Half of Republicans in new poll say millions of ballots were cast illegally in 2016

Almost half of the Republican respondents in a new poll said they believe millions of voters illegally cast ballots in the 2016 presidential election, as President Trump has claimed.

Forty-eight percent of Republicans in the HuffPost/YouGov poll said they believe as many as 5 million votes were cast illegally, compared to 17 percent who said they do not. More than one-third of Republican respondents, 35 percent, said they are unsure.

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A majority of Democratic respondents, 51 percent, said they don’t believe millions of people voted illegally. Approximately one-quarter of Democrats said they believe millions of ballots were cast illegally, while the other 26 percent said they are unsure.

More than one-quarter of all respondents, 28 percent, said they believed millions of illegal votes were cast, pollsters found. Roughly one-third of all voters said the opposite and roughly one-third said they are unsure.

The president has refused to back down on his claim that millions of voters illegally cast ballots in the 2016 election, despite providing no evidence to support the assertion.

White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders last month defended Trump’s claims about widespread voter fraud in the election, but said the administration has no evidence to back up the claims because states have refused to cooperate with a federal review.

“The president still strongly feels there was a large amount of voter fraud and attempted to do a thorough review of it. A lot of the states didn’t want to cooperate and participate,” Sanders said.

The new poll of 1,000 adults was conducted between May 17-20. Its margin of error is 3.7 percentage points.