebunking is effective because it provides people with novel facts about how elections are secured,” says co-author Brendan Nyhan, the James O. Freedman Presidential Professor of Government at Dartmouth.
To examine if corrective information can change false beliefs in widespread election fraud, the research team conducted a series of studies in the United States and Brazil to evaluate perceptions about past and future elections.
The two countries were selected because of the prevalence of misperceptions about voter and election fraud after President Donald Trump lost to Joe Biden in 2020 and Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro lost to Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva in 2022. Both incumbents promoted claims of fraud, and supporters stormed their capitols in protest.
The studies were conducted online in the U.S. before the 2022 midterm elections and in Brazil after its 2022 presidential elections. Each study contrasted the effect of prebunking with a credible sources treatment, which tests the effect of hearing from...
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