Poll: 82 percent of voters say conceding the election is important

An overwhelming majority of registered voters say it’s important for the losing candidate to concede after election results are known, a new Hill-HarrisX poll finds.

Eighty-Two percent of respondents in the Aug. 25-28 survey said they believed conceding was important, while 18 percent said it is unimportant.

While the majority of voters surveyed said it is important for the losing candidate to concede, the poll yielded nuanced results based on different demographics. 

Twenty percent of respondents who did not have a four-year college education were more likely to say conceding elections is not important. Sixteen percent of those who have a four-year degree said the same. 

The same goes for those with a yearly income of less than $75,000.

Partisanship was also an indictor of whether or not voters viewed concession as important.

The survey found Republican voters to be 9 percentage points less likely than Democratic voters and 3 percentage points less likely than independent voters to say conceding was important.

Similarly, 20 percent of respondents who support President Trump said conceding the election was unimportant compared to 13 percent of Democratic nominee Joe Biden’s supporters who said the same.

The Hill-HarrisX poll was conducted online among 971 registered voters between Aug. 25 and 28. It has a margin of error of plus or minus 3.1 percentage points. 

—Gabriela Schulte