Disturbing Poll: One In Three Americans Believe Biden Won the Presidency ‘Only Due to Voter Fraud’
BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI/AFP
Nearly one in three Americans believe that President Joe Biden only won the 2020 general election as a result of widespread voter fraud, according to a new poll from Monmouth University.
This is a disturbing development for anyone who believes in the need for a free and fair election or, perhaps more to the point, the willingness to believe in bipartisan claims from experts that there was no systemic voter fraud that could change the elections.
Former Attorney General Bill Barr has said that the DOJ saw no evidence of a “stolen election” and Chris Krebs, the cybersecurity czar under former President Donald Trump, also has repeatedly claimed there is no evidence of voter fraud, and 59 DHS experts signed a statement calling election fraud claims “unsubstantiated” or “incoherent.”
But Trump has continued to beat the drum that he only lost the election due to malfeasance and has repeated that baseless claim so often that now almost one in three Americans polled believe Biden only one due to voter fraud, which is the same number since polling started in November. Monmouth reports:
One-third (32%) of Americans continue to believe that Joe Biden’s victory in 2020 was due to voter fraud – a number that has not budged since the November election. At first glance in the crosstabs, it looks like the number of “Republicans” who believe this has been trending down while the number of independents who agree has ticked up. However, this appears to be a product of a shift in how Republicans identify themselves, with some moving their self-affiliation from being partisan to being an “independent” who leans partisan. When all Republican identifiers and leaners are combined, the number who believe Biden won only because of voter fraud has been fairly stable (63% now, 64% in March, 69% in January, and 66% in November). Furthermore, 14% of the American public say they will never accept Biden as president, including 3 in 10 (29%) Republicans and Republican leaners.
“The continuing efforts to question the validity of last year’s election is deepening the partisan divide in ways that could have long-term consequences for our Democracy, even if most Americans don’t quite see it that way yet,” said Patrick Murray, director of the independent Monmouth University Polling Institute, in a statement.
The poll continues by revealing that 57% of Americans see the ongoing audits of an already certified election are happening as “primarily partisan efforts to undermine valid election results,” though 33% say “these are legitimate efforts to identify possible voting irregularities.”
Trump has no given up his constant promotion of being a victim of a stolen election and has reportedly told those around him that he hears he will be “reinstated” as president in August, a specious claim that has since been confirmed by others, though there is no constitutional process for that to happen.
