Exclusive poll: Americans don't trust tech to stop election meddling

Just four out of 10 Americans trust tech companies to prevent foreign interference in the 2018 midterm elections — a significant loss of confidence from both parties since a February survey, according to a new Axios/SurveyMonkey poll.

Between the lines: Democrats have lost more trust than Republicans. That's notable since Democrats have generally been bigger defenders of the platforms, which have been sharply criticized for exhibiting anti-conservative bias in moderating content. At a Wednesday hearing, Senate Intelligence Committee members from both parties pressed Facebook and Twitter executives to do more to prevent problems in November.

Methodology: This Axios/SurveyMonkey online poll was conducted Aug. 30- Sept. 3, 2018 among 2,698 adults in the United States. The modeled error estimate for the full sample is 2.5 percentage points. Respondents for this survey were selected from over 2 million people who take surveys on the SurveyMonkey platform each day.

Data have been weighted for age, race, sex, education, and geography using the Census Bureau’s American Community Survey to reflect the demographic composition of the United States age 18 and over. Crosstabs available here.