The share of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents who believe that President Joe Biden’s 2020 election win was not legitimate has ticked back up, according to a new CNN poll fielded throughout July. All told, 69% of Republicans and Republican-leaners say Biden’s win was not legitimate, up from 63% earlier this year and through last fall, even as there is no evidence of election fraud that would have altered the outcome of the contest.
It’s not the same. Most people calling the 2016 election a sham will admit that Trump did technically win by the rules as written, but also think that those rules are bullshit because they allowed a multi-million person majority to be shut out in favor of a malevolent moron. The people saying Biden lost are saying he literally cheated and that there’s a conspiracy of thousands of government employees collaborating to break the rules and subvert the will of the people; that the multi-million majority literally doesn’t exist. This is just as disingenuous as comparing the top secret documents that Trump hid to the ones that Biden and Pence handed over immediately on request.