June 21- 2021- 11:09 p.m.
Roughly one-third of Americans believe that President Biden’s 2020 electoral victory was the result of widespread voter fraud, according to a new Monmouth University poll.
Thirty-two percent of respondents say fraud was the reason Biden won the presidential election, maintaining a trend that has taken hold over the past seven months.
In similar Monmouth polls conducted in November, January and March, the number of voters who believe that fraud cost former President Trump a second term in the White House has remained steady at 32 percent.
The polling underscores how pervasive Trump’s false claims of a stolen election have become among his supporters in the months since the 2020 presidential race.
“The continuing efforts to question the validity of last year’s election is deepening the partisan divide in ways that could have long-term consequences for our Democracy, even if most Americans don’t quite see it that way yet,” Patrick Murray, the director of the Monmouth University Polling Institute, said.
The majority of those who believe that voter fraud delivered the White House to Biden identify as either Republicans or Republican-leaning, according to the Monmouth poll.
Sixty-three percent of GOP voters and Republican-leaning voters say that Biden was not legitimately elected president.
At the same time, 14 percent of those surveyed say that they will never accept Biden as the legitimate president, including roughly 3 in 10 Republican and Republican-leaning voters.
The number of those who believe Biden’s victory was due to fraud is also similar to the 33 percent who believe that efforts by state legislatures to audit the results of the 2020 election are legitimate, according to the Monmouth poll.
Those audits have been criticized by Democrats and election officials who have warned that they jeopardize the security of ballots and risk sowing further distrust in the country’s elections.
Most voters – 57 percent – see the audit efforts as partisan undertakings, the poll found.
The Monmouth poll surveyed 810 U.S. adults from June 9-14. It has a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 3.5 percentage points.
