Republicans lack confidence that their votes will be counted fairly, new survey finds, casting uncertainty over turnout in the 2022 midterms

• Republicans lack confidence that their votes will be counted fairly, new polls show.
• GOP officials have spent the last year passing voting restrictions and pushing for partisan audits.

Republican voters continue to demonstrate low confidence in the integrity of American elections a year after former President Donald Trump and his allies mounted an unprecedented campaign to discredit and overturn his 2020 election loss, two new polls show.

In 2021, Republican lawmakers successfully enacted over two dozen new restrictions on voting and elections, while also pursuing dubious partisan "audits" and reviews of the 2020 results months after the election was over. This was all publicly justified under the guise of restoring voters' "confidence" in the system and addressing purported "irregularities."

But with the first primary elections of the 2022 midterms just months away, those efforts appear if anything to have had the opposite effect, tanking GOP voter confidence.

A Monmouth University poll conducted between November 4-8 and released on Monday found that nearly a third of all respondents, including 73% of Republicans, believe that President Joe Biden only won the 2020 election because of widespread voter fraud.

The that 62% of Republican respondents said they believed that the GOP-led partisan recount of the 2020 election in Maricopa County, Arizona, definitely or probably found "significant evidence of voter fraud" in Arizona.

The review, conducted by private firm Cyber Ninjas, followed none of the established industry-standard practices for post-election audits and recounts. Maricopa officials of both parties and outside experts thoroughly discredited both Cyber Ninjas' methods and refuted their eventual conclusions.

The firm's report concluded that Biden and Democratic Sen. Mark Kelly did indeed win Maricopa County — but experts and Maricopa County officials say Cyber Ninjas could not have credibly proved or disproved the result of the election.

In the Monmouth Poll, which surveyed 811 Americans with a margin of error of ±3.5 points, 54% of Republicans also said they believed that the violence at the Capitol during the January 6 insurrection was partially or fully justified.

Election misinformation is generating 'a really harmful environment,' expert says

Another poll conducted by the Center for Election Innovation and Research, a nonprofit election think tank, and GOP pollster Echelon Insights similarly found that 65% of Republicans surveyed don't think the votes cast in the 2020 election were counted fairly. And 53% don't think the votes in 2022 will be fairly counted either. They surveyed 1,600 Americans between October 20-26 with a margin of error of ±3.5 points.

"We've confirmed the election very many times, but sadly, this false belief that continues to be spread by the losing candidate and the grifters that surround him is pervasive and has staying power," CEIR's Executive Director David Becker told reporters in a Tuesday call. "And this is having a tremendously negative impact on Republican voters' confidence in elections."

Significant percentages of GOP voters polled already believe that fraud that is very rare in the real world — including people voting multiple times, election officials deliberately miscounting votes, and illegal votes being cast on behalf of ineligible or dead individuals — will cause major problems in 2022.

Widespread calls for additional audits like Arizona's that Republicans are still pursuing in states like Wisconsin are also impacting GOP voter confidence.

In the poll, 42% of GOP voters said they would more likely to vote in 2022 if all states conducted so-called forensic audits, while 16% of respondents said they'd be less likely to vote if states didn't conduct such audits. Trump and his GOP allies have called for vaguely-defined "forensic audits" throughout 2021, but it's not a commonly accepted type of election audit.

"This constant onslaught of disinformation being targeted at Trump supporters and Republican voters is leading to the environment which we're seeing right now," Becker said. "It's a really harmful environment, particularly for the professionals who run elections."

How voter confidence will affect turnout in 2022 remains 'a big question mark'

But it's so far not clear that mistrust in elections will necessarily depress GOP turnout and hobble the party in 2022, despite Trump's warnings that Republicans "will not vote" unless the party "fixes" the nonexistent "fraud" of 2020.

A Morning Consult/Politico survey conducted in mid-October found that Republican voters who lack faith in the integrity of the 2020 election are far more enthusiastic about voting in 2022 than Republicans who believe that past elections were fair.

The finding, which may seem counterintuitive at first, likely reflects how voters who fervently believe in falsehoods are also the most animated and loyal voters who make up the GOP base and are thus more likely to turn out in midterm elections.

"The upcoming primary season is going to be very telling," Becker said. "There are going to be a lot of Republican primaries in particular where we have election deniers facing off against reality-based Republicans of integrity in places like the Georgia secretary of state's race, places in perhaps like Wyoming, Michigan, Arizona, and elsewhere. Seeing how that plays out will tell us a lot about where the GOP electorate is."

On November 2, Virginia Republicans flipped control of the state's three highest offices by turning out their voters at higher levels than Democrats. The candidates focused on issues like education and voters' dissatisfaction with the state of the economy and the Biden administration, all of which will likely shape the political environment in 2022.

But Becker warned that the November 2021 results may not tell the full story of how GOP voter confidence will impact 2022. After all, depressed GOP turnout cost Republicans two US Senate seats in Georgia in January, and false election fraud claims spread by GOP nominee Larry Elder didn't help Republican turnout in September's California gubernatorial recall election either.

"There's just a big question mark there when it comes to close elections in a nationalized environment," Becker said. "The first time we're going to see a nationalized environment is next year, really, since the Georgia Senate runoffs."

Becker further noted that unlike in presidential races, the historical trend is for less than half of Americans to show up to vote in midterm elections.

"People default to not voting a non-presidential election," he said. "And if you tell them that elections are rigged, that their votes don't matter, the voting is going to be exceptionally hard, that usually does not increase the likelihood that they're going to turn out. It usually reinforces their default of not voting."