{"id":463302,"date":"2020-12-02T07:58:31","date_gmt":"2020-12-02T12:58:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/newscenter\/?p=463302"},"modified":"2020-12-02T10:56:38","modified_gmt":"2020-12-02T15:56:38","slug":"what-it-means-if-republican-voters-still-think-biden-lost-463302","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/newscenter\/what-it-means-if-republican-voters-still-think-biden-lost-463302\/","title":{"rendered":"What does it mean if most Republican voters still think Biden lost?"},"content":{"rendered":"

New Bright Line Watch survey finds that fewer than a third of Republican voters have confidence in the national vote count.<\/h2>\n

As President-elect Joe Biden and his administrative team officially begin the transition process, only about 20 percent of Republican voters consider him the true winner of the election. Nearly half of all respondents\u201448 percent\u2014still expect President Donald Trump to be inaugurated for a second term on January 20, despite plenty of indicators to the contrary. Those are among the findings of the latest Bright Line Watch (November) survey<\/a>\u2014the political science research project of faculty at the\u00a0Ä¢¹½´«Ã½<\/strong><\/a>, the\u00a0University of Chicago<\/strong><\/a>, and\u00a0Dartmouth College<\/strong><\/a>.<\/strong><\/p>\n

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In the news<\/h3>\n

Most Republicans Say They Doubt the Election. How Many Really Mean It?<\/a>\u2014New York Times<\/em> in The Upshot. <\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\u201cWe were really struck by how much Trump\u2019s baseless narrative of voter fraud to explain his loss to Biden has continued to shape the beliefs of his supporters after the election,\u201d says Gretchen Helmke<\/strong><\/a>, a professor of political science at Rochester and a Bright Line Watch founder.<\/p>\n

The watchdog group\u2019s latest survey shows a clear increase in the public\u2019s partisan divide over the legitimacy of the election compared to their previous survey in October.\u00a0<\/a>In the October survey, 33 percent of strong Trump supporters still said they would view a victorious Biden as definitely or probably the \u201crightful winner.\u201d Yet after the election, only 9 percent of strong Trump supporters saw Biden as the rightful winner. Indeed, 67 percent of that group now expressed certainty that Biden was \u201cdefinitely\u00a0not\u00a0the rightful winner,\u201d the scientists found.<\/p>\n

\u201cAlthough it\u2019s typical that voters\u2019 optimism about things like the economy, or the direction of the country shift depending on whether their candidate wins the election, it\u2019s really striking just how pervasive the loss of confidence in elections has become among Trump\u2019s supporters in the wake of his defeat,\u201d says Helmke.<\/p>\n

As they had done throughout the project, the group<\/a> fielded two parallel surveys\u2014 one to political experts and one to a representative sample of the US population\u2014between November 12 and 25.<\/p>\n

Bright Line Watch asked the public about the legitimacy of the election results, their confidence that votes were cast and counted fairly, their beliefs about voter fraud, and their willingness to condone political violence. Meanwhile, the experts were asked to rate the likelihood of 23 scenarios related to the November election and the transition to a new administration that could lead to political crises. As in previous surveys, the team asked both groups to assess the quality of US democracy overall and to rate the performance on 30 distinct democratic principles.<\/p>\n

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Full report<\/h3>\n

Read the watchdog group\u2019s latest (November 2020) survey, \u201cA Democratic Stress Test \u2014 The 2020 Election and Its Aftermath.\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Key findings<\/strong><\/h3>\n

Public survey findings<\/strong><\/p>\n