A Monmouth University poll found that US presidential candidate Joe Biden has maintained his national lead over President Donald Trump, with results much the same as those of the August polls. The poll also found that voters are not confident that the election will be fair or that election results will be accurate. The poll found that Biden has a 9-point lead among registered voters. He is supported by 51% while Trump is supported by 42%, with the rest of the vote going to third party candidates. Monmouth University's likely-voter model shows that Biden leads by seven points among likely voters. The poll found that a significant number of voters would be suspicious of elections results, regardless of who is elected. Only 22% of voters are very confident that the election will be conducted “fairly and accurately,” 39% of voters are somewhat confident, 24% are not too confident and 13% are not confident at all. Independent University Polling Institute director Patrick Murray said that the majority view is generally more important when describing public opinion, but that “in this case, minority opinion could be sizable enough to have an impact on the election's legitimacy.” Murray went on to say that “the question is whether any disbelief in the outcome might lead to other consequences.” Poll findings indicated a few possible reasons for distrust in the fairness and accuracy of the election. One reason is many voters' belief that the Trump campaign will probably cheat. Some 38% of voters think that it is very likely that “the Trump campaign will try to cheat if necessary to win,” while 14% say that this scenario is somewhat likely. A quarter of respondents think that the Biden campaign is very likely to cheat and 14% also think it is somewhat likely. Another factor that may be influencing voters' trust in the accuracy of the election is foreign involvement. Almost two-thirds (64%) of registered voters think that the Russian government is attempting to influence the results of the election and 57% think that the Chinese government is trying to impact results. A reason that voters may doubt the election's outcome is that 55% of voters believe in secret voters who support Trump but don't publicly express this support. If secret voters do not materialize on Election Day, there is a question of whether shocked Republicans may “reject the validity of the result,” according to Murray. Murray said that there is “plenty of evidence that there was no measurable secret vote in 2016 or this year.” However, Murray warned that “voter's belief that a secret Trump vote exists a very real phenomenon.” The poll was conducted just days after The Atlantic reported multiple disparaging remarks made by Trump about US service members and that poll results showed voters believe Biden has more respect for US troops than Trump. However, the poll found that this had little impact on the overall race for the presidency. The poll was conducted by Monmouth University Polling Institute from September 3-8 by telephone and has a +/- 3.6 percentage point sampling margin of error.
