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A significant minority (36%) say their confidence in the tally will be diminished if a winner cannot be determined on election night because the tally is taking longer than usual, a prospect which is increasingly likely as more parts of the public turn to – send ballots to vote.
Of all registered voters, 34% say they prefer to vote by post in the presidential election, 22% say they want to vote early at a polling station and only 43% say they prefer to vote in person on polling day. This represents a 10-point increase over the share of postal voters in 2016: 24%, according to the U.S. Election Assistance Commission.
The political divide over how voters want to vote is stark. Among the president’s supporters, 66% say they prefer to vote in person on election day. Voters supporting former Vice President Joe Biden overwhelmingly prefer to vote by mail (53%).
If this divide were to continue during elections, it could result in very different election results than what Americans are used to seeing. Election officials sometimes count one type of ballot entirely first and then switch to the next, meaning that this year early returns may not be representative of all votes. The differences between absentee voting and voting on election day have generally not been so uniformly partisan in the past.
For example, two years ago in Arizona, Republican Martha McSally led on election night, but Democrat Kyrsten Sinema took the lead later. Once that happened, Trump spoke out against “corruption” and tweeted, “calling for a new election?” McSally later conceded.
The poll also reveals that the majority of Americans are concerned that changes to the voting rules intended to make voting safer during the coronavirus pandemic will not go far enough (64% are at least somewhat concerned about this) and that these changes will make it too easy for people to vote fraudulently (59% affected). But concerns overlap only for a small portion of the public: only 36% say they are concerned about both.
An in-depth study of voter fraud, which examined over a billion votes between 2000 and 2012, found a microscopic level of fraud in the U.S. election, but determined that in cases of fraud, absent ballot fraud was one of the most common methods.
Trump’s management of electoral security criticized
In recent weeks, Trump has, without evidence, questioned the legitimacy of the postal ballots and falsely claimed that the country may never know the results of the election.
Overall, 51% of Americans say they disapprove of the President’s handling of election security in the United States, 40% approve of it. The poll was on the ground as news broke about changes to the U.S. Postal Service that may have been politically motivated.
Experts say Trump’s comments undermine public confidence in the electoral process and that he could set the stage to challenge the results if he loses.
Trump has said bluntly that he might not concede if Biden wins in the tally. He was repeatedly pressed in a Fox News interview in July and refused to commit to accepting the election result. “I have to see,” Trump replied, “No, I’m not just going to say yes. I’m not going to say no, and I didn’t do that last time either.”
Trump’s own supporters largely say that the election loser has a responsibility to concede, as do most of Biden’s supporters (83% of Trump supporters, 94% of Biden voters), and despite Trump’s unengaged stance, most voters believe their chosen candidate will follow through on a concession (68% of Trump voters say he will, 83% of Biden supporters say former VP will ). Trump supporters, however, are much more convinced that Biden will follow and concede (51%) than Biden supporters are (16%).
Spurred on by the coronavirus pandemic, states across the country, along with election officials from both parties, have expanded postal voting in a number of ways.
The degree of change varies by state. Some states, mostly Democratic-led, have switched to universal postal voting for November, where each registered voter will automatically receive one ballot in the mail and limited in-person voting will be offered on election day. Other states send postal ballot requests to all registered voters. Some have rescinded requirements for voters to provide an excuse to get a postal vote or included concerns about the coronavirus as a valid excuse. Some have changed the time limits within which ballots must be received or postmarked. These changes came quickly, and experts warned voters could be confused by the new policies.
Among Trump voters, 87% are concerned that it is too easy to vote fraudulently, compared with just 32% of Biden supporters. On the other hand, Biden voters are more concerned that it is still too difficult for eligible voters to vote safely (81%) than Trump voters (47%).
Trump supporters express less confidence in the accuracy of the vote and the tally this fall, with 50% saying they are very or somewhat confident compared to 65% of those who support Biden. But the change since 2016 has come almost entirely from the Democratic side. Hillary Clinton supporters were overwhelmingly confident that votes would be cast and counted accurately in 2016, 88% believed so, while among Trump supporters 49% were confident.
The impact of a prolonged tally on confidence is more clearly negative among Trump voters: 53% say not knowing the results on election night would lower their confidence in the vote, while a plurality of Biden supporters say it would not affect their confidence (49%). Other Biden voters are divided on whether that would make them more (27%) or less (23%) confident in the accuracy of the result.
The CNN poll was conducted by the SSRS from August 12 to 15 with a random national sample of 1,108 adults reached on landlines or cell phones by a live interviewer, including 987 registered voters. The results for the full sample have a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 3.7 percentage points. It is 4.0 points among registered voters.
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