Poll reveals how voters are divided on election fraud concerns

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• Amna Nawaz:

  Let's delve further into our PBS News/NPR/Marist poll that was released today.

  The top line, with just over a month to go until Election Day, the presidential race is still neck-and-neck.

  Our political correspondent, Lisa Desjardins, is here to break down more of the findings.

  Good to see you, Lisa.

• Lisa Desjardins:

  Hello.

• Amna Nawaz:

  All right, so just a month out, how is the race looking?

• Lisa Desjardins:

  First of all, I know viewers sometimes and all of us are hesitant about polls, but there are important trends to look at.

  When you look at this race overall, it's essentially a dead heat. So, as we know, Amna, with polling, what's important is the trend line. So let's look at the trend here. If you look at Harris' support, since she entered the race, that's in blue over Trump's support in red, you can see how close they have been this entire time.

  She has been ahead. Both of them have gained a little bit. That is because a few voters have been deciding, some for him, some for her. But if you look at that difference, it's slight. And look at the margin of error, just 3.7 percent. And if you look at across all of the trend line, that means this has been a tie virtually this entire time, just a few moments here and there where Harris has been above that margin of error.

• Amna Nawaz:

  Fascinating.

  Well, let me ask you about something we covered earlier this week. That was in the vice presidential debate. J.D. Vance at the time was asked and refused to say that former President Trump had lost the 2020 election. And we know both he and Mr. Trump continue to raise questions about election security and security of this year's election, even though there's no evidence of concerns around that in the past.

  What do Americans say about those issues?

• Lisa Desjardins:

  This is one reason polling is important. The mood of the country on these things is critical in terms of what happens after the election.

  So there is some good news in terms of confidence. It depends a bit on how you ask the question. So one question we asked was, are you confident that your state and local officials can have a fair and accurate election? Look at that; 76 percent of national adults said, yes, they are confident.

  Now, that is actually six points higher than this time in 2021, after former President Trump was declaring that there was widespread fraud. This is higher, this is more confidence in state and local officials. There's also high confidence in the Postal Service as well.

  But if you ask a different question, you ask a more broad question about, overall, are you concerned, will there be voter fraud, it flips. And there you see that number concerned; 58 percent of national adults say they are concerned, not just about potential, but that there will be voter fraud. And that was defined as meaning someone has a false identification or votes twice.

  Tammy Patrick is the CEO of a program at the Election Center, and she formally ran the Maricopa County elections. She said that this is still a widespread belief, despite evidence to the contrary.

  Tammy Patrick, National Association for Election Officials: I think what we know about election fraud is that it can occur, but is exceedingly rare. And we don't have any instances where we know that it affected the outcome of any election, particularly election for president.

• Lisa Desjardins:

  So this is also important, of course, because we still hear this, as you say, from Republicans, even though there is no evidence of anything but election officials across this country doing their job right now.

• Amna Nawaz:

  Lisa, I know you and your team dig much more deeply into these polls. So what else stands out to you?

• Lisa Desjardins:

  Right.

  The crosstabs are important here. It shows us which group is having big reactions at one time. And there is, no surprise, a split among voters who is concerned about voter fraud; 29 percent of Harris voters are concerned there will be voter fraud. But look at that number for Trump voters; 88 percent of Trump voters believe voter fraud will happen this year.

  And looking down deeper into the data, I found one other group that had an outsize sort of concern about voter fraud. It was white evangelical Christians. That is the group right now that the Trump campaign perhaps is trying the most to get out to vote. So should former President Trump lose, this is a group that already has baked in their mind that there will be voter fraud.

  So it is something to consider carefully.

• Amna Nawaz:

  Fascinating look at our latest polling there from Lisa Desjardins.

  Lisa, thank you.

  And, remember, you can dig into even more results from our poll online at PBS.org/NewsHour.