A new poll by Reuters/Ipsos shows that Republicans are not happy about the prospect of a victory by Democrat Hillary Clinton in November.
We know that the Republican nominee for president, one Donald J. Trump, is claiming that the election will be dishonest. He has repeatedly said that the election will be “rigged.”
In the third presidential debate, Trump refused to say that he would accept defeat. He slyly said that he preferred to “keep you in suspense” about how he’d react to a Clinton win.
The current poll shows that many of his supporters share his views. A full 50 percent of those polled said that they would not accept Hillary Clinton as the legitimate winner of the race.
To make the findings even more worrisome, the poll asked voters what they would believe to be the cause of their candidate’s defeat, if they do lose. Frighteningly, 7 out of 10 Republicans said that if their candidate loses, they would feel it was because of a rigged election.
In comparison to Republican paranoia, Democrats are more confident about the honesty of the election, and more likely to accept a defeat of their candidate.
Only 30 percent said that they’d have a hard time accepting a Trump victory, and fewer than half of them would blame a loss on a rigged election.
Lonna Atkeson is a professor at the University of New Mexico. She is the head of the Center for the Study of Voting, Elections, and Democracy. She had this to say:
“Republicans are just more worried about everything than Democrats. I’ve never seen an election like this. Not in my lifetime. Certainly not in modern history.”
Atkeson believes that the difference this year is what she called the “candidate effect.” She said that she believes the increased concerns have been created by the Republican candidate.
Donald Trump has been playing up the idea of a rigged election system for months. He has talked about rampant voter fraud, although there’s no evidence to back him up. He and his surrogates have suggested that the Democrats have someone been able to suppress Republican votes, an idea with absolutely nothing to substantiate it.
Trump has even encouraged his followers to go to the polls to act as informal monitors.
A lot of us would call that voter intimidation. A lot of us would call it an attack on the sanctity of the entire American election process.
Donald Trump trades in fear and paranoia. Unfortunately for the outcome of the election, his followers listen to and believe him.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6OXniUutor4
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