Fraud, trust, and diminishing political support: Evidence from the Austrian Corona Panel Project

Voter fraud allegations by former President Donald Trump still dominate the media up to today. His presidency has brought a climate of mistrust and conspiracies toward the political system in general. However, the American political system provides certain specifics that support voter fraud allegations, for example concerning voter registration regulations. On the one hand, there is an ongoing American debate on voter fraud (allegations), but on the other, we find similar survey results in countries in which voter fraud seems not to be a topic of concern in the broader public. For example, a similar media debate on voter fraud did not happen in Germany or Austria, despite the fact, that the recent elections in both countries did change the political climate, too. However, empirical studies detected voter fraud beliefs during the Federal Election 2021 in Germany and found that they are related to right-wing-voting and non-voting (Etzel 2022). This is in line with previous studies of the 2017 Federal Election in Germany indicating that the so-called plot-hypotheses (Birch/ ElSafoury 2017) is valid for the engagement of the German AfD in misinformation and mistrust in election procedures (Schmitt-Beck/ Faas 2021). This study explores whether attitudes towards voter fraud are more of a survey artifact or political attitudes related to concerns with the political system. I answer this question by using data from the Austrian Corona Panel Project (Kittel et al. 2021), which employed a new voter fraud item battery, making it possible to test a more procedural critique of the election and in addition, a more conspiracy related perception of voter fraud beliefs. I show that lower trust in parliament and lower satisfaction with democracy, as well as higher perceived fraud risk in postal voting, are key factors in explaining voter fraud beliefs.