Last month, Rebecca reported on how Virginia gubernatorial candidates Terry McAuliffe (D) and Glenn Youngkin (R) have previously spoken on the legitimacy of the 2020 presidential election. While McAuliffe "chided" Youngkin for making pledges throughout his campaign to protect election integrity, which supposedly "[feeds] conspiracy theories advanced by former President Donald Trump," Youngkin has affirmed that he thinks Biden and Harris were legitimately elected in 2020. However, a new poll released just before Election Day shows that many Republicans have doubts about their votes being counted fairly the next time they head to the polls.
An NBC News poll published on Monday found that 50 percent of Republicans surveyed believe their vote would not be counted accurately the next time they cast a ballot. Less than half of Republican respondents, 41 percent, said they thought their vote would be counted accurately, compared to 84 percent last year.
Among all registered voters surveyed, 66 percent said they believe their vote would be counted accurately in next year's 2022 midterm elections. In October 2020, this number was at 85 percent. Democrats, specifically, remained the same – 89 percent of respondents believed their votes would be counted accurately. Last year, only 11 percent of all respondents said they doubted their vote would be counted accurately in the future. This year, 29 percent of respondents share this belief.
The survey asked respondents their thoughts on the 2020 election, specifically, the legitimacy of President Biden's presidency. A mere 22 percent of Republican adults believe that Biden was elected legitimately, while 71 percent of Independents and 93 percent of Democrats felt the same. Overall, 58 percent of adults think Biden was legitimately elected, while 38 percent do not. A small portion, four percent of respondents, were unsure.
"In comparison, after the contested 2000 presidential election in Florida was ultimately decided by the Supreme Court in a decision that determined the winner, the public's trust in the legitimacy of the presidential election dipped to a similar point," the write-up notes.
"From January 2001, when he was inaugurated, to that November, the portion of adults who said President George W. Bush's election was legitimate went from 55 percent to 58 percent, with the portion who felt it was not legitimate dropping, from 39 percent to 35 percent," the write-up continues. "Over that time, the vast majority of Republicans (almost 90 percent) said that Bush's election was legitimate, but the portion of Democrats who said the same grew from 20 percent to 32 percent by November."
The poll, which was conducted from Oct. 23 to Oct. 26 among 1,000 American adults, has a margin of error of plus-minus 3.1 percentage points.