Poll: Both Dems and GOP blame fraud for recent presidential election losses

Democrats and Republicans alike point to some form of election interference for their parties’ most recent presidential losses, a new poll suggests.

In a Deseret News/HarrisX poll of U.S. voters, the most common reason Democrats give for Hillary Clinton’s 2016 loss to Donald Trump is foreign election interference. And the most common reason Republicans give for Trump’s 2020 loss to President Joe Biden is ballot tampering.

The poll was conducted Nov. 21-22 among 1,012 registered voters. The margin of error is +/- 3.1 percentage points.

Voters were offered a list of a dozen potential reasons why the candidate won either election and were invited to select all the reasons that applied. Options included “he ran the best campaign”; “he had the best policy platform”; “he was destined to be president”; and “he was the most qualified candidate,” among others.

When asked why they think Trump won in 2016, 31% of self-described Democratic voters say there was foreign election interference. Another 21% say Trump “represented the change that voters wanted” and 19% say he was “the most charismatic candidate.”

Republicans, however, point to Trump being the “change that voters wanted” as the top reason (43%); nearly one-third, 32%, say he was “willing to stand up to Washington” or he “best understood the issues that matter most to voters.”

When asked why Biden won in 2020, half of Democrats (50%) said he was the most qualified candidate. 49% said he represented the change voters wanted and 43% said he best understood the issues that mattered most to voters.

But a majority of Republicans, 51%, cite “tampering with ballots” as the leading reason for Biden’s victory. The most-frequent responses after that, at 15%, were “he represented the change that voters wanted” and “he chose Kamala Harris to be his vice president.”

There is no evidence foreign election interference changed the outcome of the 2016 election, or of widespread voter fraud in the 2020 election. In the months following the 2020 election, top government officials within the Trump administration declared the election “the most secure in American history”; Trump’s former attorney general likewise disputed claims that there was fraud sufficient to overturn the election.

Nonetheless, many prominent Republicans — including Trump himself — continue to claim that the election was stolen. Trump now faces criminal charges related to his efforts to overturn the election.

There is evidence Russia tried to influence the 2016 election, though a bipartisan Senate investigation did not find that “any votes were changed or any voting machines were manipulated.” Instead, Russia’s tactics focused on cyberespionage.

In 2019, special counsel Robert Mueller said he found no evidence of collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia.