A majority of Iowa's likely GOP caucusgoers believe Trump won in 2020, Iowa Poll finds

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A majority of voters likely to attend the Iowa Republican caucuses believe that former President Donald Trump won the 2020 presidential election over President Joe Biden, a new Des Moines Register/NBC News/Mediacom Iowa Poll shows.

Asked whether “you believe or not believe Donald Trump’s claims he won the 2020 presidential election,” 51% of likely Republican caucusgoers say they believe them, 41% do not and 8% are unsure.

Among self-identified Republicans, factoring out the independents, Democrats and members of other parties who say they plan to caucus with the GOP, the portion who believe Trump’s claims is even higher, 60%, while 33% do not.

Those beliefs linger despite the lack of evidence of substantial voter fraud in the 2020 election and dozens of court cases in which judges, some of whom Trump appointed, threw out fraud claims.

Trump continues to push those unsupported claims of a stolen contest and now faces two criminal indictments accusing him and his allies of trying to overturn the results.

The polling shows that the proportion of likely Republican caucusgoers who believe Trump won the 2020 election increased after he was indicted in Georgia on conspiracy charges to overturn election results there.

In the two days of polling before the Georgia indictment, 47% of likely GOP caucusgoers said they believed Trump’s claims he won the 2020 election. In the three days of polling after the indictment, those who believed he won rose to 53%.

Poll respondent Diane Bird, a 55-year-old from Fort Madison, said she will support Trump in the caucuses and doesn’t believe the results of the 2020 election.

That election so discouraged her that she briefly decided she would no longer vote, she said, before later changing her mind.

“I do believe that (Trump) was cheated,” Bird said. “There’s many people that I know that call Biden the illegitimate president, that he cheated. And I believe that because I saw it on TV.”

Mike Brennaman, a 55-year-old retiree from Kalona, previously backed Trump but has moved on, now looking at North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum and former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie.

He said he was exasperated by Trump’s continual claims about 2020, saying “he should go away.”

“He says he won. He lost,” Brennaman said. “I mean, come on, accept it.”

The poll of 406 likely Republican caucusgoers was conducted Aug. 13 through 17 by Selzer & Co. of Des Moines. It has a margin of error of plus or minus 4.9 percentage points.

The findings indicate that Trump’s frequent though baseless accusations since November 2020 of a stolen election and widespread fraud have left an imprint on much of the Republican Party in Iowa — particularly those who continue to prefer Trump in the 2024 campaign cycle.

Among respondents who name Trump as their first-choice candidate, 83% say they believe his claims of winning the 2020 election.

Other groups that saw high support for Trump’s 2020 claims include those with an income less than $70,000 (69%), evangelical Christians (62%) and women aged 55 and over (63%).

But majorities in several demographic groups do not believe his claims about the 2020 election: 52% of independents and 52% of those with a college degree or more education.

J. Ann Selzer, who conducted the Iowa Poll, said although some of those groups are small, they’re worth monitoring to see if support for the former president’s claims wavers in the future.

“It’s always interesting to see if they stay there or move in and out of alignment with the trend,” Selzer said.

After the 2020 election, Trump and his allies filed upward of 60 lawsuits in state and federal courts aiming to overturn results, according to USA TODAY. Almost all of them were defeated.

In the years since, Trump has continued to assert with no evidence that the election was rigged and is now charged in two criminal cases connected to his efforts to overturn the results.

In Washington, D.C., Trump is accused of derailing the federal transfer of power between November 2020 and Jan. 6, 2021; and in Georgia, of urging officials to overturn the state’s results in his favor.

Galen Bacharier covers politics for the Register. Reach him at gbacharier@registermedia.com or (573) 219-7440, and follow him on Twitter @galenbacharier.

About the Iowa Poll

The Iowa Poll, conducted Aug. 13-17, 2023, for The Des Moines Register, NBC News and Mediacom by Selzer & Co. of Des Moines, is based on telephone interviews with 406 registered voters in Iowa who say they will definitely or probably attend the 2024 Republican caucuses.

Interviewers with Quantel Research contacted 2,953 randomly selected voters from the Iowa secretary of state’s voter registration list by telephone. The sample was supplemented with additional phone number lookups. Interviews were administered in English. Responses for all contacts were adjusted by age, sex and congressional district to reflect their proportions among voters in the list.

Questions based on the sample of 406 voters likely to attend the 2024 Iowa Republican caucuses have a maximum margin of error of plus or minus 4.9 percentage points. This means that if this survey were repeated using the same questions and the same methodology, 19 times out of 20, the findings would not vary from the true population value by more than plus or minus 4.9 percentage points. Results based on smaller samples of respondents — such as by gender or age — have a larger margin of error.

Republishing the copyright Iowa Poll without credit to The Des Moines Register, NBC News and Mediacom is prohibited.

This article originally appeared on Des Moines Register: Most likely GOP caucusgoers think Trump won in 2020, Iowa Poll finds