On 9 June, 2025, a new article has been published by Ádám Stefkovics and Dömötör Gere in International Journal of Public Opinion Research. The title of the article is “Trust in Election Polls. The Role of the Source Institution and the Results of the Poll”.

Abstract:

Opinion polls about voting intentions provide important information for citizens in shaping their own political attitudes. Nevertheless, opinion polls are only useful for democracies if people trust their results. This study aims to decompose trust in poll results by focusing on two factors that may shape trust level: the source polling institution and the results of the poll. In survey experiments embedded in an online and a phone survey in Hungary, respondents were presented with two hypothetical poll reports and were asked to assess how much they trusted them. We varied the source institution (6 levels) and whether the results were realistic or not realistic. The results show that despite the highly politicized research environment in Hungary, the research institution did not play a role in general or among people with different political views. In turn, accuracy was a strong positive predictor of trust in the phone survey, but we found traces of motivated reasoning, partially depending on political sophistication. We conclude that trust processes are complex, with source credibility not always determining trust, but individual political motivations consistently shaping perceptions.

The article is available here:

Ádám Stefkovics, Dömötör Gere, Trust in Election Polls. The Role of the Source Institution and the Results of the Poll, International Journal of Public Opinion Research, Volume 37, Issue 2, Summer 2025, edaf018, https://doi.org/10.1093/ijpor/edaf018