April 26, 2021- 10:05 p.m.
There is widespread agreement on requiring identification before being allowed to cast a ballot.
A new Fox News poll, released Monday, finds 77 percent of voters nationally think “a valid form of state or federally issued photo identification to prove U.S. citizenship” should be needed for voting. That’s down from a high of 85 percent who felt that way when Fox first asked the same survey question 10 years ago.
The 8-point decline comes from a shift among Democrats and independents. In 2011, 75 percent of Democrats and 86 percent of independents favored showing government-issued ID for voting. Today, 60 percent of Democrats and 76 percent of independents support the prerequisite.
Since the 2020 election, lawmakers in 47 states have proposed new voting requirements.
Far more Republicans are extremely or very concerned about voter fraud (81 percent) than they are about voter suppression (46 percent), while significantly more Democrats are troubled about suppression (78 percent) than fraud (39 percent). In fact, voter fraud is one of the top concerns among Republicans — and comes in dead last among Democrats.
Overall, 6 in 10 voters are concerned about voting issues: 60 percent concerned about voter suppression and 59 percent feel the same about voter fraud.
That places these concerns slightly ahead of others such as being able to pay bills (58 percent), and climate change (57 percent), but below many top issues.
Around three-quarters are concerned about the economy (78 percent), gun laws (74 percent), and health care (73 percent), while about two-thirds are worried about infrastructure (68 percent), illegal immigration (67 percent), treatment of migrants at the U.S.-Mexico border (65 percent), racism (65 percent), the federal deficit (65 percent), and their personal tax bill (63 percent).
Conducted April 18-21, 2021 under the joint direction of Beacon Research (D) and Shaw & Company (R), this Fox News Poll includes interviews with 1,002 randomly chosen registered voters nationwide who spoke with live interviewers on both landlines and cellphones. The total sample has a margin of sampling error of plus or minus three percentage points.
