A slight majority of Republicans believe that Donald Trump is the rightful president and that the 2020 election was rigged, according to a recent Reuters-Ipsos poll.
The survey results show that 53 percent of Republicans think Trump is the “true president,” though President Biden was inaugurated in January after winning the popular vote by roughly 7 million votes. Additionally, 61 percent of Republican respondents believed either strongly or somewhat that the 2020 election was “stolen” from the 45th president.
While a 55 percent majority of respondents from all political affiliations said the election was “legitimate and accurate,” one-quarter said they believe Biden’s win was the result of illegal ballot-counting or election rigging.
Fifty-six percent of Republicans said that the presidential election was sullied by illegal voting or “election rigging” after Trump spent months peddling false claims that the election had been plagued by widespread election fraud. While there were isolated incidents of fraud, as in every election, state election officials across the country have said there is no evidence that the election outcomes in their states were fraudulent.
However, just 30 percent of Republicans said they are confident that absentee or mail-in ballots were accurately counted during the presidential election. Meanwhile, 86 percent of Democrats said they believe those votes were accurately counted.
As a post-election fight over voting laws has ensued between Republican and Democratic lawmakers, 87 percent of Republican respondents said it is important for the government to place new limits on voting to protect future elections from fraud.
On the January 6 Capitol riot, in which a mob of Trump’s supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol, 54 percent of Republicans surveyed agreed that the siege was led by “violent left-wing protestors trying to make Trump look bad.” Just 12 percent of Republicans said they strongly agree that Trump played a role in the Capitol riot.
While Trump has repeatedly teased a potential 2024 presidential bid in recent weeks, nearly two-thirds of Republican-leaning voters said they believe he should run again.
Trump pointed to the poll results as evidence that he is the rightful president in a statement on Tuesday.
“A new Ipsos/Reuters poll ‘Beliefs Among Republicans’ shows 53% believe Donald Trump is the true President (I always knew America was smart!),” Trump said in a statement through his political action committee. “2020 Election was tainted 56%. The Election was stolen (and Rigged!) 61%.”
The Reuters-Ipsos poll was conducted from May 17 to 19 and is based on responses from 2,007 U.S. adults, including 754 Republicans, 909 Democrats and 196 independents. It has a credibility interval of 3.7 percentage points for Democrats, 4.1 percentage points for Republicans and 8 percentage points for independents.