Pre-Election Construction of Public Trust and Electoral Legitimacy in Nigeria’s 2027 Presidential Election Discourse

Concerns about public trust and electoral legitimacy are becoming increasingly prominent as Nigeria approaches the 2027 presidential election. This study examines how trust and legitimacy are discursively constructed in emerging pre-election discourse. It investigates the linguistic and discursive strategies used to construct public trust and electoral legitimacy and analyses how Appraisal resources contribute to socio-cognitive representations of presidential candidates, political institutions, electoral legitimacy and democratic participation. Adopting a qualitative descriptive design, the study draws on a corpus of 84 discourse units collected from public posts on X between January and July 2026, from which 13 extracts were purposively selected for detailed analysis. Data were analysed using van Dijk’s Socio-Cognitive Theory and Martin and White’s Appraisal Theory. Findings reveal that lexicalisation, presupposition, modality, metaphor, pronouns, ideological polarisation and blame attribution construct competing representations of electoral credibility and institutional trust, while Attitude, Engagement and Graduation negotiate and intensify evaluations of political actors and electoral processes. The study conceptualises this emerging process as anticipatory electoral legitimation and delegitimation, demonstrating that perceptions of electoral legitimacy can develop before voting occurs. The findings underscore the importance of transparent communication, institutional impartiality and credible preparations in strengthening pre-election public confidence.