Over half of Republicans reportedly believe that former President Donald Trump should be president and the U.S. Capitol Riots were caused by leftists as per a Ipsos/Reuters poll released last Friday.
The Christian Post said that a "slight majority" of Republicans believe that the U.S. Capitol riots were caused by "violent left-wing activists" targeting to discredit Trump.
"Former President Donald Trump's stronghold over the Republican party remains. His refusal to concede the 2020 election and calls of widespread fraud have raised doubts about the integrity of its results among his Republican base. Consequently, 56% of Republicans believe the election was rigged or the result of illegal voting, and 53% think Donald Trump is the actual President, not Joe Biden," Ipsos/Reuters said in its Topline Findings of the survey.
"Only 30% of Republicans feel confident that absentee or mail-in ballots were accurately counted, compared to 86% of Democrats and 55% of independents," they added. "As a result, 87% of Republicans believe it is important that the government place new limits on voting to protect elections from fraud. Finally, 63% percent of Republicans think Donald Trump should run for President again in 2024, compared to only 8% of Democrats and 23% of independents."
Ipsos conducted the study on behalf of Thomson Reuters online on May 17-19, 2021 with a sample base of 2,007 adults aged 18 years old and above who reside in the United States, Hawaii, and Alaska.
The respondents, as per the survey's literature, comprise a mixture of 196 Independents, 754 Republicans, and 909 Democrats. The survey was conducted randomly from Ipsos' online panel and did not include a margin of error being an online poll. However, the survey has a credibility interval of 3.7% points for Democrats, more or less 4.1% for Republicans, and more or less 8.0% for Independents.
The questions asked were classified into 10 types of questions that include the respondent's profiling. The respondents were asked "[The 2020 election was stolen from Donald Trump] To what extent do you agree or disagree with the following statements?" to which 48% responded with "strongly disagree," 18% "strongly agree," 13% "don't know," 12% "somewhat agree," and 9% "somewhat disagree."
Another question ran, "[Trump is at least partly to blame for starting the deadly Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol] To what extent do you agree or disagree with the following statements?" where the respondents said 43% "strongly agree," 21% "strongly disagree," 15% "somewhat agree," 12% "somewhat disagree," and 10% "don't know."
While 40% "strongly disagree" to the question, "[The Jan. 6 riot at the Capitol was led by violent left-wing protestors trying to make Trump look bad] To what extent do you agree or disagree with the following statements?" the other respondents replied with equal status on "strongly agree" and "don't know," at 17%, 15% "somewhat agree," and 12% "somewhat disagree."
The survey also asked if the respondents think Trump should not run for President again in 2024 to which 49% "strongly agree," 22% "strongly disagree," and equal stance on "somewhat agree" and "don't know" at 10%, and 9% on "somewhat disagree."
It's worth noting that left-center Thomson Reuters commissioned the study. Media Bias Fact Check, an outlet dedicated to exposing media bias and deceptive news practices, said left-center-biased media, which have a "slight to moderate liberal bias ... often publish factual information that utilizes loaded words (wording that attempts to influence an audience by using appeal to emotion or stereotypes) to favor liberal causes." This provides insight on how some of the survey's questions were worded.
