Originally published 2020-11-09.
In the run-up to the 2020 US presidential election, a poll by JL Partners for The Independent found that 72% of Americans were very or quite concerned that violence or rioting could follow the vote. The worry crossed party lines: more than 77% of Donald Trump's supporters and 73% of Joe Biden's said they shared it. The survey of 1,034 adults was published on 21 October 2020, two weeks before Election Day, and the tense weeks that followed showed why so many people were uneasy.
What the poll found
Beyond the headline figure, the survey picked up a broader anxiety about the count itself. According to reports of the results:
- 72% of respondents were very or quite concerned about post-election violence.
- Over 77% of Trump voters and 73% of Biden voters expressed that concern.
- 68% were worried the result would not be clear.
- 66% expected no clear winner to emerge soon after polling day.
The poll was taken before the vote, not after the result was called, as some later coverage implied. That matters: it captured expectations going into the election rather than reactions to the outcome.
Fear is not the same as support
It is easy to misread a figure like 72%. The question measured concern, not approval. Most people who said they feared rioting were worried about what others might do, not saying they would take part. Supporters of each candidate were often afraid of the other side.
A single poll also has limits. With around a thousand respondents, the margin of error is roughly three percentage points either way, and small subgroups such as each candidate's voters carry larger uncertainty. The gap between 77% and 73% is therefore too small to say one camp was clearly more worried. The useful takeaway is the broad picture: a large majority of Americans, whatever their politics, entered the election expecting trouble.
Why the 2020 count fuelled suspicion
The pandemic changed how Americans voted. Record numbers cast ballots by mail, and the two campaigns gave their supporters opposite advice: Biden encouraged postal voting, while Trump repeatedly cast doubt on it and urged his supporters to vote in person.
Several key states counted in-person votes first and processed postal ballots later, partly because of state laws that barred early processing. Analysts had predicted a "red mirage": an early Trump lead on election night that would shrink as mail ballots were added. That is exactly what happened in states such as Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin. For people already primed to distrust postal voting, the shifting totals looked suspicious, even though election officials had explained in advance why it would happen.
Major networks called the race for Biden on 7 November 2020. He won 306 electoral votes to Trump's 232 and about seven million more votes nationwide. Trump refused to concede, claimed without evidence that the election had been stolen, and launched dozens of lawsuits. Courts, including judges he had appointed, rejected almost all of them, and state officials of both parties certified the results.
Warnings before Election Day
Civil society groups had been preparing for a disputed result for months. A coalition called Protect the Results planned some 250 events across the country, from Florida to Nevada, to be activated if Trump tried to stop the count or reject the outcome. Sean Eldridge, one of its organisers, told reporters: "This is pretty unprecedented in American politics to have to be worried about whether a sitting president will accept the election results."
The Brennan Center for Justice, a nonpartisan law and policy institute, had warned that Trump's suggestions of sending law enforcement or the National Guard to polling places amounted to threats of voter intimidation. It noted that federal and state laws prohibit deploying the military, police or private vigilantes to polls to intimidate voters, and urged people not to be deterred from voting. Armed demonstrators did gather outside some counting centres after the vote, though polling day itself passed largely without violence.
Was a president's refusal to concede unprecedented?
Disputed elections are not new in the US. In 1876 the result was settled by a congressional commission, and in 2000 Al Gore contested the Florida count until the Supreme Court ended the recount, after which he conceded. But no defeated sitting president in modern times had refused to accept a certified result and worked to overturn it. Historians widely regarded 2020 as a break with the tradition of a peaceful transfer of power that dates back to 1801.
What happened next
The fears captured by the poll were partly realised on 6 January 2021, when a crowd of Trump supporters stormed the US Capitol as Congress met to certify Biden's victory. Several people died in connection with the attack, more than 140 police officers were injured, and the certification was completed in the early hours of the next morning.
The House select committee that investigated the attack published its final report on 22 December 2022. It concluded that Trump had pursued a multi-part plan to overturn the election and failed to act to stop the violence, and it referred him to the Justice Department for possible prosecution. Federal charges brought in 2023 were dropped after Trump won the 2024 election, and on returning to office in January 2025 he pardoned or commuted the sentences of most people convicted over the riot.
Looking back, the October 2020 poll reads less like a panic and more like a public sense that the system was under unusual strain. It is also a reminder that confidence in how votes are counted is as important to democracy as the counting itself.
Sources: Geo News, reporting The Independent/JL Partners poll (October 2020); PBS NewsHour: Jan. 6 committee final report. Poll commissioned by The Independent; Brennan Center statement as quoted by AFP.
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