Just over one-third of Republicans say they are highly confident that their votes will be counted accurately in the upcoming state primary contests, according to a new poll.
An Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research survey released Wednesday found 37% of Republicans have a “great deal” or “quite a bit” of confidence in their party’s vote-counting process.
Meanwhile, 32% said they had “only a little” confidence or “none at all,” and 31% said they had a “moderate” amount of confidence in the early voting state tallies.
By contrast, 72% of Democrats said they had high confidence in their party’s ability to count votes accurately in primary states, and 46% even said they had a “great deal” or “quite a bit” of confidence in Republicans to do so.
Only 8% of Democrats expressed “little” confidence or “none at all” in their party’s primary vote-counting, while 19% expressed “moderate” confidence.
However, a majority of Republicans (58%) said they have “only a little” confidence or “none at all” that the Democratic Party would accurately count votes for its own contests.
Notably, 38% of independents expressed low confidence in Democrats’ vote-counting ability, while just 36% said the same of Republicans.
Confidence is also low among Republicans that ballots will be counted accurately in the 2024 general election, with only around one-quarter of GOP respondents saying they have high confidence in the tallies.
Just 46% of US adults surveyed said the same.
Former President Donald Trump, who was indicted twice this year for his efforts to overturn election results in Washington, DC, and Georgia, has clung to claims that the 2020 election was “rigged” — despite his senior legal counsel and White House staff saying that he lost to Joe Biden.
Former Attorney General William Barr also stated after Joe Biden’s victory that the Justice Department had uncovered no evidence of widespread voter fraud that would have altered electoral results.
“Not only did we not find any fraud of that magnitude, but, in the states, and when you actually looked at the votes, they were very clear to me why he lost,” Barr said at the time.
“He ran as the weakest person on the Republican ticket. Like, in Pennsylvania, he came in 60,000 votes below the Republican ticket.”
Courts also threw cold water on fraud claims brought by Trump attorneys in the aftermath of the election.
Special counsel Jack Smith, who indicted Trump in August on four counts for his efforts to reverse the 2020 election, is seeking to prove in court next year that the former president made “knowingly false” claims about the results.
Nevertheless, one 2020 Trump voter echoed the former president’s allegations when speaking with the Associated Press about the recent poll.
“Nothing will be fair because the last election was rigged,” Julie Duggan, a 32-year-old from Chicago, told the outlet. “I don’t trust any of them at this point.”
That lack of voter confidence is also underscored by pessimism about both political parties — and their ability to elect leaders that represent most Americans.
One-third of Republicans are skeptical about the future of their party, and one-quarter of Democrats said the same about their organization.
Independents were slightly more pessimistic about the future of the Republican Party (45%) than the future of the Democratic Party (41%).
Asked whether their party would elect a candidate whose views represent most Americans, only three in 10 Democrats said they were confident the primary process would result in that.
The same percentage of Republicans agreed when asked about their own presidential nominating contest.
“I feel like there’s got to be someone better out there, but I don’t think another Democrat is going to unseat Joe Biden,” Mark Richards, a 33-year-old middle school teacher in Toledo, Ohio, told the Associated Press.
“It’s all about money, who can get the most money from PACs and Super PACs,” Richards added, pointing out Biden’s low job approval numbers would not affect massive political committee spending.
Both Trump and Biden are the odds-on favorites for their party’s presidential nomination, leading the other candidates by more than 50% and 60%, respectively, according to the RealClearPolitics average.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley are in distant second- and third-place positions in the GOP primary, the polling aggregator shows, while spiritual guru Marianne Williamson and Rep. Dean Phillips (D-Minn.) net low-single-digit support behind Biden.
The AP/NORC poll was conducted between Nov. 30 and Dec. 4, with 1,074 US adults participating. The margin of error was plus or minus 4 percentage points.