Eight months after former President Donald Trump left office, almost a quarter of Republican voters still believe he’ll be reinstated in the White House before the end of 2021—despite numerous failed predictions among fans and supporters of the QAnon conspiracy theory.
Even though the U.S. Constitution doesn’t provide a mechanism for the “reinstatement” of a president who lost an election, 22 percent of Republican voters still think Trump will “likely” be reinstated before the end of the year, according to a new Economist/YouGov poll.
Of those, 11 percent say it’s “very likely” Trump will be reinstated and 11 percent say it’s “somewhat likely.” The number of Republican voters who believe that about Trump was far greater than Democratic voters—12 percent—and even slightly greater than the 19 percent of Trump voters.
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Throughout the year, supporters have unsuccessfully claimed several dates that Trump would return to office, including on Inauguration Day and March 4. The most recent failed theory, peddled by MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell, was that Trump would be back in the White House “by the morning” of August 13.
Most of the predictions appear to be linked to a widely debunked QAnon conspiracy theory that claims Trump will soon expose a supposed cabal of Satan-worshipping pedophile cannibal elites.
Trump leaned into the reinstatement conspiracy theory in September, telling Real America’s Voice that he could return to power before the next presidential election due to “tremendous voter fraud.”
But his congressional allies have declined to support the reinstatement theories. In July, Georgia Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene said: “I would hate for anyone to get their hopes up thinking that President Trump is going to be back in the White House in August because that’s not true.”
Still, Trump is continuing his campaign of pressuring states to investigate his baseless voter fraud claims.
None of the election “audits” that are taking place in several states can actually change Biden’s first term in office. Congress certified the president’s Electoral College win on January 7, after a mob of Trump supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol building in an effort to halt the certification process.
Trump has repeatedly alleged widespread voter fraud in remarks made in the 10 months since he lost the election. But the dozens of lawsuits filed by his campaign challenging the results in swing states have been narrower and unsuccessful in court. So far, Trump and his allies have not produced any real evidence for his stolen election claims.
The poll, which surveyed 1,500 U.S. adults between October 9 and 12, has a margin of error of plus or minus 3.2 percent.