By Nathan Layne and Jason Lange
WASHINGTON, April 23 (Reuters) - President Donald Trump's years-long campaign to undermine faith in U.S. elections has gained broad traction with the American public, a Reuters/Ipsos poll shows, potentially creating fertile ground for misinformation heading into November's midterm elections.
The six-day poll completed Monday showed sharp partisan divides over trust in elections, with solid majorities of Republicans saying fraud is widespread -- despite a lack of evidence
to support this claim -- and favoring federal law enforcement presence at polls.
Some 46% of respondents said they agreed with the statement that there are large numbers of fraudulent ballots cast by non-citizens in U.S. elections, with 82% of Republicans agreeing compared with 18% of Democrats and 38% of independents.
About 53% of respondents said they were worried about fraudulent mail‑in or absentee ballots, compared with 43% who said they were not, with partisan division again apparent: 83% of Republicans expressed concern, versus 33% of Democrats.
Taken together, the responses indicate that years of messaging by Trump and his allies casting doubt on voting have resonated strongly with Republicans, particularly around claims that non‑citizens vote in significant numbers and that mail‑in ballots are unreliable, despite repeated audits and academic research finding fraud in either case to be exceedingly rare.
More broadly, the poll suggests that many Americans have been primed to accept claims of wrongdoing in November's elections, when Democrats are favored to win back the House of Representatives and control of the Senate will also be up for grabs amid voter discontent over the war with Iran and stubbornly high inflation.
TRUMP'S CLAIMS TAKE ROOT
Kelly Rader, research director at States United Democracy Center, a nonpartisan group that works to safeguard free and fair elections, said the Reuters/Ipsos poll results point to the enduring impact of false claims made by Trump and his allies.
"People are responding to them, particularly Republicans, because they're listening to the leaders that they trust, and it's creating this vulnerability in people to believe lies about the election," Rader said in an interview.
"It's never fun to see these big partisan splits in beliefs like on non-citizen voting. But luckily, the system is built to withstand this, and states are ready for this year's midterms."
SUPPORT FOR VOTER ID
The online poll of 4,557 U.S. adults, with a 2 percentage point margin of error, found bipartisan support for requiring voters to show official identification, with 77% backing the idea, including 63% of Democrats and 95% of Republicans.
While the responses suggested broad sympathy with Trump's call for voter ID requirements, the poll did not address stricter Republican-proposed measures under debate in Congress.
The SAVE Act, which would require proof of U.S. citizenship to register or update voter registration for federal elections, has passed the House but faces an uphill battle in the Senate amid Democratic warnings of disenfranchisement, even as 23 mostly Republican-led states have adopted provisions in the bill.
The poll found that 63% of Republicans believe Trump's false claim that the 2020 election was stolen from him -- a share that has remained largely unchanged in recent years, despite the absence of evidence supporting his repeated claims of widespread fraud.
By comparison, only 9% of Democrats and 21% of independents said they believed Trump lost in 2020 due to wrongdoing.
CONFIDENCE OWN BALLOTS WILL BE COUNTED
A bipartisan majority of Americans, including 79% of Democrats and 71% of Republicans, said they are generally confident their ballots will be counted in elections -- a finding Rader pointed to as a silver lining in the poll.
"These conspiracy theories about elections have not caused people to lose faith that their own vote will be counted as they intended," Rader said, adding that her organization's research shows this confidence is closely tied to voter turnout.
In a January interview with the New York Times, Trump said he regretted not deploying the National Guard to seize voting machines in the 2020 election, and said that Republicans "ought to nationalize the voting" during an an appearance on former FBI Deputy Director Dan Bongino's podcast in February.
The poll found limited support for that idea, with only 28% of Americans backing the deployment of troops to polling places. Republicans were split, with 45% in favor and 54% opposed.
At the same time, 62% of Republicans supported having federal law enforcement present at polling places, compared with 23% of Democrats and 36% of independents.
(Reporting by Nathan Layne in Wilton, Connecticut, and Jason Lange in Washington; editing by Scott Malone and Deepa Babington)
