Election Cheating Motherlode (Part 1):
As the only pollster questioning 2020 (the 42nd biggest spreader of 'election misinformation' on Twitter), we're the experts on this topic.
Watch the slow-motion trainwreck as voters wake up to fraud.
Video here:
January 2020, with the electorate riding high on a Trump economic wave, and the unknown virus of unspecified origins not yet upon us, most say elections are fair to voters, but not as much as you'd expect.
A majority of Democrats say no, most likely driven by @realDonaldTrump still being in office.
But Americans overwhelmingly said that the federal government does NOT have the consent of the govern, likely driven by a perennial, severe distaste for Congress.
April 2020 - The pandemic hits, and election printers everywhere are discretely stocking up on envelope-stuffing equipment, despite the fact that mass-mailing of unsolicited ballots was illegal at the time.
Nonetheless, a strong majority of favored mail-in ballots (COVID fear?)
But Americans had a sneaking suspicion that mail-in ballots would be exploited for fraud...
...Especially Republicans, and 94% of Trump strong supporters suspected mail-in ballots would lead to more voter fraud, again, just one month into the pandemic.
October 2020, with the election fast approaching, and philosophically, voters are split on whether voting is too easy or too hard.
And there's quite a bit of a party signal...
But the race signal is stronger, with Hispanic voters being most likely to say voting is too easy. Black voters roughly agree with white voters.
And voters pretty strongly agree that voters ID's don't discriminate.
But Democrats are still most concerned about disenfranchisement.
The election comes and goes, and in December, a good portion of voters thought that the court challenges had merit, but nowhere near a majority.
Most thought the court challenges were delay tactics, but even so, with very little time to investigate or research, over 4-in-10 voters thought the court challenges had merit.
73% of Republicans thought there was widespread fraud, but also 39% of Independents, and only 20% of Democrats.
February 2021 - A month after the Capitol Riot, and a few weeks after @JoeBiden entered office with the lowest approval record in our history.
One third said he didn't win fairly.
Our retrospective on mail-in voting wasn't very confidence-building. Just a year prior, 64% supported mail-in ballot, but only 52% said that it worked well.
"Election Deniers" was just being coined, and despite our Constitutionally protected 1st amendment right to free speech, 35% of voters wanted those who questioned the 2020 outcome to be PUNISHED.
68% of Biden Strong Approvers wanted election deniers punished.
April 2021, and we revisit some philosophical beliefs about elections. Notice the huge shift towards 'too easy?'
It was driven by Republicans, BTW.
Here's another, more important philosophical question, which is REALLY useful in understanding the opinions of the right vs left...
One Party is much less concerned about cheating.
We retested Photo IDs as well, and the spread narrowed, a LOT.
But here's the big one. We were extremely surprised by this outcome. 51% of voters said cheating affected the outcome of 2020.
In the summer of 2021, there was a lot of talk about election fraud and audits, and (only?) 55% of the electorate supported audits, in general.
Only 38% of Democrats, in principle, supported audits.
Pretty incredible.
...to be continued
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