Minnesota Poll: Most are confident in election system, think voting by mail is secure

An overwhelming majority of Minnesotans are confident that votes will be counted accurately in the November presidential election, a new poll found.

The Star Tribune/MPR News/KARE 11 Minnesota Poll found that about 50% of likely voters said they were highly confident there will be an accurate count, and another 29% reported moderate confidence. The findings come four years after former President Donald Trump and other leading Republicans sowed doubt in the results of the 2020 election.

Just 12% of respondents reported that they had no confidence in an accurate count, according to the latest Minnesota Poll, and 9% said they had low confidence.

(Scroll to the end of this article for full results for each question. Click here for the poll methodology, a demographic breakdown of the sample and a map of the poll regions.)

“I really have faith in the Minnesota voting system,” said Dianne Hopen, a 76-year-old election judge and Democrat from West St. Paul.

Hopen said she’s seen firsthand how rigorous the state’s election system is. Poll workers are thoroughly trained and election judges are bipartisan, she said. The state also tracks people’s ballots so they can’t vote multiple times.

“It’s not like somebody can go around getting ballots all over the place and voting more than just their legal one vote,” said Hopen, who volunteered for a Star Tribune voter panel but was not part of the poll.

Ninety-nine percent of Democrats and 73% of independents said they were confident that votes will be counted accurately. Among Republican poll respondents, 60% said they were confident in an accurate count while about 40% reported having low or no confidence.

The poll’s findings are based on interviews with 800 likely Minnesota voters conducted Sept. 16-18. The poll’s margin of sampling error is plus or minus 3.5 percentage points.

Nearly three in four Minnesotans said they plan to vote in person on Election Day instead of voting early.

Half of the likely voters surveyed said they think voting by mail is protected from fraud, while 38% said they think it is vulnerable and 12% weren’t sure. Opinions differed starkly along party lines; 83% of Democrats said they believe voting by mail is protected from fraud, while 78% of Republicans said they think it is vulnerable.

Keith Blad, a 74-year-old Republican poll respondent from Darwin, Minn., is skeptical of voting by mail and said it should be limited to people who cannot physically make it to their polling place. Everyone else should have to submit their ballots in person, he said, and all voters should be required to show their driver’s license.

Blad said he believes the 2020 election was “stolen” from former President Donald Trump. Reviews in state after state upheld President Joe Biden’s victory.

“I don’t think it was a fair-run election,” said Blad, who plans to vote for Trump in November.

Martin Olague, a Lakeville Democrat who responded to the poll, said he hasn’t seen any credible evidence of widespread voter fraud. Olague, 44, said that even if there were a few cases, it likely wouldn’t be enough to overturn an election.

“The margins haven’t been close enough where it feels like it would make that much of a difference,” Olague said of Minnesota’s recent elections. He added that he’s also confident that voting by mail is protected against fraud.

“People have been voting by mail for decades,” Olague said. “Ironically enough, voting by mail used to be very beneficial to the Republicans because it was beneficial for older voters.”

FULL RESULTS

The Star Tribune, MPR News and KARE 11 interviewed 800 Minnesota registered voters between Sept. 16 and Sept. 18, 2024. All indicated they are likely to vote in the November general election. Findings from questions about election integrity and voting are below. Totals may not add up to 100% due to rounding. Click here for details about how the poll was conducted, the demographics of the 800 respondents and a map of the Minnesota regions used in this poll.