Poll: 73% of Trump Voters Believe Trump is Wrong About Pence’s Ability to Overturn the Election
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The vast majority of Americans who voted for Donald Trump believe that Congress should not be able to reject the results of an election once they are certified by the states, according to a new poll.
A CBS News/YouGov poll — conducted in January and flagged by CNN’s Harry Enten — found that 73% of Americans who voted for Trump in 2020 believe that Congress must accept the state certification of results. Just 27% of Trump voters said they believe Congress should be able to reject those results.
Since the 2020 election, Trump has waged a half-baked campaign to convince Americans it was stolen from him by Joe Biden, who won by more than seven million votes. Trump’s legal challenges to the election were rejected at every turn, and when it came time for then-Vice President Mike Pence to certify Biden’s victory, Trump pressured him to reject the certification and overturn the election.
Pence refused, as he doesn’t have the legal authority to pick the winner of an election. In the year since, Trump has repeatedly attacked Pence for certifying the election, prompting a strong rebuke from the former vice president last week.
“I heard this week that President Trump said I had the right to overturn the election,” Pence said. “President Trump is wrong. I had no right to overturn the election.”
As Enten notes over at CNN, “Normally, taking a position against the former President would be the death knell in Republican politics, but data shows that this looks to be the rare case where Pence is unlikely to face much wrath from the base.”
The new poll from CBS News/YouGov, with a sample size of 2,094, found the vast majority of Americans agree with Pence over Trump.
75% of Americans polled said Congress must accept the results of an election after they are certified by the states. Just 25% said Congress should be able to “decide whether to accept or reject those results.”
There was a similar breakdown by party ID. 70% of Republicans said Congress must accept the results, while 30% of Republicans said they could decide whether to accept or reject the results. Even more Democrats and Independents said Congress must accept the results after they have been certified by the states.
Read the full polling results here.
