Ahead of Jan. 6, poll flashes warning signs about 2024 election aftermath

Supporters of Donald Trump − who generally accept his unsubstantiated claims that the 2020 election was fraudulent − are prepared to believe those allegations again in 2024, setting the stage for protests and worse if the former president runs and loses in November.

On the third anniversary of the Jan. 6 Capitol riot, an exclusive USA TODAY/Suffolk University Poll shows not only a deeply held lack of faith in election integrity among GOP voters but also fears among voters across the political spectrum about threats to America’s democracy.

Doubts and fraud claims marked the aftermath of the 2020 election, and the country could well be headed for a repeat of that. In the 2020 aftermath, the doubts and claims culminated in violence. Whether that happens again is anyone’s guess, but the level of doubt indicated by the poll raises warning signs.

The USA TODAY/Suffolk University Poll found a 52% majority of Trump supporters said they had no confidence that the results of the 2024 election would be accurately counted and reported. Just 7% expressed high confidence that they would be.

In contrast, 81% of supporters of President Joe Biden were “very confident” about this year’s election returns; just 3% were “not confident.” Another 15% of Biden voters and 38% of Trump voters were “somewhat” confident.

The findings spotlight the political schism and a deep skepticism among Trump supporters about whether this year’s election results could be trusted and should be accepted − some of the same attitudes that in 2021 fueled the nation’s most serious insurrection since the Civil War.

“I think that there’s a great risk of fraud − not that any ballots would be fraudulent, but that the methods of which they attain them could be and that the people who receive them are not actually the people who they are for,” said Jake Weber, 24, a contractor for General Motors from Clawson, Michigan, who was called in the poll. A political independent who leans to the GOP, he plans to vote for Trump.

“I believe that there’s enough checks and balances. … I don’t have major concerns” about whether the 2024 election will be fair, said Michelle Derr, 55, a Democrat and small-business owner from Alexandria, Virginia, who plans to vote for Biden.

But she added that “democracy as a whole” was being tested. “I think that we as a country can get through it, but I think it’s not without effort.”

In-depth timeline:A breakdown of the 187 minutes Trump was out of view on Jan. 6 as aides urged him to act

Debunked allegations still believed by some

The view among most Trump supporters that the 2020 presidential election was “rigged” has persisted even after reviews by election officials and state legislatures across the country have consistently concluded that allegations of widespread miscounts, misconduct, stuffed ballot boxes and ineligible voters were without merit.

More than 60 cases brought by Trump and his allies seeking to overturn the results have been defeated in federal and state courts. Those decisions were handed down by Democratic-appointed and Republican-appointed judges alike, including federal judges who were appointed by Trump.

But in the poll, two-thirds (67%) of those supporting Trump said they didn’t believe Biden had been legitimately elected in 2020, a debunked assertion that Trump has continued to trumpet at rallies and on social media. That view has little traction among other voters: 98% of those supporting Biden and 82% of those supporting a third party said he was legitimately elected.

In the survey, Trump edged Biden 39%-37%, and 17% planned to vote for an unnamed third-party candidate.

The poll of 1,000 registered voters, taken Dec. 26-29 by landline and cellphone, has a margin of error of plus or minus 3.1 percentage points.

The turbulence and debate over the last election has stoked concern about the next one and those that would follow. An overwhelming 83% of those surveyed said they worried about democracy. Half of Americans said they worried “a great deal.”

But that broad alarm didn’t reflect a true national consensus. Those on each side of the partisan divide blamed the other side for imperiling democracy. Forty percent (mostly Republicans) said Democrats were chiefly responsible for the threat; another 40% (mostly Democrats) said Republicans were.

In response to an open-ended question about what specific threat worries them, the most frequent answer was Donald Trump, cited by 18%. Another 10% named governmental corruption and dysfunction. “Democrats/liberals/progressives” were cited by 7%; “MAGA/Trump followers” by 3% and “Republicans/conservatives” by another 3%. Eight percent named “immigration/open borders”; 7% “dictatorship/authoritarianism”; and another 7% “loss of personal rights.”

“We’ve seen a lot of the information that’s come out surrounding censorship, especially on Facebook or Twitter or X, whatever they call themselves now,” said Peter Lewis, 39, a software engineer and a Republican who lives near Wilkesboro, North Carolina. “The level of government involvement under the guise of misinformation or disinformation, I think it’s way too high.”

In a follow-up interview after being polled, he also questioned the move in Colorado and Maine to remove Trump from the primary ballot, based on a constitutional ban on officials who have committed insurrection, until “a jury of 12 people proved him to be guilty of something.”

Angela Adams, 53, an assistant speech therapist from Waco, Texas, and a Democrat, has been alarmed by threats of violence against those in public life who deal with election issues, from former Wyoming congresswoman Liz Cheney, who joined the House committee that investigated Jan. 6, to Supreme Court justices whose homes are now the site of protests.

“It just feels like violence has become an option, and that’s new, and I think that does threaten democracy,” she said. “It was supposed to be that we needed each other to balance each other out; let’s find the middle way together. And now it’s just like mano a mano.”

An inflection point: What happened on Jan. 6?

Americans’ attitudes toward those who participated in the Jan. 6 assault have softened since TV footage of rioters smashing Capitol doors and taking control of the Senate chamber shocked the world.

In a USA TODAY/Suffolk Poll two weeks after the attack, 70% called the rioters “criminals,” and 24% said “they went too far, but they had a point.”

In the new poll, the percentage who called them “criminals” has dropped significantly, to 48%. Those who agreed that “they went too far, but they had a point” rose to 37%. In 2021, 2% called their actions appropriate; now 6% do.

Nearly a third of those surveyed, 32%, said the convictions and sentencing of hundreds of people for their role on that day were inappropriate and should be overturned. Nearly 6 in 10, 59%, called their prosecution the appropriate work of the justice system.

“I’ve heard the old adage ‘There’s your side, there’s my side, and there’s the truth,'” said James Traylor, 45, of Forney, Texas, vice president of property management for a real estate developer. He is a member of the city council and an independent who leans Republican. When it comes to Jan. 6, he said, “I don’t know what the truth is here.”

The assessment of Trump’s role hasn’t changed much over the past three years.

Then, 48% said he bore “a lot of the blame” for the storming of the Capitol; now 43% do. Then and now, 28% said he bore “no blame.”

The new poll found a partisan divide on the criminal prosecution of the former president now underway in federal and state courts. A 52% majority said the legal actions against him are the appropriate work of the justice system; 43% said they were inappropriate and should be dropped.

Unsurprisingly, those calling for charges against Trump to be dropped comprised 91% of Trump supporters but just 1% of Biden supporters.

The survey found a less predictable divide on that question among swing voters.

“One of the most important voting blocs from the 2022 midterm election − independent women − are breaking in the opposite direction of their male counterparts on the issue of Trump’s indictments versus the actions of the justice system,” said David Paleologos, director of the Suffolk Political Research Center. “Among independent men, 43% said legal actions against Trump were appropriate, but 48% said they were inappropriate and should be reversed. Among independent women, 61% said the legal actions were appropriate, and 33% said inappropriate. The gender gap within independents could be telling in 2024.”

Jake Pearlmutter, 31, a maintenance technician from Jenkintown, Pennsylvania, and a Democrat, worried about the prospect that Trump, if he won a second term, would undo the legal reckoning that has followed the Jan. 6 attack. Trump has said he would pardon those convicted of crimes connected with Jan. 6, and he would have the power to order the Justice Department to stop his own prosecution on federal charges.

“Only way I can see that turning into … a threat to democracy and the way government’s run is if Trump were to get elected this next cycle and then he pardoned all of those people and expunged it,” Pearlmutter said. “Then it could be, like, a little scary to me.”