Swing district voters are still mad about GOP efforts to undermine the 2020 election

A new survey released on Thursday shows a majority of swing district voters are opposed to efforts by their own GOP elected officials to undermine the results of the 2020 election.

One year ago, on Jan. 6, 2021, 139 House Republicans and eight GOP senators tried to overturn the results of the 2020 election and reject President Joe Biden’s Electoral College victory. That effort preceded the violent riot at the U.S. Capitol carried out by angry supporters of then-President Donald Trump, who sought to block that win and keep Trump in the Oval Office.

Data for Progress, a progressive think tank and polling firm, released a survey on Thursday of likely voters in four GOP-held swing House districts and across the state of Georgia. It found that strong majorities in each believe Biden was the bona fide 2020 winner and that most also opposed congressional efforts against certifying those results.

The four swing districts polled were Arizona’s 6th District, California’s 25th District, New York’s 11th District, and Pennsylvania’s 10th District. Their incumbent representatives — David Schweikert (R-AZ), Mike Garcia (R-CA), Nicole Malliotakis (R-NY), and Scott Perry (R-PA) — each voted against counting some of Biden’s electors on Jan. 6, 2021.

According to the poll, Garcia’s constituents disapprove of those votes by a 32%-59% margin; Malliotakis’ constituents, meanwhile, disapprove by a margin of 41%-52%.

Constituents in Perry’s district disapprove 36%-57%, and those in Schweikert’s disapprove 37%-55%.

At least 56% of voters in each district cited those votes as a “somewhat” or “very convincing” reason to vote against their respective incumbent in 2022.

The survey also found that, by a 38%-53% margin, likely Georgia voters said they disapprove of Republicans’ votes to overturn the election results shortly after the Jan. 6 Capitol insurrection. Of the eight Republicans in Georgia’s House delegation, six voted to reject Biden’s electors: Reps. Rick Allen, Buddy Carter, Andrew Clyde, Jody Hice, Marjorie Taylor Greene, and Barry Loudermilk.

Fifty-nine percent of Georgia voters statewide said Hice’s vote to overturn the results was a convincing reason to vote against him in his quest to become Georgia secretary of state this year.

While the poll focused on only a few subsets of U.S. voters, it does seem consistent with recent national polling that suggests a majority of voters — though not most Republicans — believe Biden’s victory is legitimate.

A December 2021 poll by the University of Massachusetts Amherst and YouGov found 58% believe Biden is “definitely” or “probably” the legitimate 2020 victor, while 33% said he was “definitely” or “probably” not.

A January 2022 Axios|Momentive poll by SurveyMonkey similarly found 55% of American adults believe Biden is the legitimate winner of the 2020 election, while 26% do not.

Published with permission of The American Independent Foundation.