A new poll released Sunday indicates that most Americans believe former President Donald Trump is largely responsible for the chaos that ensued at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
The poll, conducted jointly by ABC News and the polling firm Ipsos, found that 58 percent of respondents think Trump bears a “great deal” or a “good amount” of the responsibility of what happened as Congress sought to certify the 2020 presidential election.
On the other hand, 41 percent answered that Trump carries “just some” or none of the responsibility for the riot.
As ABC News said in an article about the survey, “A strong majority of Americans condemn it [the riot] and believe former President Donald Trump is at least partially to blame.”
The poll also noted the partisan divide on the issue, as 91 percent of Democrats believe Trump was culpable, while 78 percent of Republicans say it was only slightly his fault, or not his doing at all.
The results are not surprising. The Washington Times reported that 29 percent of the nearly 1,000 respondents were Democrats, while 25 percent were Republicans. Another 36 percent declared themselves “independents.” The views of the other 10 percent were unclear. Clearly, Republicans were a distinct minority.
ABC tried to spin the outcome, but the numbers arguably didn’t show what the network purported that did.
“These figures are strikingly consistent with polling taken in the immediate aftermath of Jan. 6, despite efforts by Trump to recast the narrative and block the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack from obtaining records from his administration,” ABC said Sunday in its article about the poll.
“Overall, in this poll, 58% of Americans think Trump bears a ‘great deal’ or a ‘good amount’ of responsibility for the events, unchanged from an ABC News/Washington Post poll conducted on Jan. 13, 2021, in which 57% of Americans said he was responsible.”
Two points about this.
First, we’ve now had a full year of Democrats, including in the White House, the liberal media, and left-wing and never-Trump pundits arguing that the Jan. 6 riot was an “insurrection” or a “coup” – a moment of violence that came close to toppling the federal government.
Some of those who think that have said the Jan. 6 violence was “worse” for America than the 9/11 attacks or the bombing of Pearl Harbor, each of which killed roughly 3,000 people, and the darkest moment in U.S. history since the Civil War.
Yet, in 12 months of that nonstop rhetoric, the needle has moved one percentage point – from 57 percent a year ago to 58 percent today, according to ABC News.
But that raises the second point.
The link to last year’s poll that ABC News included in its story on Sunday actually showed more people blamed Trump then than now. It’s unclear where the “57%” figure mentioned on Sunday came from – the story ABC linked to does not include the number 57 – but the poll ABC conducted with the Post had a far different result.
In January 2021, the news outlets asked, “Does Trump bear responsibility for the attack?”
According to ABC’s story last year, 71 percent said yes, while 28 percent said no.
In other words, based on the current ABC News poll and the one it did last year, the ratio of people who think Trump is responsible for Jan. 6 has actually dropped 13 percentage points – or, in terms of percentages, about 18 percent.
Again, after a year when Trump haters have relentlessly maintained that the government was close to being overthrown by some of his followers, and at his command or suggestion.
Whatever the case may be about the polling number ABC came up with this year, it’s clear the argument the network makes doesn’t hold water.
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