One-third of adults in new poll say Biden’s election was illegitimate

About one-third of U.S. adults say they believe President Biden was not legitimately elected president of the United States in 2020, according a poll released this week.

The Washington Post/University of Maryland (Post-UMD) survey examines evolving views of the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol — as the third anniversary of the insurrection is coming up Saturday. A similar poll was conducted in December 2021.

As of last month, 62 percent of U.S. adults say they believe Biden was legitimately elected, down from 69 percent overall in the 2021 poll.

The biggest drop in those who said the 2020 election results were legitimate came from Republicans — 31 percent in 2023, down from 39 percent two years earlier.

Among Democrats, 91 percent say Biden was legitimately elected, a slight dip from 94 percent two years ago, and 66 percent of independents say the incumbent was legitimately elected, down from 72 percent in December 2021.

The Post noted that, among those who primarily get their information from Fox News, only about 3 in 10 people say the president’s election was legitimate.

Trump remains the GOP front-runner in his bid to return to the White House in 2024, despite facing four criminal indictments with a total of 91 criminal charges. Two of those cases relate to his efforts to stay in power after losing the 2020 election to Biden.

Trump has maintained he was the rightful winner of the presidency, despite numerous election audits and more than 60 lawsuits that lost in court after failing to prove claims that the election was unfairly decided.

“To date, we have not seen fraud on a scale that could have affected a different outcome in the election,” Bill Barr, Trump’s then-attorney general, said in the month following the 2020 presidential election, rejecting the former president’s repeated claims of election fraud.  

The Post-UMD poll was conducted Dec. 14-18 among 1,024 U.S. adults and has a margin of error of plus or minus 4.1 percentage points, with error margins larger for subgroups.