Former GOP members of Congress are far more likely than Republican voters to view President Biden’s victory in the 2020 election as legitimate, the events of January 6, 2021, as an insurrection, and former President Trump’s false claims of widespread voter fraud as a threat to democracy, according to a University of Massachusetts Amherst survey released Tuesday.

The survey of 237 former members, about half of them Republicans, reveals a sharp disconnect between ex-GOP lawmakers and the people who put them into office on a number of key questions related to 2020:

• More than 80 percent of the former Republican members—who participated in the survey in partnership with the United States Association of Former Members of Congress—said that they considered Biden’s win legitimate. By contrast, roughly 25 percent of voting-age Republicans in a prior poll said the same.
• Similarly, 64 percent of the ex-GOP lawmakers said they viewed Trump’s false claims that he won the 2020 election to be a threat to American democracy. Less than 20 percent of eligible Republican voters agree.
• While 53 percent of the former Republicans lawmakers said they would describe the events of January 6 as an “insurrection,” only 14 percent of voting-age Republicans said they would use that term.
• More than 70 percent of the ex-GOP lawmakers support continuing federal efforts to identify, arrest, and charge January 6 participants. In previous public polls, fewer than a third of Republican voters support the...

Read Full Story: https://news.google.com/rss/articles/CBMijwFodHRwczovL3d3dy53YXNoaW5ndG9uaWFu...