Voters support Trump on ‘rigged election’
AS DONALD Trump insists that the election will be rigged, a significant portion of voters are convinced that the White House will be “stolen” from the Republican candidate.
According to a new Politico/ Morning Consult poll, 41 percent of registered voters believe that Trump could lose the election as a result of widespread voter fraud. The results of the poll fell along party lines as 73percent of Republicans and 17percent of Democrats believed in such an outcome.
Trump has been unrelenting in his indictment of the electoral process since his campaign descended into a free-fall after the release of tapes that captured him bragging about sexual assault in 2005.
The tapes worsened a campaign already dwindling from his lacklustre debate performances.
After at least nine women accused Trump of sexual assault spanning decades, the candidate denied the claims and dismissed them as a false media narrative commissioned by the Clinton campaign.
“The election is being rigged by corrupt media pushing false allegations and outright lies in an effort to elect Hillary Clinton president,” Trump said over the weekend. “We are going to stop it. We are not going to back down.”
But the question of a rigged election appears to be a point of contention between Trump and his own running mate, Indiana Governor Mike Pence.
“We will absolutely accept the result of the election,” Pence said on Sunday. “Look, the American people will speak in an election that will culminate on November 8. But the American people are tired of the obvious bias in the national media.”
Trump has repeatedly called on his predominantly white supporters to monitor polling places, raising concerns of voter intimidation in areas with voters of colour.
“Trump said to watch your precincts. I’m going to go, for sure,” 61-year-old Ohio carpenter Steve Webb recently told the Boston Globe. “I’ll look for, well, it’s called racial profiling. Mexicans. Syrians. People who can’t speak American,” he said. “I’m going to go right up behind them. I’ll do everything legally. I want to see if they are accountable.”