Poll: 49% Of Republicans Believe Election Was Stolen

Republicans don’t seem to be handling Mitt Romney’s election loss well:

PPP’s first post election national poll finds that Republicans are taking the results pretty hard…and also declining in numbers.

49% of GOP voters nationally say they think that ACORN stole the election for President Obama. We found that 52% of Republicans thought that ACORN stole the 2008 election for Obama, so this is a modest decline, but perhaps smaller than might have been expected given that ACORN doesn’t exist anymore.

Some GOP voters are so unhappy with the outcome that they no longer care to be a part of the United States. 25% of Republicans say they would like their state to secede from the union compared to 56% who want to stay and 19% who aren’t sure.

One reason that such a high percentage of Republicans are holding what could be seen as extreme views is that their numbers are declining. Our final poll before the election, which hit the final outcome almost on the head, found 39% of voters identifying themselves as Democrats and 37% as Republicans. Since the election we’ve seen a 5 point increase in Democratic identification to 44%, and a 5 point decrease in Republican identification to 32%.

People don’t want to identify as Republican. Gee, I wonder why.

 

FILED UNDER: 2012 Election, Public Opinion Polls, US Politics, ,
Doug Mataconis
About Doug Mataconis
Doug Mataconis held a B.A. in Political Science from Rutgers University and J.D. from George Mason University School of Law. He joined the staff of OTB in May 2010 and contributed a staggering 16,483 posts before his retirement in January 2020. He passed far too young in July 2021.

Comments

  1. Tsar Nicholas says:

    Sorry, but the actual vote in the actual election last month was 32% Republican. So for PPP to be gloating about 32% of their sample now consisting of Republicans is like gloating that today the sun rose in the east. And of course there’s been a (temporary) spike in Democrat identification. People out there in Zombieland like to jump on the winning bandwagon. Whether in connection with sports, relationships, business or politics.

    That all said, it also goes without saying, given the horrible demographics of various elements of the right wing, that substantial percentages of erstwhile Republicans are going to be getting in touch with their inner freak shows. Par for the courses. It’ll get worse as time marches on. Wait until the ’15-’16 primary cycle. That’ll make last year’s insane clown circus by comparison look tame.

  2. Ben Wolf says:

    I’m flabbergasted by those numbers. How can such large numbers of people live in an entirely different universe??? I mean, sure we all know this has been going on for a while, but its still shocking. Isn’t it?

  3. David M says:

    We found that 52% of Republicans thought that ACORN stole the 2008 election for Obama, so this is a modest decline, but perhaps smaller than might have been expected given that ACORN doesn’t exist anymore.

    That’s some world-class level snark there from PPP.

  4. michael reynolds says:

    I’ve been saying for a long time now that “Republican” no longer describes just a political party or ideology but a mental illness. I know people think I’m just being partisan. I’m not. Slowly, slowly it’s beginning to dawn on people — like David Frum recently — that it’s true. Republicanism is a mental illness that involves a profound denial of reality.

  5. legion says:

    People don’t want to identify as Republican. Gee, I wonder why.

    I care a lot less about how someone identifies than I do about how they _vote_. Lots of self-described Libertarians are just Republicans who don’t want to call themselves Republicans any more. That said, I’ve also seen a number of people who were basically Democrats, but called themselves Libertarians (or Reform Party, or something even more obscure) just to sound cool.

  6. Geek, Esq. says:

    Republicanism is, at its core, a rejection of the values of the Enlightenment.

  7. Tillman says:

    That media bubble is seeming more like a media shell every day.

  8. Ron Beasley says:

    @Geek, Esq.: So true, the Christionists have been trying to over turn the enlightenment for 200+ years.

  9. mattb says:

    @Ben Wolf:

    I’m flabbergasted by those numbers. How can such large numbers of people live in an entirely different universe???

    To be fair, in the aftermath of the 2004 election — and still to this day — there were a lot of democrats who felt that Bush and electronic voting machines stole that election. Whether or not the percentages were quite as high as the current Republican number, I cannot say.

    Granted there was a lot of dubious exit polling in 2004 that helped contribute to the belief of a stolen election. That said, looking back on the actual polling from that year, it’s pretty clear GW went into election day with a noticeable lead on Kerry.

  10. Anderson says:

    The election WAS stolen! A black guy took it!

    … Sadly, like in the racist joke “What do you call a black boy on a new bicycle?” the answer of many to “What do you call a black man re-elected president?” is “Thief!”

  11. michael reynolds says:

    @Geek, Esq.:

    I think at its core it’s a rejection of Appomattox. It’s not a coincidence that we’re seeing this breakdown upon the election of the first black president. This is a deep-seated, furious, mentally unhinged reaction to the end of white dominance. This is primitive and tribal. If we’re not careful there will be violence that flows from this insanity.

    Let’s not pretend we don’t know who these people are: they’re white southerners, and for all the talk of a new south, and for all the noise about being post-racial, for these bitter dead-enders there can be no acceptance of a black man in a position of dominance. These are desperate, scared, enraged, armed and potentially violent people.

  12. maggie says:

    Michael, being a southern by birth, and having lived in the south all my life, I can tell you that you are dead on right about all the stink, at its core is about race., specifically a ‘black’ man being the most powerful man int the United states. It scares them to their racist souls. Words like Muslim and Socialist are just code words used down here so as not to reveal their true objection.

    By the way, I am white, and I can tell you since I moved to Texas 30 years ago, I have often been in racially mixed groups, and the minute the person of color leases the area at least one of the whites has something racial to say about them and just assumes we all think the same way. Apparently they are correct, I am the only one who ever bothers to call them out on it, and then I get called names you would not believe in this day and age for insinuating that blacks are “equal” to us in any way.

  13. michael reynolds says:

    @maggie:

    I’m a yankee but have also spent much of my life in the south — Texas, the Florida panhandle (Alabama basically), Virginia and North Carolina. It’s not as bad as it was 40 years ago, thankfully, but I agree it’s willful blindness not to see that this has been about race from the start. I don’t think reasonable people want to believe that there are still so many people like this, but there are.

  14. C. Clavin says:

    No question.
    If you can plant a birth notice 40 some-odd years before Obama ran for President…stealing an election is nothing. When you consider that he is also incompetent…an affirmative action candidate…it makes perfect sense.

  15. Geek, Esq. says:

    @michael reynolds:

    Well, white southerners have been opposing the Enlightenment for the better part of three centuries, so we are really arguing two sides of the same coin.

  16. Rafer Janders says:

    Some GOP voters are so unhappy with the outcome that they no longer care to be a part of the United States.

    What’s funny to me about this childish little secession tantrum is that, at heart, it’s an acknowledgment that American conservatives can’t really go anywhere. Liberals, if they’re really dissatisfied with the US, have a host of countries that are both more progressive (on many but not all measures) and equally developed as the US — Canada, most of Europe, Australia and New Zealand, Japan, etc.

    But if a conservative is unhappy, where’s he going to move to? There is literally nowhere on Earth that is both more right-wing than the US while being equally developed (and, just as important for them, both English-speaking and majority Christian). Seriously, where’s their conservative utopia? Somalia? Iran? Saudi Arabia? Russia? They’re trapped here.

  17. michael reynolds says:

    @Geek, Esq.:

    True.

  18. labman57 says:

    Romney was supposed to win. It was his destiny. All of the conservative pundits and right wing bloggers said so.
    And therefore, the simple fact that he lost is evidence that subterfuge and chicanery were involved in the outcome.

  19. mantis says:

    Skewed!

  20. That Other Mike says:

    Someone else said it first, but it bears repeating – the party of Lincoln has become the party of Lincoln’s assassin.

  21. Ron Beasley says:

    You can bet that most of that 49% were white and southern. Those who continue to claim it’s not about race are in denial. The good news is most of these people are old and will die soon.

  22. de stijl says:

    “ACORN” is not even a dog-whistle. It’s just a flat-out whistle and the meaning is as plain as day.

  23. Rob in CT says:

    That’s some world-class level snark there from PPP.

    Beautifully done, but man I can only chuckle briefly. Then the despair comes back.

  24. Rob in CT says:

    I think there is a strong element of “I don’t know anybody who voted for him, therefore how could he have won?” going on here too. Not to say that doesn’t tied back in to race, mind.

    And yes, there were cries of “Diebold!” in 2004. Lots of ’em. Not from me, but there was a fair amount of chatter.

    If you google something like “stolen election 2004” you get a bunch of hits (to be fair, I see at least one, in Salon, debunking the idea). I don’t see post-election poll data though. Maybe someone else’s google-fu is better. Failing that, however, there’s no way to know if in 2004 Dems were as deluded as GOPers are now. If I had to guess, I’d say 1/3 thought it was stolen. How much of that was left-over sour grapes from the far closer (and therefore, to me, more understandably controversial) 2000 election I don’t know. Anyway, people don’t like to be on the losing team.

  25. mattb says:

    @Rob in CT:

    I don’t see post-election poll data though. Maybe someone else’s google-fu is better. Failing that, however, there’s no way to know if in 2004 Dems were as deluded as GOPers are now. If I had to guess, I’d say 1/3 thought it was stolen.

    Exactly. And this day, on progressive talk radio, when 2004 gets brought up, people start to talk about switched votes in Ohio.

    I don’t deny that some of the rejection of 2012 boil down to race (just as they did in 2008).

    But I don’t think Democrats/liberals get to claim all too high of a moral ground on the “we are the party of reality” when it comes to denying the results of elections.

  26. stonetools says:

    To be fair, in the aftermath of the 2004 election — and still to this day — there were a lot of democrats who felt that Bush and electronic voting machines stole that election. Whether or not the percentages were quite as high as the current Republican number, I cannot say.

    While this is true, I don’t believe the percentage of Democrats came anywhere near the 50 % mark-it was more of a fringe. Also, too, I don’t remember secession petitions.

  27. Rob in CT says:

    No, liberals don’t tend to go the secession route. Though occasionally we mutter about having the South seceed again, which is sort of the same thing. More often, we mumble about going to Canada.

    And as for the %… we just don’t know. If there was a snap poll taken right after the election, who knows that it would’ve shown? But it appears there wasn’t… or if there was, I’m not finding it on the ‘net.

  28. Franklin says:

    Look, a large percentage of Republicans also believe that Obama was born in Kenya, that the Earth is 6,000 years old, and a bunch of other non-sense. I hope these groups mostly overlap, meaning that a good number of Republicans are still sane. While hopeful, I am not optimistic.

  29. swbarnes2 says:

    @mattb:

    But I don’t think Democrats/liberals get to claim all too high of a moral ground on the “we are the party of reality” when it comes to denying the results of elections.

    It’s not the same. Kerry was one state away from winning, and exit polls suggested he would. And the manufacturer of the voting machines in Ohio had literally promised to deliver Ohio’s electoral votes to Bush. And the Secretary of state was Republican, and was pulling all sorts of shenanigans to disenfranchise voters.

    http://www.iwantmyvote.com/lib/downloads/references/house_judiciary/final_status_report.pdf

    We have found numerous, serious election irregularities in the Ohio presidential election, which resulted in a significant disenfranchisement of voters. Cumulatively, these irregularities, which affected hundreds of thousand of votes and voters in Ohio, raise grave doubts regarding whether it can be said the Ohio electors selected on December 13, 2004, were chosen in a manner that conforms to Ohio law, let alone federal requirements and constitutional standards.

    “27 of the 30 wards with the most machines per registered voter showed majorities for Bush. At the other end of the spectrum, six of the seven wards with the fewest machines delivered large margins for Kerry.”

    The Greater Cleveland Voter Registration Coalition projects that in Cuyahoga County alone over 10,000 Ohio citizens lost their right to vote as a result of official registration errors.

    At the same time, the offices of Democratic Staff and of Democratic
    Judiciary Committee Members were deluged with e-mails and complaints about the
    election. While such complaints are still being processed, close to 100,000 such complaints were received. As of this writing, the Judiciary Democratic office alone is receiving approximately 4,000 such e-mails a day. More than half of these complaints were from one state: Ohio.

    The Washington Post also found that in voter-rich Franklin County, which encompasses the state capital of Columbus, election officials decided to make do with 2,866 machines,even though their analysis showed that the county needed 5,000 machines…The Franklin County Board of Elections reported 81 voting machines were never placed on election day, and Board Director Matt Damschroder admitted that another machines malfunctioned on Election Day. However, a county purchasing official who was on the line with Ward Moving and Storage Company, documented only 2,741 voting machines delivered through the November 2 election day. While Franklin County’s records reveal that they had 2,866 “machines available” on election day. This would mean that the even larger number of at least 125 machines remained unused on Election Day.

    Obama won by many states, and there was no evidence that he was disenfranchising tens of thousands of Republican voters to do it.

  30. mattb says:

    @swbarnes2:
    Thanks for demonstrating my point.

    Again, if you look at the broader polling, Bush/Kerry largely was decided along the lines that the meta polls predicted. In other words, Nate Silver’s model would have most likely predicted that Bush would win. Sam Wang’s model did predict the Bush win.

    I am sure there was monkeying around, and the disenfranchisement of some voters (especially in Ohio). But if one looks at the bigger picture, one will find a very similiar patterns among 2004 Democrats and 2012 Republicans (including not believing polls and an overconfidence in the idea that undecideds were underrepresented in polls and were going to break for their candidate).

  31. swbarnes2 says:

    @mattb:

    Thanks for demonstrating my point.

    My point was that Democrats really did have evidence to support the notion that Republicans stole the state of Ohio, due to the large numbers of disenfranchised Democratic voters.

    Are you claiming that Republicans have any evidence at all that multiple states were tampered with to the extent to a hundred thousand votes?

    It’s ridiculous that conservatives expect people to treat their feelings as being just as important and relevant as real facts. They just aren’t, and people need to stop coddling the big selfish, violent babies already by going along with that.

  32. al-Ameda says:

    49%? We must be nearing critical mass with respect to secession, right? I sure hope so.

    I hope Obama does not make the same mistake that Lincoln did, I hope he lets those states leave the Union.