NC voters trust election results, but partisan divides linger, WRAL News Poll shows

Nearly half of all Republicans say they have little to no confidence that their votes will be counted accurately in North Carolina, according to a WRAL News Poll released Friday. That’s despite success by GOP candidates in recent statewide elections and high Republican voter turnout so far this year.

The results also come amid high scrutiny over how elections are being administered in conservative western North Carolina counties after Hurricane Helene forced emergency changes to elections processes.

North Carolina is on pace to set a new record for election turnout, due in large part to higher-than-normal participation by Republicans in early voting. “Republican enthusiasm is strong out here,” state Republican Party chairman Jason Simmons wrote on social media Thursday from a western North Carolina polling place.

The WRAL poll, conducted by SurveyUSA, found that 69% of likely voters in North Carolina mostly trust the elections system, expressing either “full confidence” or “some confidence” that the results of the election will be honestly reported. A previous WRAL News Poll in September found the same topline result.

But the new poll shows that just 22% of Republican likely voters expressed full confidence in the state’s election results, and 40% said they had little to no confidence. The skepticism follows years of disproven election claims by the party’s presidential nominee, former President Donald Trump, whose claims that the 2020 election was stolen from him have been struck down dozens of times in various state and federal courts.

An opposite picture of confidence emerged among Democratic North Carolina voters: 52% expressed full confidence in the state’s election results, and 14% expressed little to no confidence, according to the WRAL poll.

At the same time, the poll found, people expressed slightly more confidence in elections officials’ ability to make sure everyone in North Carolina — even those in counties ravaged by Helene storm damage a month ago — will be able to vote. There has been a highly public, and bipartisan, effort after Helene to loosen voting rules in that heavily conservative part of the state to make it easier for voters there to cast a ballot than in other parts of the state.

The poll found 74% of likely voters were confident in those post-Helene election efforts, including substantially higher numbers of Republicans when compared with the broader question of election integrity.

‘As transparent as we possibly can’

The poll shows fraud claims by Trump and other prominent conservative politicians have had staying power even in a state where Republicans control the courts and the state legislature — and which Trump won in 2016 and 2020 — and despite the fact that there have been significant consequences for some of those behind false fraud claims and efforts to overturn the 2020 election:

• Trump and other allies face pending criminal charges, in Georgia as well as in federal court. Three 2020 Trump lawyers have pleaded guilty to criminal charges in the Georgia case.
• Another Trump attorney, former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, has been banned from practicing law in New York and Washington, D.C., due to his rejected 2020 efforts to challenge election counts. Giuliani was also ordered this month to turn over his Manhattan apartment — as well cash, luxury watches and other valuables — to two election workers in Georgia whom he owes $146 million for defamation about the 2020 elections.
• Fox News paid $787 million to settle a defamation lawsuit brought by voting machine company Dominion after the 2020 elections.

North Carolina elections officials have been trying for years to assuage Republican voters’ concerns in this state. State elections director Karen Brinson Bell said it’s been a multifaceted effort to make sure people know about the audits and other routine work that goes into safeguarding elections — and to make more data accessible to the public, for people who want to do their own research.

“We've been out there telling our story through social media, press releases, an expanded website,” she told WRAL in an interview. “More data is available on our website, for this state board of elections, than any other state elections office in the country. And it's all in the goal of being as transparent as we possibly can, so that people understand our processes.”

Brinson Bell was appointed to her job by Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper. In addition to her and the other professional staff charged with running elections, the board also has five political appointees: three Democrats and two Republicans. Amid power struggles over elections laws between the Democratic governor and Republican legislature, however, elections officials have tried to stay above the fray — including by frequently reminding voters that the vast majority of people working the polls are volunteers who are working in the same voting precinct where they live.

Brinson Bell said there are 25,000 people — from both sides of the aisle — working to make sure North Carolina’s 2024 elections go off as smoothly as possible.

“Those are bipartisan officials, appointed by the political parties and the county boards of elections, who take an oath to serve their community and serve their neighbors,” she said.

She also noted that state law typically mandates that polls can only be staffed by people from the local community. “There's an added ounce of confidence for voters, when they go into the polling places and they recognize those people,” she said.

A battleground theme

Trump continues to revisit complaints about 2020 as he visits the key battleground states, including North Carolina, that will decide the 2024 election.

At a speech Wednesday in Rocky Mount, Trump told the crowd the only reason he lost heavily Democratic California in 2020 — a state where he won about one-third of the vote — was widespread fraud.

Trump offered no explanation for how such a massive conspiracy could’ve gone undetected, particularly by his own presidential administration and hand-picked federal prosecutors who were in office during and after the 2020 election. But the crowd in Rocky Mount roared with approval as Trump said: “I believe if we had an honest election — if God came down from on high, and God said ‘I will be the voting tabulator for the day’ — I believe I would win California.”

Yet as Trump’s claims of fraud still resonate with many Republicans, the poll also shows those claims appear to have turned off a small but perhaps significant number of GOP voters.

Although 22% of Republicans as a whole said they had full faith in elections in North Carolina, the poll showed 20% of Trump supporters said the same. That indicates that some Republicans who do trust in elections have decided not to support Trump — and while it’s not a large part of the electorate, it could be enough for Democrat Kamala Harris to flip the state blue. Trump won North Carolina in 2020 by fewer than 75,000 votes, and the latest WRAL News Poll showed the candidates locked in a tie.

The Harris campaign has put effort into reaching “Never Trump” Republicans in North Carolina and other states — largely led by Republicans who say they don’t agree with Harris on everything but are turned off by Trump’s efforts and strategies to regain power.

“Donald Trump does not stand for our beliefs,” said Michael Tucker, a former Mecklenburg County GOP board member, when he helped launch the North Carolina chapter of Republicans for Harris in August. “He does not stand for anything but himself.”