Poll: Majority of Republicans Believe Trump's Lies About the 2020 Election

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Last updated on May 27th, 2021 at 05:21 am

According to the latest national poll from Reuters/Ipsos, a majority of Republicans have fallen for ex-President Donald Trump’s “big lie” about the 2020 election and fully believe that the election was rife with fraud and abuse despite all evidence to the contrary.

The poll found that 53% of Republicans believe Trump is the “true” president of the United States compared to 47% who said Biden won the election fairly. 56% of Republicans said the election results were “the result of illegal voting or election rigging.” Additionally, 39% “strongly” agreed and 22% “somewhat” agreed that the election was “stolen from Donald Trump.”

“Those numbers are remarkable. Scary. Depressing. And reflective of the fact that the Big Lie pushed by Trump and his allies — and aided and abetted by the silence of the vast majority of Republican leaders — has taken significant root in the Republican Party,” observed CNN’s Chris Cillizza, who noted that Trump has continued to spread lies without regard for the consequences.

Yesterday, Trump claimed that an audit of election results in New Hampshire “revealed that large-scale voting machines appear to count NON-EXISTING VOTES.” Last week, it was reported that while machines in the town of Windham “undercounted votes for four Republican state legislative candidates by about 300 votes and showed 99 more votes for a Democratic candidate than had actually been cast,” the Republicans on the ballot still won their races and the Democrat lost.

Trump has continued to use the episode as an example of large-scale corruption and has criticized the Republican establishment for what he perceives as their inaction.

“Why aren’t Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and Republicans doing anything about what went on in the 2020 Election? How can the Democrats be allowed to get away with this?” he wrote on his official website. “It will go down as the Crime of the Century!”

Trump has used similar language before, perhaps most prominently in his repeated attacks against voting procedures in Georgia, which he says were faulty because of the use of absentee ballots. An Associated Press fact check found no evidence that absentee ballots were linked to fraud within the state.