Republican loyalty to Trump, rioters climbs in 3 years after Jan. 6 attack

Three years after the Jan. 6 attack, Republicans are more sympathetic to those who stormed the U.S. Capitol and more likely to absolve Donald Trump of responsibility for the attack than they were in 2021, according to a Washington Post-University of Maryland poll.

Republicans' increasing loyalty to the former president comes as he simultaneously campaigns for reelection and fights criminal charges over his attempt to stay in power after losing in 2020. Republicans are now less likely to believe Jan. 6 participants were "mostly violent," less likely to believe Trump bears responsibility for the attack and are slightly less likely to view Joe Biden's election as legitimate than they were in a December 2021 Post-UMD survey.

In follow-up interviews, some said their views have changed because they now believe the riot was instigated by law enforcement to suppress political dissent — a baseless conspiracy theory that has been promoted heavily in right-wing media and by Trump in his speeches and in his legal fight against the four-count federal indictment he faces in Washington, D.C.

"From a historical perspective, these results would be chilling to many analysts," said Michael J. Hanmer, director of the Center for Democracy and Civic Engagement at the University of Maryland.

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But Republican views are more fractured than those of Democrats, who remain largely in agreement that the riot was a violent threat to democracy for which Trump bears responsibility. "In the current context of hyper-partisanship, there seem to be some divisions among Republicans," Hanmer said. Independents, according to the poll, mostly side with Democrats.

As Trump leads the Republican field for president by a wide margin, the poll reveals several key takeaways.

Despite audits in multiple states and nationally televised congressional hearings in which state officials and aides to Trump confirmed there was no evidence of fraud in the 2020 election, more Americans question Biden's victory than they did two years ago.

When The Post and UMD asked in December 2021 whether Biden was legitimately elected, 69 percent of Americans said he was. Now, that's down to 62 percent. Slightly fewer Republicans today (31 percent) say Biden's election was legitimate compared with 2021 (39 percent). More than one-third of Americans, or 36 percent, do not accept Biden's victory as legitimate.

Older Americans are slightly more likely than younger ones to say Biden was legitimately elected, as are voters with college degrees. About 3 in 10 people who get most of their information from Fox News think Biden won legitimately in 2020.

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Several voters interviewed by The Post cited what they said was evidence of voter fraud, in particular the long-debunked claim that Georgia election workers were caught on video putting fake ballots into tallies. The two women in that video recently won a $148 million judgment against former Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani for spreading those defamatory claims.

Most Americans, 55 percent, believe the storming of the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, was "an attack on democracy that should never be forgotten," with majorities of Democrats and independents holding this view. But most Republicans and Trump voters reject this view.

More than 7 in 10 Republicans say too much is being made of the attack and that it is "time to move on." Fewer than 2 in 10 (18 percent) of Republicans say that Jan. 6 protesters were "mostly violent," dipping from 26 percent in 2021. Currently, 77 percent of Democrats and 54 percent of independents say the protesters were mostly violent, little changed from 2021.

"There were so many people that felt the election was rigged. It was not right for them to break in like that, but they were fed up and frustrated and they were whipped into a frenzy by the FBI and others," said Colleen Michaels, 59, of Woodsfield, Ohio.

A Republican voter, she said she would have attended herself had she not had a stroke. Her sister went, but did not go in the building after seeing people retreat with chemical spray in their eyes. What Michaels heard from the people who went, combined with security footage released to and selectively edited by former Fox News host Tucker Carlson, leads her to believe in the conspiracy theory that undercover FBI agents instigated the riot.

Other Trump supporters place more blame on the rioters. Peggy Orr, 67, of North Platte, Neb., is a Republican who thinks the rioters did threaten democracy, even though she did not believe the 2020 election was legitimate.

"I've never joined a protest or tried to break windows because I didn't like the way the election went, and I don't think people should," Orr said. "You have to accept the results."

The Post-UMD poll finds that 55 percent of Republicans think legal punishments for the people who broke into the Capitol have been "fair" or "not harsh enough," though that is down from 64 percent in 2021. Seven in 10 independents and about 9 in 10 Democrats say punishments have been fair or insufficient.

Republicans today also feel more defensive of Trump than they did in 2021. Two years ago, 60 percent of Americans overall said Trump bears "a great deal" or "a good amount" of responsibility for the attack; now, 53 percent do. Again, Republicans are driving that change - 14 percent assign him a great or good amount of culpability, about half as many as did in 2021 (27 percent).

"In the beginning when I heard about it, I was very upset that Trump didn't come out and say, 'Stop,'" said Gloria Bowden of Jacksonville, Fla., a 68-year-old independent voter who leans Republican. But now, having seen video clips of police using tear gas and rubber bullets on rioters, she thinks the attack was instigated by law enforcement.

"I still wish he would have [told people to leave the Capitol earlier], but I don't know that it would have mattered," Bowden said. "It was planned." She found the House hearings "totally one-sided," and criticism of Trump over the past three years has led her to empathize more with his reluctance to intervene during the riot. "The man had been through so much in four years that at one point you finally say, 'Let them do it,'" she said.

A 56 percent majority of Americans say Trump is probably guilty of a criminal conspiracy to overturn the 2020 election results through false claims of voter fraud, including 40 percent who believe he is "definitely guilty." Republicans are less united than Democrats. Nearly 9 in 10 Democrats believe Trump is guilty, while nearly 7 in 10 Republicans think he is innocent. Among independents, nearly twice as many think Trump is guilty as think he is innocent.

A similar majority of Americans, 57 percent, say the Justice Department is "holding Trump accountable under the law like anyone else" by prosecuting him. A fifth of Republicans agree; the vast majority (77 percent) believe Trump is being targeted for political reasons, as he has repeatedly claimed without evidence.

Two of four criminal prosecutions that Trump is facing are related to attempts to stay in power after the 2020 election. In D.C., he faces a four-count federal criminal indictment of conspiring to defraud the United States, conspiring to obstruct an official proceeding, obstructing a congressional proceeding and conspiracy against rights - in this case, "the right to vote, and to have one's vote counted." He has been charged in state court in Georgia with allegedly trying to block the election results there.

"I think he should be held accountable," said Ed Quigley, a 65-year-old retiree from outside Myrtle Beach. He is a registered Republican, but he voted against Trump in both 2016 and 2020, and sees Trump as a would-be autocrat responsible for the events of Jan. 6. "Nobody should be above the law."

Despite most believing Trump is guilty, the poll finds fewer than half of Americans, 46 percent, say his actions related to Jan. 6 should disqualify him from the presidency - a question that is likely to head to the U.S. Supreme Court now that multiple states have determined that he engaged in insurrection and should be barred from appearing on primary ballots. Another 17 percent say they cast doubts on his fitness to serve, while 33 percent say they are not relevant.

Just over a quarter of Americans are confident that Trump would accept the results of the election if he loses the next presidential race, while 65 percent think President Biden would. A 71 percent majority are not confident Trump will accept losing in 2024, which is more than twice the share who say this of Biden. Nearly half of Republicans doubt Trump will accept the election if he loses, rising to 73 percent among independents and 93 percent of Democrats.

For many Republicans, refusal to adhere to that democratic norm is not a dealbreaker.

"He's a fighter - he loves to get in that courtroom and would appeal anything that's up against him, and I think that's what people really like about him," said Michael Bettger, 49, of Austin, Ark. Biden "would accept defeat" because "he's a political person, and he does basically everything everybody tells him to do," Bettger said. "He doesn't think outside the box."

He doesn’t see a post-election battle over the legitimacy of the results as a threat to democracy, because after 2020 he no longer believes that voting matters, saying, “We chose Donald Trump, but we didn’t get him.”