WASHINGTON — More than 4 in 10 Pennsylvania voters still harbor doubts that the 2020 presidential election was fairly conducted and that President Joe Biden received more votes than former President Donald Trump, according to a new poll.
The Muhlenberg College survey, released Tuesday, showed how Mr. Trump’s false claims of a stolen election continue to resonate among Republicans just months before the next presidential election in the most populous battleground state — despite no evidence of any significant voter fraud. House Republicans and lawyers for Mr. Trump sought to overturn the state’s election, which Mr. Biden won.
“It’s a major backdrop to this election cycle,” said Christopher Borick, director of the college’s Institute of Public Opinion. “Of course, that comes from messaging from the top of the Republican Party and the top of the Republican Party is Donald Trump.”
The poll gave Mr. Trump a 3-point lead, 44% to 41%, in a head-to-head matchup with Mr. Biden, well within the survey’s margin of error of plus or minus 6 percentage points. With third-party candidates, Mr. Trump and Mr. Biden are tied at 35% with Robert F. Kennedy Jr. at 18%.
And U.S. Sen. Bob Casey, D-Pa., led former hedge fund CEO David McCormick, 45% to 41%, also within the poll’s margin of error. The survey of 417 registered voters was taken April 15-25.
The Biden campaign announced Wednesday that it would spend another $14 million on advertising in Pennsylvania and other battleground states, focusing on health care, including ads targeting Black, Hispanic and Asian American voters.
Mr. Trump has promised to repeal the Affordable Care Act, which covers 371,516 Pennsylvanians, and nominated three of the six U.S. Supreme Court justices that overturned the right to abortion.
As part of their effort, Biden campaign officials said they would reach out to the 155,000 Republicans who voted for former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley in the Pennsylvania primary on April 23, more than a month since she dropped out the presidential race.
“We are not taking any voters for granted,” said Quentin Fulks, principal deputy campaign manager for Mr. Biden’s re-election campaign. “We are showing up in communities every day.”
Mr. Trump railed against the 2020 election over the weekend at the Republican National Committee spring meeting and donor retreat at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida.
Among those on stage with Mr. Trump was Mr. McCormick and House Speaker Mike Johnson, the Louisiana Republican who led the unsuccessful effort to get the U.S. Supreme Court to throw out the election results in Pennsylvania and other battleground states.
Mr. Johnson announced legislation Wednesday to require proof of citizenship for people voting in U.S. elections. It is illegal for noncitizens to vote in federal elections and incidence of that happening is rare; according to a study of the 2016 election by the Brennan Center for Justice, just 30 of 23.5 million ballots counted could have been cast by noncitizens, or 0.0001% of the votes cast.
In fact, the Muhlenberg poll said that a greater percentage of Pennsylvanians were worried about voter suppression (32%) than voter fraud (25%). The only group more concerned about fraud were Republicans.
Indictments obtained by special counsel Jack Smith and in Georgia showed Pennsylvania at the center of Mr. Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election. The federal indictment highlighted Mr. Trump’s false claim that there were “205,000 more votes than voters” in Pennsylvania, and his efforts to form a fake slate of electors. The Georgia charges mentioned Pennsylvania 46 times as a site where the “criminal enterprise” took place.
The Election Infrastructure Government Coordinating Council — comprised of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, U.S. Election Assistance Commission, the National Association of Secretaries of State and the National Association of State Election Directors — said the Nov. 3, 2020, election was “the most secure in American history.”
But that didn’t stop supporters of Mr. Trump from storming the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6. 2021, to try to stop the certification of electoral votes that made Mr. Biden the next president, nor a majority of House Republicans — including all three from Western Pennsylvania — from voting to reject the votes after the building was cleared of insurrectionists.
In fact, the poll shows confidence in the 2020 election diminishing over time. Those who had high confidence in the results dropped from 49% in 2020 to 34% in both 2021 and 2024. Those with high confidence that Mr. Biden received the most votes dropped from 52% in 2020 to 44% in 2021 and 40% in 2024.
“It’s unfortunate, because the reality is that Pennsylvania’s elections are more secure than they’ve ever been, by every objective measure,” said David Becker, executive director and founder of the Center for Election Innovation and Research.
“Voter lists are more accurate thanks to better data integration with DMV and effective data sharing with other states,” Mr. Becker said. “Unlike 2018 and earlier, Pennsylvania now has paper ballots statewide, and audits those ballots to ensure the voting machines are counted properly. Nevertheless, losing candidates and those that support them continue to spread lies and incite harassment of election officials.”
And despite Republican efforts to get their supporters to mail in their ballots, 72% of GOP voters in Pennsylvania said they had little or no confidence in using that method of voting. Mr. Trump had insisted that absentee balloting was rife with fraud. Meanwhile 85% of Democratic voters were very or somewhat confident in mailing in their ballots.
“It's hard, once you build distrust, to gain trust back,” Mr. Borick said. “It’s a really difficult path to build trust once you destroy it.”
Jonathan D. Salant: jsalant@post-gazette.com, @JDSalant
First Published: May 8, 2024, 1:48 p.m.
Updated: May 9, 2024, 5:31 p.m.
