As the third anniversary of the Jan. 6 attack draws closer, support for Donald Trump’s “Big Lie” appears to be moving in the wrong direction. The Washington Post reported on the latest national poll conducted with the University of Maryland:
Despite audits in multiple states and nationally televised congressional hearings in which state officials and aides to Trump confirmed there was no evidence of fraud in the 2020 election, more Americans question Biden’s victory than they did two years ago. When The Post and UMD asked in December 2021 whether Biden was legitimately elected, 69 percent of Americans said he was. Now, that’s down to 62 percent.
Of particular interest was the shift among self-identified Republicans: As 2021 came to a close, 39% of GOP voters said President Joe Biden’s election was legitimate. As 2023 wrapped up, that total was down to 31%, while 67% of Republicans said the Democratic incumbent was not legitimately elected, all evidence to the contrary notwithstanding.
This comes on the heels of a CNN poll from August, which found very similar results.
Circling back to our earlier coverage, in the immediate aftermath of the 2020 election, it was obvious that Trump’s lies were having the intended effect: Most Republican voters actually believed the nonsense.
As regular readers know, I initially hoped that reality would set in gradually over time. It seemed plausible to think that some of the early polling — during the presidential transition period, for example — was driven by more of an emotional reaction than a meaningful assessment of the facts. Many GOP voters were led to believe that Trump would win, so perhaps their initial rejection of Biden’s victory was a combination of reflexive surprise and anger.
What’s more, as the 2020 race faded from view, Republicans failed to produce any evidence to substantiate the lies, and policymakers’ attention shifted to governing, common sense suggested that even GOP die-hards would move…
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