Nearly two out of three Republicans believe Biden stole the election, poll finds

Trump has continued to spread false claims about 2020 election since leaving office

Former President Donald Trump. (Copyright 2021 The Associated Press. All rights reserved)

Nearly two in three Republicans still believe the lies about President Joe Biden stealing the 2020 election being spread by former President Donald Trump and some of his allies, including some members of Congress, according to a new poll.

A poll from Yahoo News/YouGov found that 66 per cent of Republican respondents believed that Mr Trump was the rightful winner of the 2020 election, while a significant number of independents (28 per cent) and three per cent of Democrats said the same.

The poll is a distressing look at how divided America’s electorate remains over the sanctity of US elections, and underscores just how widespread conspiracy theories about the 2020 election continue to travel even despite the complete failure of Mr Trump’s attorneys to provide any evidence to courts that proved fraud was widespread during the election.

Mr Trump’s own former attorney general, Bill Barr, has called his ex-boss’ claims “bulls***”, and while he was still in office said that the Justice Department had seen no evidence of widespread election or voter fraud in 2020. Other government agencies said the same.

Still, Mr Trump persists in spreading falsehoods about vote totals in Arizona, Georgia, and other states he lost to Mr Biden in November, while even reportedly telling some supporters at his Mar-a-Lago resort that he could be reinstalled as president before the end of 2021, according to The New York Times.

In January, Mr Trump was banned from Facebook and Twitter for spreading false claims about the election that company officials said were clearly responsible for the violent attack on the US Capitol that occurred on 6 January, when thousands of pro-Trump rioters stormed the building and surrounding grounds, battling law enforcement and causing damage.

The Yahoo/YouGov poll surveyed 1,552 adults in the US between 30 July and 2 August. The margin of error is 2.7 per cent.