Will the election be ‘fair and equal?’ Most Americans aren’t too confident, poll finds
Most Americans don’t have much confidence in the fairness of the upcoming election, a poll found.
An NBC News/SurveyMonkey poll of 44,601 American adults found the majority, regardless of party affiliation, are “not too confident” or “not at all confident” that the 2020 election will be conducted fairly and equally.
The poll was conducted Aug. 3-9 and included respondents selected from the “more than 2 million people who take surveys on the SurveyMonkey platform each day,” it says. Data were weighted to reflect the demographics of the country.
The poll did not list a margin of error because “SurveyMonkey research surveys do not have a probability-based design, because there is no well-defined sampling frame of respondents to SurveyMonkey surveys.”
More than half — 55% — responded that they were “not too confident” or “not at all confident” that the November election will be conducted in a “fair and equal way.”
Only 14% said they are “very confident” and 29% said they are “somewhat confident.”
Democrats surveyed were more likely than Republicans surveyed to express higher levels of confidence.
While 9% of Republicans said they are “very confident” the election will be fair, 20% of Democrats responded the same. Meanwhile, 28% of Republicans and 16% of Democrats responded they are “not at all confident.”
The poll also asked respondents about their opinions on voting by mail — a contentious topic in the United States during the COVID-19 crisis.
The majority of respondents were in favor of “changing the election laws to allow everyone to vote by mail.”
Thirty-five percent said they “strongly favor” and 20% said they “somewhat favor” doing so. Only 12% said they “somewhat oppose it” while 30% said they “strongly oppose” it, the survey found.
President Donald Trump has repeatedly — and without evidence — claimed that mail-in voting increases voter fraud and hurts Republican chances of winning the election. He and others have resisted expanding access to vote-by-mail amid concerns about the spread of the virus and voting in person.
But a study from political scientists at Stanford University found that if every voter mailed their ballot, it would not swing the election one way or the other, McClatchy News reports.
The NBC News/SurveyMonkey poll found a partisan divide on mail-in voting.
While 64% of Democrats surveyed said they “strongly favor” changing the laws, only 9% of Republicans answered the same. Sixty-two percent of Republicans said they “strongly opposed” changing them while 6% of Democrats answered the same.
More than half of those polled responded they were likely going to vote by mail for the November election.
Thirty-six percent said they are “very likely” and 19% said they are “somewhat likely.” Meanwhile, 13% said they are “not so likely” and 29% said they are “not likely at all.”
Democrats were more likely to say they’re likely going to vote by mail.
While 57% of Democrats said they are “very likely” and 22% said they are “somewhat likely” to do so, 20% and 13% of Republicans answered the same, respectively.
