Voter fraud beliefs in Germany. A comparison of election day and postal voters during the 2021 Federal Election

In December 2020, 5 percent of the German population reported they have no trust in the correct procedure of elections in Germany. 28 percent agreed with the statement: The political climate in Germany is different to what the election results tell us. Literature shows that voter fraud beliefs correlate highly with conspiracy beliefs and mistrust in political institutions in general. But most research related to perceived voter fraud focusses on the US or authoritarian regimes like Russia, where possible voter fraud is a public issue. In 2021, conspiracies related to the Covid-19 pandemic led to protest against the measures to fight the pandemic. After a peak in 2020, trust in politics declined in 2021, as the pandemic was ongoing. In the 2021 Federal Election, the share of postal voters was higher than ever before. Nevertheless, a public debate about postal voting, the consequences for an election in times of pandemic and election fraud, as in the US Presidential Election, did not unfold in Germany. This in contrast with the reported survey results from December 2020, raising the question of whether the observed mistrust in the election process is simply a survey artefact not related to the voting procedure itself—or if there is a stable proportion of people who share these attitudes but were not visible, as the public discussion in the aftermath of the Federal Election did not take place? By answering that question, I add to the literature of voter fraud beliefs in established democracies and link it to the underdeveloped field of postal voting in Germany. Specifically, I show how postal voters and election day voters differ in their attitudes concerning voter fraud, using panel data collected before and after the Federal Election in 2021 in Germany for the project: “Wahlen in stürmischen Zeiten. Neue Muster individueller Kommunikation und Information am Beispiel des Wahl-O-Mat“, founded by the Fritz-Thyssen-Stiftung.