02/10/2025

On Issue after Issue, Americans Say Things are Going Better Locally than Nationally

This divide in voters’ perceptions is not new

Just after Election Day in 2024, 69 percent of registered voters said the elections in their community were run and administered very well, according to a Pew Research Center survey. Yet only 43 percent said the same about elections across the United States.

This divide between voters' perceptions of local and national election administration isn’t new. We saw the same pattern after the elections of 2022, 2020 and 2018. The gap was largest in 2018, when 63 percent of voters said elections in their community were administered very well, while only 21 percent said this about elections across the country.

Election administration is far from the only topic where we see Americans expressing more positive views about local conditions than national ones. On issues as varied as education and crime, Americans often have a rosier view of how things are going in their communities than in the nation as a whole.

Please select this link to read the complete article from Pew Research Center.