Donald Trump and many Republican operatives continue to promote the ruse that the 2020 election results—which gave Joe Biden a victory and made Donald Trump a one-term president—are false. This isn’t surprising, but it is disappointing. We have a democracy and the foundation of that democracy is that every eligible American is supposed to have an equally weighted vote. This isn’t actually true with the Electoral College, but the general idea is still supposed to apply. But even with the scales already pressed down on the side of the minority Republican Party, the GOP and its cult base are having a hard time reconciling that there are so many more Americans who would prefer new leadership at this crucial moment in our history.
A new poll from Reuters/Ipsos reports that while 73% of those polled agreed that Biden had won the election, and that only 5% thought Trump won, more than half of the Republicans asked thought that Trump had “rightfully won.” By this “rightfully won” measurement, only 29% of Republicans believed Biden had won. According to the poll, 68% of Republicans worried about the election being “rigged.”
The good news is that the majority of people polled, all told, believe that the election was “legitimate and accurate.” Also, the good news is that this week’s polling matched last week’s Reuters/Ipsos polling, with only around 13% of those polled believing the election has not yet been decided. The bad news is that the number of people polled who believe the election was “legitimate and accurate” was only 55%. This is down seven percentage points from 2016 polling numbers. Logically, the number of respondents that believe there is more “illegal voting” and rigging of the election has gone up. It’s logical in that if you believe one thing, then you likely believe the other. And considering how much of the Trump-Republican Party believes in truly illogical QAnon conspiracy theory BS, the fact that there is any logic here is remarkable.
In 2016, 52% of Democrats said Hillary Clinton’s loss to Trump was “legitimate and accurate,” even as reports emerged of Russian attempts to influence the outcome. This year, only 26% of Republicans said they thought Trump’s loss was similarly legitimate.
As the conservative movement becomes smaller and smaller in relation to the general American population, the conservative leadership—the people that derive power from it—will continue to lie and spread misinformation about the legitimacy of the democratic process. So far it is working on a large population of their electorate. However, Trump’s attempts at changing the results of the election are not supported, and that’s a good thing.