Majority expects foreign governments to meddle in midterms: poll

The majority of Americans believe that a foreign government will try to meddle with the 2018 midterm elections, according to a new poll from Axios and SurveyMonkey released Tuesday.

The poll found that 58 percent of those surveyed said it was very or somewhat likely for a foreign government to try to influence the elections in November, compared to 38 percent who said they thought foreign meddling was very unlikely or would not happen at all. 

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A majority of Democrats — 77 percent — said foreign powers were very or somewhat likely to meddle, compared to the only 42 percent of Republicans who said it was a very likely possibility.

Only 64 percent of those polled said they were confident their votes were going to be correctly counted during the midterms, while more than one-third, 34 percent, said they are not very or at all confident that their vote will be counted correctly.

A similar Axios poll from March found that a majority of respondents don’t believe President Trump will stop foreign governments from meddling in the midterms.

The poll comes as voter confidence is something experts worry about heading into the midterms.

Reuters reported in May that officials in 14 districts where congressional races are expected to be close are concerned about malicious actors accessing voting data and changing vote outcomes.

The new Axios/SurveyMonkey poll was conducted between May 23-26 among 2,499 adults in the United States. The margin of error is plus or minus 2.5 percentage points.