More than a third of US adults believe Joe Biden was not legitimately elected president in 2020, according to a new poll.
According to the Washington Post and the University of Maryland, 62% of American adults say they believe Biden’s win was legitimate – down from 69% in the same poll in December 2021.
Thirty-six per cent say they do not accept Biden’s win.
This week brings the third anniversary of the deadly January 6 attack on Congress, which Donald Trump incited in his attempt to overturn his conclusive defeat by Biden the year before.
Nine deaths have been linked to the attack, including law enforcement suicides. More than a thousand people have been charged and hundreds convicted in relation to the riot, some with seditious conspiracy.
Trump was impeached for inciting an insurrection but acquitted when enough Senate Republicans stayed loyal.
Colorado and Maine have moved to bar Trump from the ballot under section three of the 14th amendment to the US constitution, a post-civil war measure meant to prevent insurrectionists running for state or national office. Trump is expected to appeal.
Maintaining his lie that Biden’s win was the result of electoral fraud, and using four federal and 13 state criminal election subversion charges (alongside 74 other criminal counts and assorted civil threats) to motivate supporters, Trump dominates polling for the Republican nomination this year.
Reporting its poll, the Post said that among Republicans, only 31% now say Biden’s win was legitimate – down from 39% in 2021.
The poll also showed Republicans becoming more sympathetic to the January 6 rioters and more likely to absolve Trump of responsibility for the attack, the Post said.
Analysing the poll, Aaron Blake, a senior political reporter for the Post, said it mostly showed that Trump’s message over the 2020 election and January 6 had resonated with voters already disposed to believe it.
Nonetheless, Michael J Hanmer, director of the Center for Democracy and Civic Engagement at the University of Maryland, told the paper: “From a historical perspective, these results would be chilling to many analysts.”
