# Only Three Percent of Republican Voters Think Biden Won? **URL:** \ **Category:** Politics & Elections\ **Created:** [December 1, 2020, 4:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/only-three-percent-of-republican-voters-think-biden-won/926929 "2020-12-01T16:14:57Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 8\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Two\_Many\_Cats2](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/779978/32.png) [@Two\_Many\_Cats2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Two_Many_Cats2)\ **Post date:** [December 1, 2020, 4:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/only-three-percent-of-republican-voters-think-biden-won/926929/1 "2020-12-01T16:14:57Z")
Okay, I’ve heard this statistic on \*The Young Turks \* a couple of times. Cenk says that only three percent of those who voted for Trump believe that Joe Biden won the election. Can this possibly be accurate? Sure, there’s plenty of YouTube fodder showing Trump fans being delusional, but that’s just YouTubers trying to be interesting, right? If a person puts on silly outfits and stands around yelling into a camera about how the election was stolen, then that person is fairly invested in their tinhattery. But that can’t be ninety-seven percent of 70 plus million voters, right? Please tell me half the country is not this far gone. ---
**Author:** ![AlsoNamedBort](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/alsonamedbort/32/3213_2.png) [@AlsoNamedBort](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AlsoNamedBort)\ **Post date:** [December 1, 2020, 4:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/only-three-percent-of-republican-voters-think-biden-won/926929/2 "2020-12-01T16:21:12Z")
Here’s the most recent poll I found: > **[Half of Republicans say Biden won because of a 'rigged' election:...](https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-election-poll/half-of-republicans-say-biden-won-because-of-a-rigged-election-reuters-ipsos-poll-idUSKBN27Y1AJ?utm_medium=Social&utm_source=twitter)** > > About half of all Republicans believe President Donald Trump "rightfully won" the U.S. election but that it was stolen from him by widespread voter fraud that favored Democratic President-elect Joe Biden, according to a new Reuters/Ipsos opinion... So not 3%, but not that great either. ---
**Author:** ![Procrustus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/procrustus/32/2994_2.png) [@Procrustus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Procrustus)\ **Post date:** [December 1, 2020, 4:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/only-three-percent-of-republican-voters-think-biden-won/926929/3 "2020-12-01T16:24:36Z")
People lie in polls like this to express displeasure about the election result. If Trump had won I can easily imagine saying “yes” to all kinds of crazy questions, just to piss him off. Why, yes, I do think he drugged members of the judiciary to suppress the vote, thanks for asking. ---
**Author:** ![Buck\_Godot](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/buck_godot/32/6573_2.png) [@Buck\_Godot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Buck_Godot)\ **Post date:** [December 1, 2020, 5:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/only-three-percent-of-republican-voters-think-biden-won/926929/4 "2020-12-01T17:09:25Z")
You can’t get 97% of people to agree on anything. There might be an internet click poll on some Qannon website that could have yielded those results, but no legitimate poll is going to give you that level of agreement. ---
**Author:** ![Velocity](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/velocity/32/18006_2.png) [@Velocity](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Velocity)\ **Post date:** [December 1, 2020, 5:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/only-three-percent-of-republican-voters-think-biden-won/926929/5 "2020-12-01T17:16:18Z")
People will often reply “yes” to something just because of the novelty of it. If you ran a poll asking, “Do you want Barack Obama to balance himself on a beach ball on one foot while rubbing his belly with his left hand and drinking a pina colada with the right?”, you could probably get at least 30 percent yes. That doesn’t mean that one-third of Americans wake up in the morning wishing Obama would do that, though. ---
**Author:** ![LSLGuy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lslguy/32/5813_2.png) [@LSLGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LSLGuy)\ **Post date:** [December 1, 2020, 5:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/only-three-percent-of-republican-voters-think-biden-won/926929/6 "2020-12-01T17:22:38Z")
See here > [@Conundrum: why does Trump's support seem so...unenthusiastic?](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/conundrum-why-does-trumps-support-seem-so-unenthusiastic/926696/27): > > Something I raised a couple of weeks back which would be on-topic here: [# Most Republicans Say They Doubt the Election. How Many Really Mean It?](https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/30/upshot/republican-voters-election-doubts.html?action=click&module=Top%20Stories&pgtype=Homepage) Research has shown that the answers that partisans (on the left as well as on the right) give to political questions often reflect not what they know as fact, but what they wish were true. Or what they think they should say. It’s incredibly hard to separate sincere belief from wishful thinking from what political scientists call partisan cheerlead… for a series of posts on topic. ---
**Author:** ![I\_Love\_Me\_Vol.I](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/i_love_me_vol.i/32/521_2.png) [@I\_Love\_Me\_Vol.I](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/I_Love_Me_Vol.I)\ **Post date:** [December 1, 2020, 5:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/only-three-percent-of-republican-voters-think-biden-won/926929/7 "2020-12-01T17:55:24Z")
People will come up with whatever numbers they need to make their point. “Results” like that–the ones that declare near unanimity for anything other than “Do you believe water is wet?” are suspect. Usually they use a convenient totaling up of several different responses. First of all the question asked was something like: “How likely is it that there was any fraud against Trump in the 2020 Presidential election returns?” (instead of “Do you think Biden won?”) Then you get raw results like: “Without any doubt” [15%] “I really, really think so” [15%] “Most likely” [15%] “Probably” [15%] “Maybe” [15%] “Could be” [22%] “Definitely not” [3%] And this is then parsed as: “Only 3% of Republicans think Biden won” ---
**Author:** ![Orville\_mogul](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/aeb1de/32.png) [@Orville\_mogul](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Orville_mogul)\ **Post date:** [December 1, 2020, 8:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/only-three-percent-of-republican-voters-think-biden-won/926929/8 "2020-12-01T20:18:33Z")
Well done explanation!