Americans, Especially Republicans, Lost Faith In Election: Study

LOS ANGELES, CA — President Donald Trump may not have won the 2020 presidential election, but his campaign to undermine it has proved remarkably effective, according to a post-election USC Dornsife survey released Thursday.

Trump's repeated insistence that widespread fraud undermined the Nov. 3 presidential election has left a mark on Americans' faith in the voting process, the survey found. According to the survey, a majority of Republicans have suddenly lost faith in America's ability to hold free and fair elections.

This loss of faith in democracy comes even as the Trump administration's senior cybersecurity official responsible for securing the presidential election asserted that the 2020 election was “the most secure in American history,” prompting the president to fire him over Twitter.

Using a 0-100 scale to measure voters' confidence that all ballots were tallied correctly, the average ranking from voters was a middling 58, the Los Angeles Times reported. Democrats were more confident than Republicans, giving the election higher marks — a 79. Republicans, on the whole, rated their confidence in the election results' accuracy at just 34.

"What's really very clear is that the large group of voters who voted for Donald Trump in this election have absorbed the message that the vote may not have been completely, fairly counted," said Jill Darling, the director of the USC Dornsife survey. Democrats, on the other hand, may have lost confidence because of concerns about voter suppression or problems with the U.S. Postal Service, she said.

The final pre-election tracking poll estimated a national electoral outcome of Joe Biden with 53 percent of the popular vote and Trump with 44 percent. The actual results were a narrower spread: Biden with 51 percent and Trump getting 47 percent, with results still being tallied.

"Clearly, we were overestimating Biden a little bit and underestimating Trump by a little bit more," Darling said.

The experts are trying to understand why their polling numbers were so off. To explain the discrepancy, Darling said the USC team has begun to look into whether its probability questions — in which respondents ranked their answers on a scale of 0 to 100 — did not work as well this election year or if it was missing any key population of voters. The team's analysis found that the survey did do a good job of predicting overall likelihood of voting. It also found no evidence that people lied or were inconsistent in their responses.

One possible reason for the polling miss could be the deep polarization in the electorate, according to The Times.

Many other polls this cycle also tended to underrate support for Trump, raising expectations for a commanding Biden win coupled with a "blue wave" of Democratic wins down-ballot. While Biden did receive a record-setting 79 million votes so far, Democrats fell short in key Senate races and lost seats in the House of Representatives, although they maintained a majority.

Just before the election, for example, the USC Dornsife poll estimated a double-digit win for Biden. However, a separate question about how voters thought their friends, family and acquaintances may vote pointed to a tighter race — 51 percent for Biden versus 46 percent for Trump — that more closely aligned with the true results.

City News Service and Patch Staffer Paige Austin contributed to this report.