Most Republican voters believe 2020 election was invalid, poll finds

The majority of Republican voters believe the election is invalid, according to a recently released survey.

The poll was conducted by R Street Institute, and found that 67 per cent of Republican respondents thought the 2020 election was invalid. Only 23 per cent of Republican respondents believed it was valid.

Of the Republicans polled, 42 per cent believed that the entire electoral system is meaningless and that their votes "probably" were not even counted, while half said they believed that their votes were actually counted.

“President Trump’s rhetoric seems to have had a profound impact on his base’s outlook on the election,” the Tyson Group, which conducted the survey, said. “Across all regions, our participants by and large opposed alternative voting methods, believed that those methods opened the election process to fraud, and felt that the 2020 election result was invalid.”

Mr Trump began casting doubt on the legitimacy of the 2020 election months before voters cast their ballots. He complained that efforts to promote vote-by-mail to avoid spreading the coronavirus would result in "massive" voter fraud.

The former president's rhetoric eventually resulted in a major rally in Washington DC on 6 January. Many of the supporters at that rally later took part in the insurrection at the US Capitol.

Despite the president's words, numerous members of his administration denied his claims of voter fraud.

Mr Trump's former attorney general William Barr said that while election fraud was common on a small scale, there was no evidence that massive voter fraud occurred.

Chris Krebs, a senior cybersecurity official in Mr Trump's administration, said the 2020 election was the most secure in US history.

Mr Trump fired Mr Krebs after he made the comment.

Ninety-two per cent of Republicans responding to the poll said they believed that mail-in voting and ballot drop boxes resulted in more errors and fraud.

Despite that, the poll found that only 48 per cent of Republicans voted in person, on Election Day, while another 28 per cent voted early and 24 per cent voted by mail.

“In the wake of the contentious November 2020 election, it’s more important than ever to defend the principles that underpin our democracy,” Jonathan Bydlak, interim director of the R Street Institute’s governance programme, said.

“That starts with understanding voters’ feelings about the legitimacy and administration of the election. Following Donald Trump’s loss, a significant portion of the electorate, primarily Republican voters, still distrust our election systems.”