Tipsheet

Poll: Majority of Voters Believe 'Cheating Affected Outcome of 2020 Election'

Rebecca Downs
Rebecca Downs  |  October 14, 2021 8:30 PM

A Rasmussen Reports poll released earlier this week showed that a majority of likely voters thinking cheating affected the 2020 presidential election. What's more, this number has increased not only with all voters, but Democrats, Independents, and Republicans. According to results from October 56 percent of all likely voters believe that "it is likely that cheating affected the outcome of the 2020 presidential election," including 41 percent who say it's "very likely."

Those poll results were analyzed by Charlie McCarthy for Newsmax.

Former President Donald Trump has spoken up about his concerns with the 2020 election results, especially this week. His spokesperson, Liz Harrington, tweets out statements from the former president. She also retweeted the above tweet from Rasmussen Reports and tweeted her own thoughts.

The poll also examines voter thoughts on mail-in voting. Concerns abound over cheating when it comes to this type of voting as well. Sixty-five percent of likely voters believe it will lead to more cheating in elections. Fifty-one percent say it's very likely. In contrast, 28 percent don't think it will mean more cheating, with 14 percent who say it's not likely at all.

Sixty-seven percent of Democrats think that mail-in voting becoming permanent is a good policy.

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Trump and Harrington have raised concerns with mail-in voting as well.

The poll was conducted October 7-10 with 1,000 likely U.S. voters and a margin of error of 3 percentage points.

Mail-in voting increased exponentially for the 2020 election, the reasons given due to the pandemic. A variety of sources have discussed the phenomena.

The Pew Research Center in an analysis from last November pointed out that a plurality of voters cast their ballot by mail, by 46 percent. A majority of those who voted for President Joe Biden voted by mail, by 58 percent. 

As an analysis from FiveThirtyEight noted:

We may have seen it coming, but now we know for sure: The coronavirus pandemic made the 2020 election look different from any other election in recent memory. Due to the massive expansion of mail voting, a staggering number of Americans cast their ballots before Election Day. And due to then-President Donald Trump’s false claims that mail voting would lead to election fraud, a huge partisan gap emerged between ballots cast by mail and ballots cast on Election Day.

First, the share of voters casting mail ballots far exceeded that of any other recent national election, and the share of voters who reported going to a polling place on Election Day dropped to its lowest point in at least 30 years...

The Public Policy Institute of California touched upon this in a report from April:

States across the country took extraordinary steps to increase voting by mail for the 2020 election in an effort to minimize in-person contact and virus transmission risk during the COVID-19 pandemic. The biggest such policy change involved mailing every voter a ballot by default. California took additional steps toward facilitating vote-by-mail—such as a statewide ballot tracking system and a later deadline for receiving ballots that had been postmarked by election day—and many counties in the state also adapted their options to accommodate in-person voting.

It also noted how mail-in voting has affected California's voting:

California is now debating making universally mailed ballots a permanent feature of the state’s elections moving forward, through AB 37. The state has already committed (through SB 29) to extending the approach through 2021, including for any gubernatorial recall election that may occur...

That legislation passed just recently, late last month, as Leah reported.