Voters from both major parties increasingly dubious about 2020 election results
A growing number of Americans, or more than one-third of US adults believe that US President Joe Biden’s 2020 election was not legitimate, a new Washington Post-University of Maryland poll revealed on Tuesday.
While the majority of US adults (62%) still consider Biden’s 2020 win legitimate, 36% have an opposite view on the matter. This represents a 7% increase compared with poll results for the same question in December 2021, when only 29% said Biden’s election victory was not legitimate.
The share of Republicans who consider Biden’s election victory legitimate has shrunk from 39% three years ago to only 31% now. Meanwhile, the number of Democrats who think Biden was legitimately elected decreased from 94% to 91%, according to the poll.
At the same time, almost two-thirds of US adults, or 63%, expressed confidence that there was no solid evidence of widespread voter fraud in the 2020 election, according to the survey.
The poll also found that 50% of Americans believe that protesters who entered the US Capitol during the January 6, 2021 riot were “mostly violent.”
Moreover, 53% believe that former President Donald Trump bears either “great deal” (37%) or a “good amount” (16%) of responsibility for the attack on the Capitol.
The nationwide poll was conducted online and by phone on December 14-18, 2023, among 1,024 adults.
On January 6, 2021, after Trump’s election defeat, a mob of his protesters breached the US Capitol in an attempt to halt Congress’s Electoral College vote count. Since the riot, charges have been filed against more than 1,200 individuals for crimes related to the breach of the Capitol.