Americans were already primed to distrust elections. Then came Iowa.

But it’s becoming more acceptable for political elites to challenge the outcomes of elections and make claims of fraud or outright electoral theft. Trump, after all, spent most of his 2016 campaign alleging that the election he eventually won would be stolen from him.

That’s a problem for the future of democracy, said Eitan Hersch, a professor of political science at Tufts University and past FiveThirtyEight contributor, and unlike a lot of other political problems this country faces, it’s one that both parties are engaging in. “Both parties have an incentive to rile their base with discussion of elections being stolen,” he told me. “And that’s probably bad for the system if people increasingly believe elections aren’t fair.” That seems to be what is happening.

What’s more, researchers are starting to suspect that the way outrage and accusations of stolen elections trickle down might do more than indirectly reduce trust — it could also lead the most level-headed voters to disengage from politics.