Majority of NJ Voters Say Biden’s 2020 Win Was Legitimate, Trust Electoral Process and Will Accept 2024 Results

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A majority of New Jersey registered voters say they have faith in the legitimacy of the electoral process, whether looking back on 2020 or looking ahead, according to a special Rutgers-Eagleton Poll in partnership with NJ Advance Media and the Miller Center on Policing and Community Resilience at the Eagleton Institute of Politics.

Stark partisan differences prevail, however, with Republicans either disagreeing, or agreeing to a lesser extent, on election integrity last cycle and this cycle.

Sixty-seven percent of voters say President Joe Biden legitimately won the presidency in 2020, versus 18% who feel he didn’t and 15% who are unsure. Nearly all Democrats say Biden won fairly (96%). A majority of independents say the same (60%), though 4 in 10 in this group believe he either didn’t (18%) or are unsure (22%). Republicans are mixed: 30% say he legitimately won, 46% say he didn’t and 24% are unsure.

When it comes to 2024, 81% say they will accept the outcome of the presidential election regardless of whether their choice wins; 5% say they won’t and 15% don’t know how they feel. While solid majorities of Democrats, independents and Republicans say they will accept the 2024 results, independents are about twice as likely and Republicans are about three times as likely as Democrats to say they are unsure.

“Even in New Jersey, often thought of as a solidly blue state, a notable minority of voters doubt the legitimacy of the 2020 election and are unsure if they will accept whatever happens on Nov. 5,” said Ashley Koning, an assistant research professor and director of the Eagleton Center for Public Interest Polling (ECPIP) at Rutgers University–New Brunswick. “New Jersey parallels public opinion nationally on this, and these seeds of doubt, both state and nationwide – while not the majority – point to why many voters feel apprehensive and unsettled about what Election Day, and the days and weeks after, might bring.”

A majority of New Jersey voters, furthermore, have some level of confidence that votes cast in person in the Garden State (60% “very,” 26% “somewhat”) will be counted as voters intend in the Nov. 5 election. They say they feel similarly about votes cast in person throughout the nation, though to a slightly lesser degree (50% “very” and 33% “somewhat”).

Absentee and mail-in ballots inspire less confidence than in-person voting: two-thirds of voters in the state are either “very” (40%) or “somewhat” (26%) confident that votes cast in New Jersey will be counted as voters intend, while 6 in 10 are either “very” (31%) or “somewhat” (30%) confident in votes cast throughout the U.S.

If their chosen candidate for president doesn’t win, half of voters say they will simply do “nothing” (50%). This sentiment holds somewhat steady across Democrats (45%), Republicans (51%) and independents (55%).

Small numbers of voters say they will do a variety of activities if their choice doesn’t win. Seventeen percent say they would support legal challenges; Republicans are especially likely to say this, at 25%, compared with 15% of Democrats and 13% of independents.

Eleven percent would volunteer for political or social causes; 9% would donate for or against a candidate, politician, issue or organization; and 8% would participate in a peaceful protest. All of these are more popular among Democrats than they are among Republicans.

Three percent say they would leave the country and less than 1% say they would participate in a nonpeaceful protest that may cause damage or harm; no significant differences by partisanship arise for either activity. Five percent say they would take some other kind of action.

“New Jersey voters are generally more trusting of the state’s handling of the electoral process than they are the nation as a whole,” said Jessica Roman, director of data management and analysis at ECPIP. “However, voters in the Garden State maintain a level of skepticism around absentee and mail-in ballots here as compared with in-person voting. Democrats are more trusting in this process than their partisan counterparts, echoing the partisan divide in mail-in ballots seen in the last presidential election.”

Results are from a statewide poll of 1,018 adults contacted through the probability-based Rutgers-Eagleton/SSRS Garden State Panel from Oct. 15 to Oct. 22. The full sample has a margin of error of +/- 4.1 percentage points. The registered voter subsample contains 929 registered voters and has a margin of error of +/- 4.2 percentage points.

 

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3 responses to “Majority of NJ Voters Say Biden’s 2020 Win Was Legitimate, Trust Electoral Process and Will Accept 2024 Results”

  1. “A notable minority of voters doubt the legitimacy of the 2020 election and are unsure if they will accept whatever happens on Nov. 5”. A NOTABLE MINORITY????? I think the writer is seriously mistaken. It’s significantly more than a NOTABLE MINORITY. I guess the writer wasn’t at the Wildwood, NJ Trump rally back in the summer. I was. Over 120,000 people attended. And, everyone who I talked to, and I talked to a lot of people, said the same thing. That the 2020 election was stolen.

    Politicians always say that one voter or rally-goer means at least 500 voters who think similarly. That means well over 600,000 New Jerseyans think the same way. That’s a considerable block of voters on one side. That’s enough to sway the typical New Jersey numbers that always seem to be 54% Democrat and 46% Republican for the past 30 years. Coincidental? I think not. Not after the last Governor’s election where ballots were found in trunks of cars in Newark and behind tables and voting machines in Hackensack, and then counted after midnight on Election Day.

  2. Unfortunately, 2020 was the year of COVID-19, that turned normalcy on its head !
    Many unimaginable things happened from censorship, to mandates, to business closings and never reopening to unnecessarily too long school closures, to toddlers in masks to unprecedented learning loss to riots in the streets and billions of dollars of destruction in the name of social justice, to looting , to soaring mental health problems and loneliness to billions of dollars in Covid money not accounted for to the ballot harvesting and unsupervised mail ballots boxes to hunkering in a basement due to fear and uncertainty all while watching unimaginable loss of life continuously reported on non stop media . So it is no wonder both sides of the aisle are skeptical of the integrity of our voting systems. The loss of trust in our institutions, the vitriol and gaslighting, the divide and conquer elements creating the seeds of violent behavior are the end result.
    May the “Arch of Justice” allow for unity and a peaceful transition of power. Hopefully, not a majority, but all will except the results of the election.

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