Few Republicans are confident that the vote will be accurately counted in next year’s presidential election, suggesting that years of persistent attacks on elections by former President Trump and his allies have taken their toll, according to a new poll.

The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll shows that only 22% of Republicans are highly confident that votes will be accurately counted in the upcoming presidential election, compared to 71% of Democrats. in connection with the 2020 presidential election. Even as a third-time candidate for the White House, Trump continues to promote the false claim that the election was stolen.

Overall, the survey shows that less than half of Americans (44%) are very or somewhat confident that votes will be accurately counted in the next presidential election.

While Democrats’ confidence in elections has risen in recent years, the opposite is true for Republicans. Prior to the 2016 election, 32% of Republicans were confident that votes would be counted accurately, a figure that rose to 54% two years later, after Trump won the presidency.

That confidence level fell to 28% a month before the 2020 election, when Trump signaled to voters that the vote was rigged, and now sits at 22% less than 16 months before the next presidential election.

I just didn’t like the way the last election went, said Lynn Jackson, a registered nurse from El Sobrante, California, who is a registered Republican. I have questions about it. I can’t actually say it was stolen, only God knows.

Trump’s claims were rejected by dozens of judges, including several he appointed. His own attorney general and an extensive review by the Associated Press found no evidence of widespread fraud that could have altered the results. Multiple assessments, audits and recounts in the battlefield states where Trump contested his loss confirmed Democrat Joe Biden’s victory, including several overseen by Republican lawmakers.

Yet Trump’s attempts to declare his loss sparked a flurry of new laws in GOP-dominated states that added new voting restrictions, primarily by restricting mail-in voting and limiting or banning ballot boxes. Across the country, conspiracy theories involving voting machines have prompted many Republican-controlled local governments to ban vote-counting machines in favor of hand counts.

The AP-NORC survey suggests that the continued coverage has reached much of the American public.

The survey found that independents, a group that have consistently had low confidence in elections, were also largely skeptical about the integrity of the 2024 election. Only 24% are most confident that votes will be accurately counted.

Chris Ruff, a 46-year-old unaffiliated voter from Sanford, NC, said he lost faith in elections years ago, believing they were rigged to favor certain candidates. He also sees no difference between the two major parties.

I’m not voting at all,” he said. “I think it only adds credibility to the system if you participate.

The voting machine conspiracy theories promoted through forums across the country have also eroded confidence among Republicans, even though there is no evidence to support them.

About 4 in 10 American adults are confident that scanning paper ballots into a machine produces accurate counts. Democrats are about twice as confident in the process as Republicans: 63% compared to 29%. That marks a notable shift from a 2018 AP-NORC poll that found only 40% of Democrats were confident compared to 53% of Republicans.

Gillian Nevers, a 79-year-old retiree from Madison, Wis.

consin

has

worked as

a pollster and said that based on her experience, she has confidence in the people overseeing the election.

I’ve never seen shenanigans, said Nevers, who votes for the Democrats. The claims are baseless and ridiculous. Because they’re projected so broadly, I think a lot of people have concerns that I don’t think they should be.

The conspiracy theories have led to death threats against election officials and an exodus of veteran workers. The attacks on voting machines have been especially daunting for election officials because of the tests and audits they conduct before and after elections to ensure that votes are accurately recorded. All states except Alabama and Wisconsin reported using a method referred to as logic and accuracy testing to confirm that voting machines correctly tallied votes before the 2022 midterm elections, according to a report from the U.S. Election Assistance Commission.

In most jurisdictions, any contested result can also be checked against the paper ballots.

James Grove, a 74-year-old retiree from Sharon, Pennsylvania, is among the minority of Republicans who believe votes will be accurately counted next year and said he doesn’t believe the 2020 election was stolen.

I think most elections are pretty fair, said Grove, who supported Trump in 2016 and 2020. There are Republican election observers and Democratic ones. And do I think the 2020 election was lopsided? No not at all.

Opinion polls include:

Most Republicans (62%) oppose allowing people to vote by mail without an excuse, compared to just 13% of Democrats. About 7 in 10 Democrats support voting by mail without excuse.

Requiring photo ID to cast a vote is gaining widespread bipartisan support. Seven in 10 American adults would support a measure requiring voters to provide photo ID, including 87% of Republicans and 60% of Democrats.

A slim majority of Americans (55%) support automatically registering adult citizens to vote when they obtain a driver’s license or other state identification.

Four in 10 American adults say that being denied the right to vote is a major problem for eligible voters in US elections, but about the same number of Americans say the same about people who vote who are ineligible to vote. The perceived importance of each issue varies by political party, with 56% of Republicans citing illegal voting as a major problem in US elections, compared to 20% of Democrats. At the same time, 53% of Democrats say being unable to vote is a major problem for eligible voters, compared to 26% of Republicans.

The survey of 1,220 adults was conducted June 22-26 using a sample drawn from NORC’s probability-based AmeriSpeak Panel, which is designed to be representative of the U.S. population. The sampling error margin for all respondents is plus or minus 3.9 percentage points.