Jeph Ajobaju, Chief Copy Editor
Public opinion is shifting against Donald Trump, who seeks to undermine the United States electoral system by conjuring up falsehoods, as 79 per cent of Americans say they believe Joe Biden won the ballot on November 3.
Biden on Tuesday projected confidence about a transition effort he said is “well underway” even as Trump and his administration attempt to impede it.
He called Trump’s refusal to concede the election that he lost “an embarrassment” that “will not help the President’s legacy.” But he also told reporters that he believes Republicans will eventually acknowledge his victory, CNN reports
The Trump administration’s refusal to initiate the transition process “does not change the dynamic at all in what we’re able to do,” Biden said.
“We don’t see anything that’s slowing us down, quite frankly.”
Nearly 80 per cent of Americans, including more than half of Republicans, recognise Biden as the winner of the election after most media outlets called the race for him on Saturday based on his leads in critical battleground states, according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll.
Only 3 per cent said Trump won.
Biden’s unassailable lead
Biden needed 270 Electoral College votes to win. He had 279 of those votes to 214 for Trump with results in three states not yet complete, according to Edison Research.
In the popular vote, Biden got 76.3 million, or 50.7 per cent of the total, to 71.6 million, or 47.6 per cent, for Trump. That is a difference of 4.7 million votes and counting.
The Reuters/Ipsos national opinion survey, which ran from Saturday afternoon to Tuesday, found that 79 per cent of U.S. adults believe Biden won the White House.
Another 13 per cent said the election has not yet been decided, 3 per cent said Trump won and 5 per cent said they do not know, per reporting by Reuters.
The results were somewhat split along party lines: about six in 10 Republicans and almost every Democrat said Biden won.
Edison Research, which conducts exit polling for Reuters and major media outlets, called the race for Biden on Saturday after he expanded his lead over Trump in Pennsylvania and appeared well on his way to amassing 270 electoral votes.
Trump has yet to recognise the result of the race. He prematurely declared victory well before the votes had been counted and has repeatedly complained without evidence that he is the victim of widespread voter fraud.
His claims have been echoed by members of Trump’s cabinet.
U.S. Attorney General William Barr has authorised federal investigations of “substantial” allegations of voting irregularities, and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Tuesday said he foresees “a smooth transition to a second Trump administration.”
The Reuters/Ipsos poll was part of a broader survey conducted Friday to Tuesday and included responses before the presidential race was called.
It showed that 70 per cent of Americans, including 83 per cent of Democrats and 59 per cent of Republicans, trust their local election officials to “do their job honestly.”
The poll also found that 72 per cent think the loser of the election must concede defeat, and 60 per cent think there will be a peaceful transition of power when Trump’s term ends in January.
The Reuters/Ipsos poll was conducted online, in English, throughout the U.S.
It gathered responses from 1,363 adults in all, including 469 respondents who took the poll between Saturday afternoon and Tuesday. The poll has a credibility interval, a measure of precision, of 5 percentage points.
Transition continues without Trump’s support
CNN reports that the refusal of the General Services Administration, under Trump-appointed administrator Emily W. Murphy, to take the legally necessary step of declaring Biden the President-elect has so far blocked his team from receiving $6.3 million in funds Congress appropriated for transition efforts.
It has also prevented Biden’s transition team from accessing federal agencies, and Biden from receiving the president’s daily intelligence briefing.
Biden said the daily briefings “would be useful, but it’s not necessary,” and said his transition team “can get through without the funding.”
“We’re just going to proceed the way we have. We’re going to be doing exactly what we’d be doing if he’d conceded and said we won – which we have. So there’s nothing really changing.”
He also shot down the possibility of legal action to force the beginning of the transition process, saying, “I don’t see the need for legal action.”
Biden is moving forward with his transition effort, on Monday naming a 13-person coronavirus task force and on Tuesday naming members of agency review teams. He said he hopes to publicly reveal his choices for “at least a couple” Cabinet positions before Thanksgiving.
He said he has not yet spoken to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Kentucky, but that he expects to do so “in the not too distant future.”
Trump so far has refused to accept the results of the election, instead making a series of false claims about voter fraud on Twitter.
He has also mobilised his campaign and the Republican National Committee behind those claims, filing lawsuits and holding press conferences making unfounded allegations without offering any proof.
Trump’s Cabinet secretaries have also lined up behind his denials of reality.
Attorney General William Barr on Monday told federal prosecutors that they should examine allegations of voting irregularities before states move to certify results in the coming weeks, a move that triggered the resignation of the director of the elections crimes branch in the Justice Department’s Public Integrity Section.
On Tuesday, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo refused to acknowledge Biden’s victory, saying, “there will be a smooth transition to a second Trump administration.”
McConnell, meanwhile, defended Trump’s actions, saying Monday that the President “is 100 per cent within his rights to look into allegations of irregularities and weigh his legal options.”
And in Georgia, two Republican senators who appear headed for a January 5 runoff – Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue – on Monday called on the Republican secretary of state, Georgia’s chief elections official, to resign, complaining without evidence that he had mishandled the election.
Biden chalked their actions up to fear that failing to abide Trump could hurt them politically.
“I think that the whole Republican Party has been put in the position – with a few notable exceptions – of being mildly intimidated by the sitting President,” Biden said.
Biden said he has spoken so far to six world leaders, and said he believes he will be able to “put America back in the place of respect that it had before” Trump’s presidency.
“I know from my discussions with foreign leaders thus far that they are hopeful that United States democratic institutions are viewed once again as strong and enduring. But I think at the end of the day, it’s all going to come to fruition on January 20.”
