Poll: More Trump backers bracing for botched election
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Vice President Kamala Harris' supporters are far more optimistic that the Nov. 5 election will be administered smoothly and accurately than former President Trump's, a survey released on Thursday has found.
Why it matters: Trump and his allies have relentlessly questioned the integrity of the upcoming vote — after falsely claiming the 2020 election was stolen — and the Pew Research Center survey indicates their message is getting through.
- Almost half of Trump supporters, 42%, think the election won't be handled well, compared to just 10% of Harris supporters, according to Pew.
By the numbers: That divide extends across various aspects of the election.
- Among Harris' backers, 85% are confident that there will be a clear winner after all the votes are counted, compared to just 58% of Trump supporters.
- When it comes to confidence that mail-in ballots will be counted correctly, the gap is even wider: 85% of Harris' backers were confident, versus 38% of Trump's.
- Nearly three-fourths of Harris' supporters, 73%, are confident election systems are secure, more than double the 32% of Trump's supporters who said the same.
Yes, but: One area where Harris' backers are far more dubious than Trump's is on the question of whether the Supreme Court would be politically neutral in resolving any election challenges.
- While just one in five voters overall said they were confident in the court's neutrality, that number was far higher among Trump's backers, 36%, than among Harris' 6%.
Zoom out: The current overall confidence divide is a reversal from just six years ago. In 2018, supporters of Republican candidates were 8 percentage points more likely than those who supported Democrats to say the midterm election would be well run.
- But by 2020, President Biden's backers were 22 percentage points more likely than Trump's to say that year's election would run smoothly.
- This year, that gap has widened to 33 percentage points.
- "It's fair to say that some of the dynamics around the 2020 election have continued this partisan divide in views of election administration,"said Jocelyn Kiley, the PRC's senior associate director of research.
Zoom in: The vast majority of Harris' supporters, 87%, add they were at least somewhat confident that people who are ineligible to vote would be prevented from doing so, compared to just 30% of Trump's backers.
- Trump has stoked fears about people, including undocumented immigrants, illegitimately gaining access to ballot boxes.
- Pew surveyed 4,025 registered voters — from Sept. 30 to Oct. 6, the results have a margin of error of plus-or-minus 1.9 percentage points.
