Donald Trump’s supporters thought voter fraud could determine the election outcome — until he won.
Heading into Election Day, nearly 9 in 10 Trump voters said fraud was a serious issue. Afterward, just a bit over one-third said so.
Trump’s victory over Vice President Kamala Harris has scrambled public opinion about a range of other issues, too. For example, his supporters were also more likely to feel good about the economy after the election — while Harris supporters adopted a more negative outlook.
Those are among the results of a new POLITICO|Morning Consult poll, designed to measure change in public opinion before and after the election. The results largely track with recent consumer sentiment data and comments from Republican leaders.
Our new poll showed voters’ perceptions of issues like election security and the economy swung substantially post-election, with deep differences based on who they voted for. The poll also found mixed expectations for a second Trump term.
The first poll (toplines, crosstabs) was conducted from Oct. 30 to Nov. 1, the week before the election, while the second (toplines, crosstabs) was in the field from Nov. 20 through 22, two weeks after Trump’s victory. Both surveys sampled more than 4,000 registered voters, with a margin of error of 2 percentage points.
Here are some of the big takeaways we learned from the results.
Trump supporters worried less about voter fraud after he won
In polling just days before the election, Trump supporters expressed little confidence in the election outcome, with a whopping 87 percent substantially or somewhat agreeing with the statement that voter fraud was a “serious issue” that could determine the outcome of the election. Among Harris supporters, roughly half expressed similar worries.
That partisan divide disappeared after Election Day.
Post-election, both Trump and Harris supporters were less likely to think that fraud affected the outcome. The swing was especially pronounced among Trump supporters, with only 36 percent agreeing after he won that fraud was a serious issue.
Notably, confidence in the results of the 2024 election did not substantially shift voters’ beliefs and policy preferences about mail voting or voter identification laws. Republicans had pushed for their voters to adopt mail voting this fall — despite some mixed messaging from Trump himself — but Harris supporters were still more likely to favor allowing expansive mail voting.
Both before and after the election, a bit under half of Trump supporters said voters should be allowed to vote by mail regardless of whether they can make it to the polls on Election Day. Among Harris supporters, the figure was about 85 percent.
Meanwhile Trump and other Republicans have raised alarms about lack of voter identification laws in some states, but the 2024 election running securely with no serious signs of fraud in any state did not change voters’ perceptions of the issue. Nearly 80 percent of Trump supporters, and half of Harris supporters, continued to believe that all voters should be required to present identification to vote.
Voters’ perceptions of the economy are starting to flip along partisan lines
The economy was the single biggest issue for most voters going into Election Day, with 81 percent of voters in the preelection POLITICO|Morning Consult polling identifying it as “very important” to determining their vote choice. Trump voters put slightly more emphasis on the economy than Harris voters, but it was important across party lines.
What wasn’t the same for Trump and Harris supporters: What they thought of the preelection economy — and what they think now.
A week before the election, just 8 percent of self-identified Trump voters described the economy as on the “right track,” the polling found. But after Trump’s victory, that number swung to 28 percent — still a minority, but a substantial swing in a span of just a few weeks when economic conditions did not change dramatically.
On the flip side, Harris supporters were far less likely to say the economy was on the right track after the election, with just 46 percent saying so, down from 59 percent the week before Election Day.
Voters also divided along partisan lines about what Trump should do — but they agree about what they think he will do
Voters are unsurprisingly divided on how the Trump administration will go: 64 percent who voted for the president-elect said they were “very optimistic” about his presidency, while 65 percent who voted for Harris said they were “very pessimistic.”
But on certain issues, voters’ perceptions of what Trump will do, and how they feel about it, are more nuanced. Take the potential pardons of defendants involved in the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol — a longtime Trump campaign promise.
A majority of voters oppose the idea, although there are significant splits along partisan lines. In the post-election poll, Trump voters were somewhat divided, with 53 percent favoring pardons while 30 percent opposed them. (Meanwhile, 18 percent weren’t sure).
Harris voters were overwhelmingly against the idea of pardoning Jan. 6 defendants, with 74 percent strongly opposing it.
But when it came to whether they believe Trump is likely to issue those pardons, the gaps were a bit smaller: Voters think he will. Sixty-percent of Trump voters thought it was very or somewhat likely the president-elect will issue pardons or clemency, while 81 percent of Harris voters did.
The question of the treatment of Jan. 6 defendants was emblematic of broader divisions over the country’s future. Two-thirds of Harris voters said after the election they were somewhat or very pessimistic about democracy in the U.S., while three-quarters of Trump voters were optimistic.
Trump supporters were also far more optimistic than Harris supporters across a range of policy areas, with some of the greatest divides coming on national security (75 percent of Trump voters were optimistic compared with 30 percent of Harris voters) and public health (73 percent of Trump voters optimistic compared with 33 percent of Harris voters).
The gap was slightly narrower in how Trump and Harris voters thought the upcoming Republican presidency would impact their own financial situations. Seventy percent of Trump voters were optimistic on that front, but so were 42 percent of Harris voters.
