This afternoon PPP released some troubling results of weekend polling in Ohio, Florida, and Pennsylvania on the subject of voter fraud.
The question was:
Do you think Democrats will engage in voter fraud to ensure that Barack Obama wins the election, or not?
Do you think Republicans will engage in voter fraud to ensure that Mitt Romney wins the election, or not?
The rest of the questions were all demographics, party ID, etc. The voter fraud question was pretty much all there was to this poll. And these are the results:
-In Ohio 62% of Republicans think Democrats will engage in voter fraud to make sure that Barack Obama wins. 50% of the Democrats think that the GOP will engage in voter fraud to ensure a Romney victory.
-In Florida 60% of Republicans think Democrats will engage in voter fraud to make sure that Barack Obama wins. 55% of the Democrats think that the GOP will engage in voter fraud to ensure a Romney victory.
-In North Carolina 69% of Republicans think Democrats will engage in voter fraud to make sure that Barack Obama wins. 51% of the Democrats think that the GOP will engage in voter fraud to ensure a Romney victory.
A few thoughts below the squiggle.
First off, I really dislike the question.
Not only does voter fraud have a specific definition, but it's been relentlessly demagogued by Republicans and their surrogates. Voter fraud is focused on malfeasance by individuals, as in this definition from Project Vote:
Voter fraud is the “intentional corruption of the electoral process by the voter.” This definition covers knowingly and willingly giving false information to establish voter eligibility, and knowingly and willingly voting illegally or participating in a conspiracy to encourage illegal voting by others.
The fact that this form of corruption is almost vanishingly-rare has not deterred the wave of GOP/ALEC voter suppression legislation, justified by the FOX-hyped myth of armies of ineligible voters just itchin' to sway elections to the left with their illegal votes.
I'm not at all surprised, with all the right-wing propaganda about rampant (non-existent) left-wing voter fraud, that Republicans would expect it to occur, though the numbers are disturbingly high.
However, I am quite sure that -- in general -- Democrats do not expect armies of ineligible voters to cast ballots for Republicans. Personally, I'd have answered that question with a "No." Of course there's not enough voter fraud by Republicans to make a difference. But the GOP has been working incredibly hard to SUPPRESS Democratic votes, by legislative means and slimy phone calls and voter intimidation (True the Vote) and RNC voter registration fraud.
Not to mention concerns about rigged voting machines.
So the question that was the entire basis for the poll is... malarkey. They needed a more generic question about cheating.
Unfortunately, even with that, the results are still troubling -- that's an awful lot of people with doubts about the electoral process, and the nature of the question probably under-counted Democrats.
Though I don't like the PPP question at all, I'm with them on their conclusion:
If it's a close election it's safe to say it's going to get ugly.