Trump says 82% says Americans think 2020 election was “rigged.” Polls, polling executives disagree

GREENSBORO — Former President Donald Trump told his North Carolina supporters during a campaign stop that he’s not the only one who believes the 2020 presidential election was rigged against him.

"Eighty-two percent of the country understands that it was a rigged election," Trump said March 2 during a rally at the Greensboro Coliseum Complex. "You can’t have a country with that. A poll came out: 82%. But they go after the people — they don’t go after the people that rig the election, they go after the people (that are) looking."

First, the 2020 election was not rigged and numerous reviews have confirmed that President Joe Biden won 51% of the vote. States certified the results. Congress accepted the results. Trump and his allies lost more than 60 lawsuits claiming otherwise. A group of conservatives, including former federal judges, examined every fraud and miscount claim by Trump and concluded that they "failed to present evidence of fraud or inaccurate results significant enough to invalidate the results." 

Still, Trump has only amplified this false claim. Could he be right that now 82% of Americans are buying his line?

We asked members of Trump’s campaign team about the 82% figure in Greensboro, but received no response. We searched the internet for a survey with that number from a credible polling company, but couldn’t find one. It reminded us of a 2022 check we did on a claim that 65% of Americans doubted the 2020 election, but we found that one to be False. Other media outlets have also failed to substantiate his recent 82% figure.

So, we asked polling experts across the nation: Is there any truth to Trump’s claim that up to 82% of Americans believe the 2020 presidential election was rigged?

Their answer: No.

Dave McLennan, director of the Meredith Poll at Meredith College in Raleigh said although several polls ask respondents whether the 2020 election was fair and legitimate, none of them show that a majority of Americans think that contest was fraudulent, "much less 82%, as Trump claims.

"Even if you look at Republicans, the percentage that claim that the election was stolen is not as high as Trump claims," McLennan said in an email.

Available data shows that Trump’s claim is "absurd," Alexander Theodoridis, co-director of the UMass Amherst Poll at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, said in an email. 

A January Umass Amherst Poll found that 30% of respondents believed Biden’s win was illegitimate. 

Theodoridis noted that even among former Republican members of Congress — who were involved in government and could access detailed information about elections — more than 80% said Biden’s victory was legitimate.

Polling groups have surveyed Americans multiple times about the 2020 presidential election’s legitimacy  and none of their findings support Trump’s claim. Here’s a smattering of poll findings since we last examined this issue.

• A Washington Post-University of Maryland poll from December found that 36% of respondents viewed Biden’s win as illegitimate. 

• An August poll by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research found that about 70% of respondents believed Biden was legitimately elected. Among Republicans, the number was 57%. 

• A June Monmouth University poll found that 30% of respondents believe Biden won the 2020 election because of voter fraud. Among Republicans, the number was 68% — still lower than Trump claimed. That result "has been a nearly constant percentage in Monmouth’s polling since the November 2020 election," Monmouth noted in its report. 

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• An early 2022 Axios-SurveyMonkey poll found that 55% respondents believed Biden won legitimately. SurveyMonkey and the AP-NORC polls have lower credibility ratings than Monmouth and The Washington Post with FiveThirtyEight.com, which analyzes polling methods.

Trump may have been referring to a 2021 survey conducted by the Public Religion Research Institute, a public opinion research firm. 

Thirty-one percent of the poll’s respondents said they believed the 2020 presidential election was stolen from Trump — but the number was much higher for respondents who consumed conservative media. Among Republicans who claimed they trust Fox News more than any other outlet, 82% said they believed the election was stolen. 

Polling results consistently show a partisan divide over the election’s legitimacy, said Alejandra Campos, a Latino Studies professor in the University of Arkansas’ political science department. Still, "the available data does not support the claim that a majority of Americans thought the 2020 election was rigged," Campos said.

Trump said, "82% of the country understands that it was a rigged election."

We couldn’t find any credible poll — or any group of polls — with results that support Trump’s claim. His campaign also produced no evidence to support it.

Polling continues to show that most Americans believe the 2020 election was legitimate. 

We rate Trump’s claim False.

WRAL state government reporter Will Doran contributed to this report.