About half of Donald Trump’s supporters don’t believe the votes in this year’s presidential election are going to be counted fairly, according to a new Associated Press poll.
The poll revealed about half the people who have a favorable opinion of the Republican presidential nominee have “little to no confidence in the integrity of the voter count,” according to the AP report. Two-thirds of Republicans also doubt they can trust election results, with just one-third of GOP voters saying “they have a great deal or quite a bit of confidence” in the election process.
Actual instances of voter fraud are statistically very rare but Trump has raised doubts about the integrity of the electoral process through the campaign, frequently saying the system is “rigged” against him.
That has resonated with Americans, the poll showed. Only 40 percent of those polled were confident in votes being counted accurately. Another 30 percent rated themselves moderately confident in the electoral process.
The poll comes on the heels of Trump backing off his statement during the first presidential debate that he would definitely accept the outcome of the election if former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton won.
“We’re going to have to see. We’re going to see what happens. We’re going to have to see,” Trump told the New York Times in a Friday interview. He also urged supporters at a rally in Michigan to go to their polling paces and make sure there is nothing-untoward going on.
The feeling about possible voter fraud in the general election is largely a Republican one, the poll showed.
Only a quarter of Democrats think there is a great deal of voter fraud, compared to about half of Republicans, the poll reported. Among the supporters of each candidate, 18 percent of Clinton supporters think there is a great deal of fraud compared to 58 percent of Trump supporters.
Overall, 35 percent of those polled believe there’s a great deal of voter fraud in the United States, 39 percent say there’s only some and 24 percent say there’s hardly any.
