
Poll: Most Americans reject validity of 2020 election audits
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A 57% majority of Americans say that, based on what they’ve heard about the audits conducted or proposed by legislatures in some states, they view them as “partisan efforts to undermine valid election results.” Just a third say they see them more as “legitimate efforts to identify potential voting irregularities.”
Further, 40% of the public says that such audits will weaken American democracy, while 20% say it will strengthen it. Another 35% expecting them to have no impact.
Although the survey didn’t explicitly identify the audits as Republican-led efforts, it still found sharp divides along political lines. A near-universal 90% of Democrats view the audits as bad faith, partisan ploys. Republican support for the audits is broad, but less overwhelming: 59% call them legitimate, with 31% seeing them as attempts to overturn valid results.
Both the overall numbers and the partisan divides reflect wider opinions about the 2020 election. Most Americans, 61%, believe President Joe Biden won the 2020 election fair and square, a number that’s budged little since last November. But 57% of Republicans say they believe the baseless theory that Biden’s victory was due to voter fraud.
Monmouth’s survey also looked at issues surrounding voting policy, finding broad public consensus on two issues — 71% say that in-person early voting should be easier, and 80% that they generally support requiring voters to show a photo ID in order to vote. Each has majority support among both Democrats and Republicans, although the strength of that majority varies by party. Democrats are 33 percentage points likelier than Republicans to say in-person voting should be easier, while Republicans are 29 points likelier than Democrats to back photo ID requirements.
But there’s a far more pronounced divide over voting by mail: Democrats are 58 percentage points likelier than Republicans to say it should be made easier, with most Republicans rejecting the idea.
The Monmouth University poll surveyed a nationally representative sample of 810 American adults by phone between June 9 and June 14, using live interviewers to reach both landlines and cell phones. The results have a sampling error margin of plus or minus 3.5 percentage points for the full sample.
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