Accurate Information Can Substantially and Durably Increase Republicans’ Beliefs in Election Integrity

Low confidence in the integrity of elections is a growing concern in the US, and questioning election integrity has become a core part of Republican identity in recent years. These beliefs appear to be the result of an uninformed or misinformed electorate. However, despite growing evidence that factual information can shift political beliefs even on contentious issues, election integrity beliefs have so far proven unusually resistant to information-based approaches, arguably because they are tightly linked to partisan identity and reinforced by a polarized information environment. To examine whether election integrity beliefs are indeed resistant to corrective information, we develop and test an informational treatment that provides a high volume of politically balanced accurate evidence on election integrity. Immediately prior to the 2024 general election, we randomly assigned N = 871 Republicans to either the experimental group or a control group engaging with general political information. The treatment substantially increased participants’ overall beliefs about the integrity of US elections, retrospective beliefs about the integrity of the 2020 election, and prospective beliefs about the expected integrity of the upcoming 2024 election (.6 < ds < .8). Furthermore, a follow-up shows that the effects persist two weeks later, following the 2024 election. These findings demonstrate that even beliefs closely tied to partisan identity are responsive to credible factual information.