Shocking 75% of Trump Supporters Say They’ll Vote For Him Because They Believe Fantasy That He Won the 2020 Election

AP Photo/Andrew Harnik, File

Former President Donald Trump did not win the 2020 presidential election, but has obsessively clung to his baseless claims of election fraud, and a new poll shows the overwhelming majority of his supporters are singing the same fact-free tune.

The ex-president lost over 60 state and federal cases attempting to overturn the 2020 election results, with many of those defeats coming at the gavel of Republican-appointed (and sometimes even Trump-appointed) judges. Fox News agreed to pay a whopping $787.5 million settlement to Dominion Voting Systems rather than attempt to defend their broadcasts of some of those same election lies. Sworn testimony aired by the Jan. 6 House Select Committee showed a long list of Trump administration officials — many of whom remain loyal supporters of the 45th president — admitting under oath that Trump did not win the election and that there was no credible evidence of election fraud.

None of this seems to matter to the MAGA faithful, according to a new CBS News/YouGov poll.

An article by Anthony Salvanto, Kabir Khanna, Jennifer de Pinto, and Fred Backus summarizing the poll’s results characterized the 2024 GOP presidential primary as a battle “between Donald Trump and a sentiment one might call ‘Trump fatigue,'” with the former president “winning that matchup easily.”

The explanation, the reporters wrote, is that there was “big demand” among GOP primary voters “for a candidate who says Trump won in 2020, who challenges woke ideas, who doesn’t criticize Trump and, for good measure, makes liberals angry,” and “Trump leads in all of these areas.”

Image via CBS News.

The poll was conducted nationally between April 27-29, 2023 with 2,372 U.S. adult residents and an oversample of self-identified Republicans, with a margin of error of +/- 5.4 points for the sample of likely Republican primary voters.

Reflecting other recent polls, the CBS News/YouGov survey showed Trump remains the strong frontrunner for the GOP nomination, with 58% saying they’d vote for him compared to 22% for Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R). No other candidate got above the low single digits. Trump also had an additional 18% of GOP primary voters who picked another candidate but said they would consider voting for him.

Among those voters who named Trump as their choice, when asked the reasons for their support, 75% said it was because “he actually won in 2020.”

The poll also illustrated Trump’s enduring grip on the hearts and minds of Republican voters, and shed some more light on the uphill battle DeSantis faces if he is to overcome Trump’s lead.

“Four in 10 likely voters are considering both of them,” reported CBS News, but DeSantis’ “anti-woke stance” that he’s made a central talking point as he is preparing to launch a widely-expected presidential campaign “isn’t enough on its own to overtake Trump, since Trump has that item covered too,” with voters who prioritize that issue strongly preferring Trump, 59% to DeSantis’ 24%.

Image via CBS News.

DeSantis does fare a bit better among voters who acknowledge the truth that Joe Biden won in 2020, with the Florida governor coming in even with Trump among these voters.

Read the full CBS News/YouGov survey here.