53% of Republicans view Trump as true US president: Poll

WASHINGTON - A majority of Republicans still believe Mr Donald Trump won the 2020 US presidential election and blame his loss to Mr Joe Biden on illegal voting, according to a new Reuters/Ipsos opinion poll.

The May 17 to 19 national poll found that 53 per cent of Republicans believe Mr Trump, their party's nominee, is the "true president" now, compared with three per cent of Democrats and 25 per cent of all Americans.

About one-quarter of adults believe the Nov 3 election was tainted by illegal voting, including 56 per cent of Republicans, according to the poll.

The figures were roughly the same in a poll that ran from Nov 13 to 17 which found that 28 per cent of all Americans and 59 per cent of Republicans felt that way.

A Democrat, Mr Biden won by more than seven million votes.

Dozens of courts rejected Mr Trump's challenges to the results, but Mr Trump and his supporters have persisted in pushing baseless conspiracy theories on conservative news outlets.

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The Reuters/Ipsos poll showed that 61 per cent of Republicans believe the election was "stolen" from Mr Trump.

Only about 29 per cent of Republicans believe he should share some of the blame for his supporters' Jan 6 deadly riot at the US Capitol.

Still, 67 per cent of overall respondents say they trust election officials in their town to do their job honestly, including 58 per cent of Republicans, according to the poll.

The November and May polls were both conducted online, in English, throughout the United States.

The May poll gathered responses from 2,007 adults, including 909 Democrats and 754 Republicans. The poll has a credibility interval, a measure of precision, of about four percentage points.