Republicans Still Think Trump Is Going to Be President Again. Yup, Any Day Now.

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More than half of voters who cast a ballot for Donald Trump in 2020 believe that ongoing audits in Republican-controlled states will change the results of the 2020 election, according to a new poll. Yes, Joe Biden was inaugurated five months ago. 

A survey from Morning Consult and Politico asked nearly 2,000 respondents over the weekend whether they believed the audits "will uncover any information that will change the outcome of the 2020 U.S. Presidential election?" Of the 839 Trump 2020 voters who responded, 28 percent said “yes, definitely,” and another 23 percent said “yes, probably.” 

Just seven percent said “no, definitely not.” 

The poll provides just the latest piece of evidence that months of baseless and disproven allegations about a massive electoral fraud scheme to steal the election away from Trump have convinced a substantial number of Republican voters, if not a majority, that all of it is real. A Politico/Morning Consult poll released last week found that nearly 30 percent of Republicans believed it was likely Trump would be reinstated as president sometime this year—despite the fact that there’s no mechanism in the Constitution to do that. 

The most notable of these “audits” is happening in Arizona’s Maricopa County, which was decisive in Joe Biden becoming the first Democrat to carry Arizona since 1996. There, the GOP-controlled Senate contracted a Florida company called Cyber Ninjas to oversee the audit, despite the fact that it had no experience running an audit, and its founder has publicly voiced support for the election fraud lies. 

The effort has been denounced by both Maricopa County’s GOP-controlled Board of Supervisors and the county recorder, its top election official who defeated an incumbent Democrat on the same ballot Trump and Biden were on. 

“The same people who have thrown fits that Mark Zuckerberg very publicly, transparently, and lawfully provided grant funding to help election officials during coronavirus are now shaking the can for private, undisclosed donations to this audit,” Maricopa County Recorder Stephen Richer, a self-described Trump voter, wrote in a piece for the conservative National Review last month.

“That’s your audit. Are you still comfortable? If you are, do you think your Democrat friends are?” he wrote. 

But the effort has begun to spread to other states as well. Officials and lawmakers from several states—most notably Pennsylvania, which Trump narrowly won in 2016 but then lost by more than 81,000 votes in November—have visited the Arizona recount site in recent weeks. 

Pennsylvania state senator Doug Mastriano is parlaying his support for an audit as well as previous efforts to overturn the election results into a potential gubernatorial bid in 2022, Politico reported Wednesday. He  finished first in a straw poll at a gathering of conservative activists last weekend, according to PoliticsPA.

The Wisconsin state Assembly has also hired a team of retired cops to “investigate” spurious claims about the 2020 election; though Speaker Robin Vos said he accepts the results of the election, he didn’t rule out using the results as a basis for changing election laws in an interview with the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel. 

Trump is also increasing pressure on legislative Republicans to replicate what’s happening in Arizona, threatening to oppose them for re-election if they don’t comply with his demands. 

“Why is State [Senate President] Jake Corman of Pennsylvania fighting so hard that there not be a Forensic Audit of the 2020 Presidential Election Scam? Corman is fighting as though he were a Radical Left Democrat, saying that a Forensic Audit of Pennsylvania not take place,” Trump said Monday.

“I feel certain that if Corman continues along this path of resistance, with its lack of transparency, he will be primaried and lose by big numbers,” Trump added.