Majority of Americans Fear Foreign Election Influence

A new poll shows a large majority of Americans believe foreign governments will try to influence the 2020 election, including voters from both the Democratic and Republican parties.

The Pew Research Center released a poll on February 12 that shows 71 percent of U.S. respondents believe foreign election interference is either very likely or somewhat likely during the 2020 election. This is up by four points from the same poll conducted by Pew in 2018, which recorded that 67 percent of respondents believed a foreign government would influence the congressional mid-term elections at that time.

There was a significant difference between how Democrats and Republicans responded to the possibility of foreign election interference for 2020. 54 percent of Democrats responded that they believed it was very likely that other nations are trying to influence the 2020 elections, compared to just 23 percent of Republicans. Still, a majority of both Democrats and Republicans believed there was some likelihood of foreign election influence in 2020, with 84 percent of Democrats and 59 percent of Republicans.

The poll went on to show how 82 percent of Democrats who see foreign influence as likely believe it’s a major problem, compared to only 39 percent of Republicans who see foreign influence as likely.