Over half of Republican voters believe bonkers notion that sham audits could change the 2020 outcome

There's a reason Republican lawmakers in more than half a dozen states are pushing sham Arizona-style audits in their own states—GOP voters actually believe they can change the outcome of the 2020 election.

New polling from Morning Consult/Politico released Wednesday found that 51% of Republican voters nationwide believe these partisan, GOP-led audits like the one in Arizona will "definitely or probably" change the 2020 U.S. presidential election results.

Naturally, GOP voters are out there on a limb by themselves. Just 16% of Democrats said they believed these reviews could overturn the 2020 election, while 24% of independent voters said they thought that was possible.

Roughly one-third, or 36%, of GOP voters exhibited enough reality-based thinking to say the reviews likely or definitely would not change the 2020 outcome, with 53% of independents and 76% of Democrats saying the same.

Not surprisingly, Republican voters were also much more likely to support the fraudits, with fully 74% saying they either strongly (54%) or somewhat (20%) backed the efforts. Overall, just 23% of Democrats expressed some support for the reviews while 40% of independents did.

GOP lawmakers have supported and spread Donald Trump’s Big Lie about widespread election fraud for months, and these sham fraudits are just one more opportunity for them to keep Trump cultists engaged, hopeful, and ultimately aggrieved. But Trump’s cultists aren’t alone in believing these reviews could somehow lead to a change in outcome. According to multiple reports, Trump is also entertaining the idea that he could be “reinstated” as commander in chief.