A third of Texas registered voters continue to believe President Biden did not “legitimately” win the 2020 presidential election, according to the latest Univ. of Texas/Texas Politics Project poll. Three out of five Republicans do not believe Biden won the election “legitimately” and another 16% are unsure – leaving just 24% who accept the results as legitimate.
No credible evidence supports former President Trump’s fantasy that the 2020 presidential election was somehow stolen from him. Yet, that fantasy persists.
Election denialism is more prevalent among older voters than younger ones:
- Aged 65 and older – 46% believe Biden was legitimately elected, 43% do not
- Aged 45-64 – 51% believe the election was legitimate, 38% do not
- Aged 30-44 – 62% believe the election was legitimate, 28% do not; and
- Aged 18-29 – 75% believe the election was legitimate, 10% do not.
Rural voters are more likely to believe Biden’s win was illegitimate (48%) than legitimate (38%), while suburban voters are more inclined to believe its legitimacy (55%) than not (33%).
Most Republicans (59%) do not believe U.S. election results are accurate – 26% believe they are “very inaccurate” – but just 19% of Republicans believe Texas election results are inaccurate. Only 1 in 25 Republicans believe Texas results are “very inaccurate.”
Encouragingly, election denialism has declined, slightly, since the UT/TPP poll conducted shortly after Biden’s inauguration. In that poll, 43% of Texans thought U.S. election results were either somewhat (13%) or very (30%) inaccurate. In the latest poll, the percent of Texans believing U.S. results are very inaccurate has fallen by half to 15%, with much of that difference shifting to somewhat inaccurate (+6%) and somewhat accurate (+11%).
Discouragingly, election denialism has increased since right before the general election. In its October poll, UT/TPP found just 24% of Texans believed U.S. election results were either somewhat (15%) or very (6%) inaccurate.
Faith in Texas election results has remained steady over the past two years.
The poll found fairly divided assessments on job approvals, most of which have held steady for at least two years:
- Greg Abbott’s job approval: 49/41 (24/34 strongly)
- Gov. Dan Patrick’s job approval: 43/36 (19/31 strongly)
- Gen. Ken Paxton’s job approval: 41/37 (19/31 strongly)
- U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz’s job approval: 44/44 (25/36 strongly)
- U.S. Sen. John Cornyn’s job approval: 35/40 (13/25 strongly)
- Biden favorability: 40/49 (17/43 very)
- Trump favorability: 42/48 (20/39 very)
Biden’s net favorability rating of -9 represents the least underwater he has been since his presidential campaign began in 2020.
Looking ahead at the 2024 primary, five out of six Republicans either strongly (53%) or somewhat (30%) approve of Cruz’s job performance. Just 9% of Republicans disapprove (3% strongly). Seven out of 10 “extremely” conservative voters strongly approve Cruz’s job performance.
The poll of 1,200 self-declared RVs was in the field December 2-11 and has a stated margin of error of ±2.89% for the full sample.
©2022 Texas Election Source LLC
