80% of Americans support voter photo ID laws: Monmouth poll
Four-fifths of Americans support laws that require voters to show photo identification in order to cast a ballot in elections, according to a new poll by Monmouth University.
In findings released Monday, Monmouth reported that 80% of respondents supported photo ID laws for voters, while only 18% of respondents opposed them.
Some 62% of Democrats, 91% of Republicans and 87% of independents said they were in favor of the laws that protect election integrity.
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Nevertheless, the same poll found strong support for making the voting process easier, with 71% of respondents agreeing with making it easier, while only 16% said it should be harder.
“The poll contains some seemingly conflicting information on voter access,” said Patrick Murray, director of the West Long Branch, New Jersey-based Monmouth University Polling Institute, in a statement. “The bottom line seems to be that most Democrats and Republicans want to take the potential for election results to be questioned off the table. The problem, though, is they aren’t likely to agree on how to get there.”
The sample for the poll was 810 adults in the United States, who were interviewed by telephone from June 9-14, with a margin of error of +/- 3.5 percentage points.
Another finding of the poll was that 32% of Americans believe that the results of the 2020 presidential election came via widespread voter fraud, while 61% say that Joe Biden won “fair and square.”
According to Monmouth, this number has remained consistent over the course of four polls conducted since last November, while those who said Biden won “fair and square” was slightly smaller than the 65% reported in a January poll.
“At first glance in the crosstabs, it looks like the number of ‘Republicans’ who believe this has been trending down while the number of independents who agree has ticked up,” stated Monmouth.
“However, this appears to be a product of a shift in how Republicans identify themselves, with some moving their self-affiliation from being partisan to being an ‘independent’ who leans partisan.”
Monmouth noted that, when combining those who identify as Republican and those who lean Republican, the percent of respondents who say that Biden did not win fairly remains fairly steady, peaking in January with 69%, being 64% in March, and now standing at 63%.
According to the National Conference of State Legislators, 36 states request or require "voters to show some form of identification at the polls,” while 14 states “use other methods to verify the identity of voters,” such as a signature.
“Proponents see increasing requirements for identification as a way to prevent in-person voter impersonation and increase public confidence in the election process,” explained the NCSL in a May article.
“Opponents say there is little fraud of this kind, and the burden on voters unduly restricts the right to vote and imposes unnecessary costs and administrative burdens on elections administrators.”
