“Stop the Count!”—How Reporting Partial Election Results Fuels Beliefs in Election Fraud
通过七项研究，发现报告部分计票结果会因累积冗余偏差使早期领先者更受青睐，当最终获胜者后来居上时，人们更易怀疑舞弊，且这种效应在真实选举中持续存在。
In seven studies, we investigated how reporting partial vote counts influences perceptions of election legitimacy. Beliefs in election fraud, as in the 2020 U.S. presidential election, may be fueled by the cumulative redundancy bias (CRB), which skews perceptions toward early leaders in partial vote counts. In line with this prediction, participants (Prolific adult participants from the United States and the United Kingdom) consistently rated early leaders more favorably and were more likely to suspect fraud when the eventual winner gained a late lead. This effect persisted across simulated elections (Studies 1–3) and real-world vote counts from the 2020 election in Georgia (Study 4). It is important to note that fraud suspicions already arose before the count was completed (Study 5) and persisted despite explanatory interventions (Study 6). Partisanship did not eliminate the CRB’s influence on fraud beliefs (Study 7). Our findings suggest that the sequential reporting of vote counts may amplify false perceptions of election fraud and could be mitigated by revising how results are communicated.