Poll: Donald Trump is 'true' president, majority of Republicans say

NEW YORK - After months of raising doubts about the integrity of the presidential election to outright accusations of "rigging," former President Donald Trump appears to have such a stronghold on the GOP that more than half of Republicans believe that he is the actual president, according to a new poll.

An Ipsos/Reuters poll of U.S. adults showed that 56% of Republicans believe the election was rigged or the result of illegal voting and 53% think Trump is the "true" president right now — not Joe Biden, who won the November election.

In a message on his website, Trump reacted to the poll, saying, "I always knew America was smart!"

Biden and his running mate, Kamala Harris, won the 2020 election with 306 electoral votes to Trump and Vice President Mike Pence's 232 electoral votes, according to Ballotpedia, a nonpartisan online encyclopedia. Biden/Harris garnered about 81 million votes nationwide to Trump/Pence's 74 million.

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The poll, which was released under the headline "The Big Lie," found that 30% of Republicans said they are confident that absentee or mail-in ballots were accurately counted, compared with 86% of Democrats and 55% of independents.

Claims of problems with those ballots have been repeatedly debunked.

Trump has suggested he may run for president again — and his party certainly wants him to. The poll found that 63% of Republicans believe Trump should run again in 2024, whereas just 8% of Democrats do. 

The market research firm Ipsos surveyed 2,007 adults in the United States via an online interview from May 17-19, 2021.

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