55% of Voters Support Election Audits

Arizona’s ongoing audit of 2020 election results has been widely criticized, but a majority of voters nationwide approve of the election integrity effort.

A new national telephone and online survey by Rasmussen Reports finds that 55% of Likely U.S. Voters support forensic audits of election results to ensure there was no vote fraud. Twenty-nine percent (29%) oppose such audits and 17% are not sure. (To see survey question wording, click here.)

The new survey also found that 41% of voters still don’t believe that Joe Biden won the 2020 presidential election fairly.

Arizona’s Republican-controlled state senate is winding down its audit of more than 2 million ballots cast in Maricopa County. Supporters of former President Donald Trump have raised doubt about the results in Maricopa County, which Biden won by about 45,000 votes, larger than his 11,000-vote statewide margin.

While a majority of voters support audits to ensure there was no vote fraud, many are concerned about casting doubt on the election process. Forty-eight percent (48%) think that expressing doubt about the outcome of elections undermines democracy in America. Thirty-four percent (34%) say expressing such doubts does not undermine democracy and 18% are not sure.

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The survey of 900 U.S. Likely Voters was conducted on June 20-21, 2021 by Rasmussen Reports. The margin of sampling error is +/- 3 percentage points with a 95% level of confidence. Field work for all Rasmussen Reports surveys is conducted by Pulse Opinion Research, LLC. See methodology.

Seventy-one percent (71%) of Republican voters support forensic election audits like the one in Arizona, as do 38% of Democrats and 57% of voters not affiliated with either major party.

A majority of Republicans (70%) don’t believe Biden won the 2020 presidential election fairly, a belief shared by 10% of Democrats and 45% of unaffiliated voters.

In February, 34% of Likely Voters did not believe Biden won the election fairly. In an April survey, a majority of voters (51%) believed it was at least somewhat likely that cheating affected the outcome of the 2020 election

In the new survey, Democrats (56%) are more likely than Republicans (47%) or unaffiliated voters (38%) to believe that expressing doubt about the outcome of elections undermines democracy in America.

Men (53%) are more likely than women (43%), and whites (51%) are more likely than blacks (45%) or other minorities (41%), to believe that expressing doubt about the outcome of elections undermines democracy in America.

Younger voters are more supportive than their elders of auditing election results. Sixty-two percent (62%) of voters under 40 support audits of election results to ensure that there was no vote fraud, compared to 52% of voters ages 40-64 and 49% of those 65 and older.

Voters earning more than $200,000 a year or less than $30,000 are less supportive of election audits than middle-income voters.

President Biden’s strongest supporters are most likely to oppose election audits to ensure that there was no vote fraud. Among voters who Strongly Approve of Biden’s job performance as president, 57% oppose audits like the one in Arizona. By contrast, among voters who Strongly Disapprove of Biden’s performance, 81% support such election audits.

President Biden just completed a weeklong trip to Europe that included the G7 summit and a meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin, but less than half of voters think his European trip was successful.

Barely one-in-five voters approve of the job Congress is doing, and most rate congressional job performance as poor.

Additional information from this survey and a full demographic breakdown are available to Platinum Members only.

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