(CN) — Just over a year after President Joe Biden took office and former President Donald Trump retired to Florida, a Monmouth University poll released Thursday reveals Americans are not sure if that outcome was for the best.
When asked what the state of the nation would be if Trump had prevailed in 2020, 42% say they think the country would be better off. Another 40% say things today would be worse if Trump won reelection and 16% think things would be about the same.
Regardless who voters think should have won the White House, some Americans still maintain the results from the last election were bogus. Despite numerous failed attempts by several groups to produce hard evidence of widespread voter fraud in 2020, about a third of Americans still believe Biden’s victory was illegitimate.
That number has not budged at all since the 2020 election took place. In an interesting display of strained coincidences, exactly 32% of Americans have said Biden’s win was because of fraud every single time since Monmouth began asking the question in November 2020.
Some also think it’s not too late to change the results, with 12% of Americans saying Biden not only stole the election but that there’s also still a chance to reinstate Trump in the White House before the next election.
“The persistence of the ‘big lie’ continues to be a warning sign,” Patrick Murray, director of the Monmouth University Polling Institute, said with the release of the poll. “It is being fed and nurtured by messages that tout the possibility of overturning the 2020 result even though no such legal mechanism exists. While the number who hold this view might not sound like a lot right now, it’s important to remember that it doesn’t take an outright majority to destabilize institutions.”
Americans are just as divided and unclear when it comes to two other major issues currently facing the country: voting rights and filibuster reform. When asked how they felt about the recent voting rights bill that died in the Senate due to a filibuster, 26% said they were behind it while 24% opposed it. Another 19% had no real opinion on the matter and nearly a third of respondents didn’t know the bill existed at all.
A slight majority of the public (55%) say that, as a whole, it’s generally more important for America to create national standards for election rules and voting rights than it is to maintain traditions like the filibuster. The filibuster has long been under fire from across the political spectrum as an antiquated legislative relic, but efforts to change or remove it have not historically gone far.
But while Americans say election guidelines are more important than maintaining the filibuster, 44% of them also believe it’s acceptable to use the filibuster to stop election and voting rights legislation.
Thursday’s poll found 43% of Americans say we should keep the filibuster the way that it is. Another 35% say we should keep it but change how it can be used, while just 17% say we should toss it entirely.
With our views on filibuster reform and voting rights all over the map, Murray says the national consensus on the issues is anything but clear.
“Public opinion lacks clarity on this issue,” Murray said. “A majority say that election rules and voting legislation are more important than the filibuster, but nearly half are okay with using the filibuster to stop such a bill. There is not a public consensus that voting rights, or at least what the Senate bill was trying to accomplish, is a fundamental priority for the country as a whole.”
Thursday’s Monmouth University poll had a sample size of 794 people and a margin of error of plus or minus 3.5%.
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