From below:
Over the course of nine public opinion surveys by Yahoo News/YouGov
between January 2021 and early June 2022, the average number of
Republicans who believed incorrectly that the 2020 election was rigged
was 66%.
But in three Yahoo News/YouGov polls conducted since the Jan. 6
committee held its eight hearings from June 9 to July 21, the number of
Republicans who believed Trump’s “big lie” had fallen to 60%.
End excerpt.
NB: 6 of 10 Republicans believe that Trump "won" over Biden and is the
"legal" President? This is a large fraction of the USA that is
delusional and believes the Big Lie.
https://news.yahoo.com/trump-republicans-big-lie-january-6-committee-hearings-190912807.html
Yahoo News
The number of Republicans who believe Trump’s 'big lie' has fallen since
the Jan. 6 hearings
Jon Ward
Chief National Correspondent
Wed, October 12, 2022 at 12:09 PM
As the work of the Jan. 6 committee winds down, with a ninth hearing
Thursday and a final report expected soon, there are signs that its work
may have moved public opinion in a few ways.
First, the number of Republicans who believe the false claim that the
2020 election was stolen from former President Donald Trump has dropped
below the two-thirds mark. That still leaves a lot of Republicans who
believe something that is not true, but the group has shrunk by several
percentage points.
Over the course of nine public opinion surveys by Yahoo News/YouGov
between January 2021 and early June 2022, the average number of
Republicans who believed incorrectly that the 2020 election was rigged
was 66%.
But in three Yahoo News/YouGov polls conducted since the Jan. 6
committee held its eight hearings from June 9 to July 21, the number of
Republicans who believed Trump’s “big lie” had fallen to 60%.
As for Trump’s behavior around the event, survey data shows that
attitudes about his role in the insurrection on Jan. 6, 2021, have not
shifted a lot.
But there has been a decrease of several points in the number of
Republicans who are worried about the future of democracy. That may
correlate to the lower number of Republicans who believe that the 2020
election was rigged.
Meanwhile, Democrats have grown more concerned about the viability of
democracy by a few points.
Another significant data point is that Trump’s lead over his closest
statistical rival for the Republican nomination for president, Florida
Gov. Ron DeSantis, has narrowed over the last year.
Across eight Yahoo News/YouGov surveys in 2022, Trump’s support has
stayed in the mid-40s all year, but DeSantis has crept up about 10
points, from the mid-20s to the mid-30s.
It’s plausible that the hearings conducted by the Jan. 6 committee have
had an impact. The closest margins between the two came in surveys
conducted during and after the committee’s hearings.
In a Yahoo News/YouGov poll conducted a week after the last hearing in
July, Trump led DeSantis 44% to 35% among likely voters.
The only time Trump’s support spiked up closer to 50% was after the FBI
searched his Mar-a-Lago home for top-secret documents in early August.
But the most recent poll found his support back down to 46% and DeSantis
at 34%.
Opinions about Trump’s responsibility for Jan. 6 have not moved much.
Three surveys by Yahoo News/YouGov in the summer of 2021 found that, on
average, 42% of U.S. adults believed Trump was “a great deal” to blame
for the attack. Another Yahoo News/YouGov survey in July 2022 found that
number basically the same, at 43%.
Similarly, an Economist/YouGov survey in July 2022 found that 41% of
adult U.S. citizens believed that Trump had “a lot” of responsibility
for the Jan. 6 takeover of the Capitol. That’s the same number who held
that opinion a week after the insurrection.
A hearing of the House select committee held on June 16
A hearing of the House select committee held on June 16. (Drew
Angerer/Getty Images)
In the Yahoo News/YouGov surveys, Democrats went from 72% who blamed
Trump “a great deal” to 75%, and Republicans went from 10% to 14%, a
marginal increase. There was some notable movement among Republicans on
the question of whether Trump was “not at all” to blame. That number
decreased, from 51% to 43%.
Voters’ views on whether democracy is in trouble have also not moved
that much. There are high levels of concern among all voters. But some
polling shows that Democratic worries have increased slightly over the
past nearly two years, while Republicans have grown slightly less anxious.
In January 2021, a CBS News poll found that 16% of 2020 Trump voters
believed democracy and the rule of law were secure and 84% believed
democracy was threatened. At that time, 32% of 2020 Joe Biden voters
believed democracy was secure and 68% believed it was threatened.
Since then, Republican alarm has gone down only a few points, to 81% in
a June 2022 CBS News survey, and Democratic concern has gone up a few
points, to 73%.
In December 2021, a Yahoo News/YouGov poll found that 87% of Republicans
were worried about “the future of U.S. democracy” and 84% of Democrats
felt the same.
In September 2022, another Yahoo News/YouGov survey found that 82% of
Republicans still felt concerned about the future of democracy, while
83% of Democrats did. Democratic fears among Biden voters, specifically,
had increased from 88% to 90% over that period, while Trump voter
concerns had decreased from 89% to 83%.
This may represent some impact from the Jan. 6 committee’s work, since
one of its emphases has been that the 2020 election was not rigged or
stolen, and that Trump knew this from the very beginning. The committee
has relied on testimony from Trump’s own former advisers on the campaign
and at the White House, as well as many other Republican officials.
If the Jan. 6 committee reduced the number of GOP voters who were
deceived by Trump’s false and unsubstantiated claims about the 2020
election, it might also have eased their concerns about the reliability
of future elections.
There have been numerous articles in the media about the possible threat
of Republicans overturning future elections to benefit their own party,
so the higher levels of Democratic concern about the future of democracy
may reflect a growing awareness of this.
But other polling data indicates that many Democrats are focused on the
ability of voters to cast ballots, rather than the prospect of
politicians meddling with results after ballots have been cast.
A Pew poll in August found that 83% of Democrats were confident that the
fall elections will be “conducted fairly and accurately” but that only
66% think “all citizens who want to vote ... will be able to.” In that
same survey, 55% of Republicans believed the election will not be fair,
and only 45% thought it would be fair.
Still, the wording of that question does not speak to whether voters are
worried about a fair election being overturned after the fact by
politicians claiming fraud without evidence.
