Winners, Losers, and Voter Confidence in Response to Partisan Electoral Reform.

This article analyzes voter confidence in Georgia from 2020 to 2022 amid a highly contentious political period marked by the 2020 presidential election and subsequent Senate runoffs. It finds that Republican voter confidence sharply declined after their electoral losses and the spread of false claims of fraud, prompting the GOP-controlled legislature to pass Senate Bill 202 (SB 202), a comprehensive electoral reform aimed at restoring confidence. Survey data indicate that SB 202 increased confidence among Republican voters in both individual and statewide vote counts during the 2022 midterm, while Democratic voters largely opposed the bill and did not experience a confidence boost from it. The study highlights the strong influence of election outcomes (the winner/loser effect) and partisan messaging on voter confidence, showing that confidence is highly malleable and closely tied to voters' partisan interests and perceptions of electoral reforms.