Campaign

Just one-third of GOP voters say they trust 2024 elections will be fair: poll

A new poll by NPR has found that only 33 percent of Republicans trust that the 2024 elections will be fair.

The poll found that most Americans do trust that the elections will be fair, but that GOP voters are far less likely to think so.

The results come after an unprecedented effort by former President Trump and his supporters to cast doubt on last year’s election, an effort that culminated in the Jan. 6 attack by Trump supporters on the Capitol that interrupted the counting of the Electoral College vote.

Fifty-eight percent of those polled overall said they trusted elections in the U.S. a great deal or a good amount. Yet while 90 percent of Democrats polled and 60 percent of independents polled trust elections, just a third of GOP voters did.

GOP voters without a college education were also far less likely to trust elections than those with a college diploma. Forty-eight percent of Republican respondents with college diplomas said they trusted the 2024 presidential election result would be fair even if their candidate lost, compared to 31 percent of those who are not college graduates.

Seventy percent of respondents overall trust that their state and local governments will handle the 2022 elections fairly, with 60 percent of GOP voters saying so. Fifty-three percent of GOP voters also said they would trust the results of the 2022 elections even if their candidate lost.

The poll found that a number of GOP voters believe former President Trump’s claims about the 2020 election despite the fact that state officials in both parties in contested states have found no evidence to support his claim that widespread fraud led to his defeat.

Sixty-eight percent of the GOP voters polled agreed with the statement that “Donald Trump continues to say the 2020 election was rigged mostly because he is right.” This included 62 percent of Republican respondents with a college degree, and 72 percent of polled Republicans with no college degree agreed.