Almost 90% of Wyoming adults believe their county’s tally of ballots for president in the upcoming election will be very or somewhat reliable.
A randomized survey of 739 residents 18 years or older indicates that 89% of the population has that level of confidence in their own county’s presidential election count, according to the Wyoming Election Year Survey, 2024 report published Friday by the Wyoming Survey & Analysis Center at the University of Wyoming. The margin of error is approximately 3.6 percentage points.
Confidence among Wyoming adults in election integrity, however, wanes with distance.
“This approach to the survey methodology gives every person in Wyoming with a phone an equal probability of selection for the survey.”
Brian Harnisch
For statewide tallies, confidence in accurate counting of ballots for president slips by eight-tenths of a percent, down to 88.2%. For the nationwide presidential election count, confidence erodes further.
Only 58.2% of Wyoming adults believe the national results of that contest will be very or somewhat reliable, according to the report.
Return to sender
Wyoming adults are not fans of voting by mail. The survey asked when a person should be allowed to vote by mail and 45.3% said “only when a person has special needs that prevents them from voting in person.”
About 38% said anybody should be able to mail in their ballot.
Shy about the mail, Wyoming adults are not fearful about crossing party lines in the primary election, so-called “crossover voting.” Primaries should be open to all voters, regardless of party affiliation, 74.3% of the population believes.
Wyoming lawmakers in 2023 restricted the ability to change parties for a primary, prohibiting party changes to the period before candidates begin to file for nomination. The move followed disproven claims by unsuccessful 2018 gubernatorial candidate Foster Friess who blamed his loss on Democrats switching to vote against him.
The survey also revealed other aspects of the political landscape, including that news websites or apps are the leading source of political and election news. Some 32% get their information that way, 24.3% get it from social media and 13% from cable TV.
Wyoming residents are conservative — 49% characterize themselves that way or “slightly conservative” while 17% call themselves “middle of the road” or moderate. About 19% put themselves in the liberal category.
Of the 62% who consider themselves Republicans, 76.4% say they are “strong” party members. More residents — 17.4% — consider themselves independents than Democrats, who make up 16.3% of the adult population.
The survey used landline and cell phone queries, followed by emails or phone interviews. “This approach to the survey methodology gives every person in Wyoming with a phone an equal probability of selection for the survey,” Brian Harnisch, director of the Wyoming Survey and Analysis Center, said in a statement.The raw results were massaged using statistical weighting, a technique used in research “to adjust survey results to accurately represent the target population.”