FBI Director Christopher Wray recently testified before Congress that Russia has made “very active efforts to influence our elections in 2020.”
In a testimony before the House Homeland Security Committee on September 17, he said that Russians are trying “to denigrate Vice President Biden and what the Russians see as a kind of anti-Russian establishment.”
Polling from The Economist and YouGov finds that almost three in five (59%) Americans believe Russia is actively trying to influence the upcoming US presidential election.
Democrats (76%) are more likely than Independents (53%) and Republicans (48%) to believe Russia is attempting to influence the upcoming US presidential election.
Additional polling from The Economist and YouGov finds that half (50%) of Americans think that Russia favors President Donald Trump over Democratic nominee Joe Biden. One in five (20%) believe that Russia favors Biden, and 10 percent think Russia doesn’t favor a particular candidate.
Among Biden’s supporters, 81 percent believe that the Russians favor Donald Trump, and only 7 percent think the Russians favor Biden. Trump supporters are more split. While 38 percent think that the Russians favor Biden, 30 percent think that Russia supports their chosen candidate.
See the toplines and crosstabs from this week’s Economist/YouGov Poll
Methodology: The Economist survey was conducted by YouGov using a nationally representative sample of 1,500 U.S. adult citizens interviewed online between September 13 - 15, 2020. This sample was weighted according to gender, age, race, and education based on the American Community Survey, conducted by the US Bureau of the Census, as well as 2016 Presidential vote, registration status, geographic region, and news interest. Respondents were selected from YouGov’s opt-in panel to be representative of all US citizens. The margin of error is approximately 3.4% for the overall sample.
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