Can Elite Allegations of Election Fraud Demobilize Supporters?

Can allegations of electoral fraud and misconduct undermine participation in democratic politics? If so, how large and long lasting are these turnout declines? We investigate these questions in the context of the high-profile, unsubstantiated allegations of electoral fraud in the 2020 presidential election made by President Trump and his allies. We examine the relationship between attitudes toward Trump and the decision to turn out in the 2021 Georgia runoff. At the precinct-level, we employ five alternative measures of Trump popularity to show that precincts where Trump is popular experienced large relative declines in turnout in the runoff. We then undertake an individual-level analysis by employing statistical learning algorithms to characterize the relationship between stated Trump attitudes and respondent demographics. Using a variety of research designs that control for unobserved heterogeneity in turnout propensity, we find that Trump supporters experienced large relative turnout declines, 1.7 percentage points in our base specification, in the runoff. Finally, we estimate whether these turnout declines persist to the 2022 election. We find smaller turnout declines among Trump supporters in the 2022 Georgia Senate runoff. Our findings are consistent with the perspective that extreme and well-publicized allegations of electoral fraud can discourage some citizens from participating in the democratic process, but that the effects are modest and short lived.