The Headline:

Poll: Just a Quarter of Republicans Accept Election Outcome (NPR  December 9, 2020)

This headline seems to be saying that just a quarter of Republicans accept that Biden won the election. That’s pretty amazing, assuming it’s true. But it isn’t true, at least not according to the poll in question.

The first hint that something was amiss in the NPR article was this sentence:

“A solid majority of Americans trust that the results of the 2020 presidential election are accurate, but only about a quarter of Republicans do, according to a new NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist survey.”

Note that doubt about accuracy is not the same as doubt about outcome. In other words, one can doubt the official vote count is accurate but that’s different than doubting whether an accurate recount would change the election outcome. I’m not nitpicking here. Consider:

“Although only 18 percent of Republicans had said the [election] results would be unreliable prior to Election Day, now 64 percent feel the same way following Biden’s victory. …However, despite their lack of trust in the results, Republicans are split on whether or not the outcome will change. Thirty-eight percent of Republicans believe the results will be overturned, while 45 percent say it’s unlikely.” — Poll: 70 percent of Republicans don’t think the election was free and fair Politico November 9, 2020 

Even NPR in a previous piece had made the distinction between the accuracy of counted votes and election outcomes:

[Various] “counties all experienced issues with missing or unscanned votes related to human error — but the numbers weren't significant enough to change the outcome of the election.”  NPR November 19, 2020

Not to mention Trump’s very own Attorney General:

“ ‘To date, we have not seen fraud on a scale that could have affected a different outcome in the election,’ Attorney General William Barr told the AP.” ABC News  December 1, 2020

Why does this matter? Because the media keeps misrepresenting Republican views in what appears to be a never-ending quest to portray Republicans and Trump-supporters as a bunch of deluded idiots. Such misrepresentations just make it all that easier for half of the country to ignore the other half - an outcome that further erodes the ability of this country to solve its problems.

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Here’s a link to the PBS NewsHour/Marist Poll: http://maristpoll.marist.edu/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/NPR_PBS-NewsHour_Marist-Poll_USA-NOS-and-Tables_202012071625.pdf#page=3 and this is the actual question asked of respondents: “Do you trust that the results of the 2020 election are accurate, or not?”