[ad_1]
A majority of 57% of Americans say, based on what they have heard about audits conducted or proposed by legislatures in some states, they view them as “partisan efforts to undermine valid election results.” Only a third of them say they see it as “legitimate efforts to identify potential voting irregularities”.
Moreover, 40% of the public said such revisions would weaken American democracy, while 20% said it would strengthen it. 35% expect it to have no effect.
Although the survey did not explicitly identify the audits as a Republican-led effort, it did find sharp divisions along political lines. 90% of quasi-universal Democrats view audits as bad faith, partisan tricks. Republican support for audits is broad, but less impressive: 59% describe them as legitimate, while 31% see them as attempts to overturn valid findings.
Both the overall numbers and partisan divides reflect broader views of the 2020 election. Most Americans, 61%, believe President Joe Biden won the 2020 election fair and square, a number that hasn’t changed much since last November. But 57% of Republicans say they believe the unfounded theory that Biden’s victory was due to voter fraud.
The Monmouth poll also looked at issues related to voting policy, finding broad general consensus on two issues – 71% say early in-person voting should be easier, and 80% generally support requiring voters to show a photo ID in order to vote. . Both have majority support between Democrats and Republicans, although the strength of that majority varies by party. Democrats are 33 percentage points more likely than Republicans to say that in-person voting should be easier, while Republicans are 29 percentage points more likely than Democrats to support photo ID requirements.
But there is a clearer split over voting by mail: Democrats are 58 percentage points more likely than Republicans to say it should be easier, with most Republicans rejecting the idea.
These results are the culmination of an election cycle in which the choice of voting by mail has suddenly become a partisan issue, in line with former President Donald Trump’s vociferous attacks against the practice. The Republican Party’s views of who should be allowed to vote before Election Day have also seen a rapid shift. In 2018, according to a Pew Research Center poll, 57% of Republicans believed that any voter should have the option to vote early or absent without having to document a reason for doing so. By June 2020, that number had fallen to 44%; In April of this year, only 38% supported such broad access to absentee voting. Democratic opinion has remained stable throughout this time.
The Monmouth University survey surveyed a nationwide representative sample of 810 American adults by phone between June 9 and June 14, using live interviews to reach both landlines and cell phones. The results have a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 3.5 percentage points for the full sample.
.
[ad_2]
Picture Credit!