14% of Republicans would 'take action to overturn' the election if Trump loses, study finds
Nearly half of Republicans say they won’t accept the results of the presidential election if their candidate loses, and some of them say they would “take action to overturn” the results, according to data released Tuesday.
About a quarter of Democrats said they wouldn’t accept the results if their candidate loses, and fewer Democrats than Republicans said they would “take action to overturn” the results.
The nonpartisan World Justice Project, which keeps an index of how strong the rule of law is in more than 100 countries, gathered the data as part of a larger study. The poll was conducted through online interviews with 1,046 American households between June 10 and June 18.
The report did not ask people what specific “action” they would take to overturn the election results, just that that 46% of Republicans and 27% of Democrats wouldn't accept results, and 14% of Republicans compared with 11% of Democrats said they would "take action."
Elizabeth Andersen, the group’s executive director, said the results are “kind of startling” and amount to about one-third of Americans being unwilling to accept the presidential election results if their candidate loses.
Only 29% of Republicans said that the electoral process is free from corruption, compared with 56% of Democrats. One of the biggest gaps was in response to the statement, “Votes are counted accurately.” Only 43% of Republicans and 84% of Democrats agreed.
Democrats were less likely than Republicans to believe that “people are able to vote conveniently” and that “voting access is equal for all citizens."
“You can see quite low levels of trust in the process, particularly among Republicans, but also, in some areas, among Democrats,” Andersen said. “It’s not zero by any stretch of the imagination. So that really seems to us like a recipe for potential conflict in the aftermath of the election.”
Last week, the Public Religion Research Institute found that 1 in 6 Americans supports political violence, including about 1 in 4 Republicans.
A survey from the nonpartisan Brennan Center for Justice at New York University released in May found that 36% of local election officials experienced harassment or abuse, and 16% were threatened.
Seven in 10 election officials surveyed said threats increased from 2020, and just under 3 in 10 said threats stayed about the same.
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This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: 46% of Republicans won’t accept election results if Trump loses: study