83% of Republicans polled after the 2020 election said they didn't believe Joe Biden won

• It's been a month since major news organizations projected Joe Biden to win the 2020 election. But 83% of Republicans polled by Gallup in the days afterward indicated they didn't believe the reports.
• In the poll, taken from November 9 to 15, 99% of Democrats, 64% of independents, and 17% of Republicans characterized the news reports as "accurate."
• The vast majority of Republicans polled — 89% — said they didn't believe the electoral process worked well, while 92% of Democrats said it did.
• The 2020 election was unlike any other in US history, with an unprecedented surge in mail-in voting, a raging pandemic, and a huge spike in domestic misinformation.
• But as Business Insider previously reported, this election was the safest in US history because of the use of paper ballots and voting machines with verifiable paper trails, as well as a massive public-education campaign about how to vote in a pandemic.

More than 80% of Republicans polled by Gallup right after Joe Biden was projected to win the 2020 US election indicated they didn't believe the reports.

In the poll, conducted from November 9 to 15 by Gallup in partnership with the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, 99% of Democrats, 64% of independents, and 17% of Republicans said the reports were "accurate."

The post-election survey had 2,752 respondents, and a pre-election survey taken from September 24 to October 5 had 1,552 respondents. Gallup said more than 1,000 respondents completed both surveys.

Overall, the post-election poll found that most Americans believed the voting process worked "very well" or "well." But there were sharp partisan divides in how people viewed the process, with 92% of Democrats saying it worked well and 89% of Republicans saying it did not.

The 2020 election was unlike any other in US history. There was an unprecedented surge in early and mail-in voting because of the coronavirus pandemic, which as of Monday had infected more than 14 million Americans and killed over 282,000, according to data from Johns Hopkins University.

The pandemic and the Trump administration's efforts to hamstring the US Postal Service led to uncertainty among many Americans about how to vote and whether they would be able to receive and send their mail ballots in time for them to be counted.

President Donald Trump and his allies also spent months before the election spreading misinformation about voting by mail and sowing doubt about the legitimacy of the election process. The president repeatedly said the election would be "rigged" against him, and he's ramped up those allegations in the weeks since he lost, accusing Democrats of conspiring with "big media" to steal the race.

Gallup's poll found that more Americans believed they were exposed to misinformation this year and that they think the issue was more prevalent than it was in 2016. Overall, 62% of Americans polled said the outcome of the election was swayed by misinformation, including 82% of Republicans and 46% of Democrats.

The Washington Post reported last month that the Russian government did not mount any major social-media influence campaigns ahead of the 2020 election in part because Americans were already doing the job for them. The report and the responses to Gallup's survey backed up experts' predictions that domestic disinformation would be a bigger threat than foreign disinformation in the 2020 election.

More than 80% of Americans polled by Gallup said they thought they were exposed to "a great deal" or "a fair amount" of misinformation this year. The poll defined misinformation as reports that are "made up or cannot be verified as accurate, but are presented to readers as if they are accurate."

Ninety-two percent of Republicans said they were exposed to misinformation this year, compared with 80% of Democrats and 83% of independents.

Trump has continued to insist that the election was stolen from him, even as his legal team's faltering effort to nullify the results faces defeat after defeat in the courts. The campaign has filed more than two dozen legal challenges since Election Day and hasn't won a single case.

In the end, as Business Insider reported, the 2020 election was the safest and most secure in US history because of the use of paper ballots and voting machines with verifiable paper trails, as well as a massive campaign by election officials and nonpartisan experts to prepare Americans to vote during a pandemic.

The six battleground states that decided the election certified their results as of last week, and the "safe harbor" deadline for all states to certify their results and resolve any legal disputes is on Tuesday. The Electoral College will meet on December 14 to cement Biden's victory, and he will be sworn into office on January 20.