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71 percent of Americans worry officials won’t accept election results: Poll

A new poll has highlighted concerns among Americans over whether officials will accept the outcome of November’s elections.

The Scripps News/Ipsos survey found that 71 percent of respondents nationally said they are either very or somewhat concerned about officials not accepting the results of the election.

The poll also found 69 percent of Americans were concerned about foreign countries interfering with the election and, 51 percent were concerned about noncitizens voting illegally and 50 percent were concerned about widespread voter fraud.

The results come as former President Trump has continued to falsely claim he won the 2020 election against President Biden.

During his only presidential debate with Vice President Harris, Trump again attempted to sow doubts about 2020 results.


“There’s so much proof,” he said last week. “All you have to do is look at it.”

Multiple court cases challenging the results have been thrown out and even some of Trump’s former allies have conceded the election was not stolen. Trump and his allies are facing charges in Georgia related to an alleged scheme to illegally influence the election results.

“Donald Trump was fired by 81 million people,” Harris said during the debate. “Let’s be clear about that, and clearly, he is having a very difficult time processing that.”

More than 67 million people tuned into the debate, likely the only one between Trump and Harris before Election Day and as states begin their early voting periods. Trump has said he won’t take part in another.

Trump and his Republican allies have also raised concerns about undocumented immigrants casting illegal ballots in upcoming election, frequently turning their attention to immigration and border issues on the campaign trail.

House GOP leaders have pushed to tuck language into a government funding measure that would reiterate that it’s illegal for noncitizens to vote in federal elections and Trump has said Congress should not pass a stopgap funding bill without addressing “election integrity.”

Democrats note that it is already illegal for noncitizens to vote and that occurrences are exceedingly rare.

“The election, people should never be thinking about an election as fraudulent,” Trump said during the debate, arguing that noncitizens or other instances of voter fraud should cause concern.

The Ipsos poll found that 82 percent of Republicans are concerned about people who are not American citizens casting ballots in the upcoming election.

The Scripps News/Ipsos poll was conducted Sept. 13-15 based on a nationally representative probability sample of 1,027 adults 18 or older. The margin of error is 3.6 percentage points.