A Washington Post-ABC News-Ipsos poll found that 70% of U.S. adults lacked confidence President Donald Trump would accept a midterm loss by his party, although most trusted the voting process.
The poll showed 61% were confident the elections would be conducted fairly and accurately, compared with 38% who expressed less confidence. In a separate question, 65% were confident votes would be counted accurately. Ipsos put those two questions to different random halves of the sample.
Opinions about Trump's response were more lopsided. Half of respondents said they were not at all confident he would accept a loss, and 20% were not too confident. Another 28% said they were very or somewhat confident he would accept the result.
The poll also asked about Democratic Party leaders. Some 61% said they were confident those leaders would accept the outcome if their party lost. The figures describe views recorded before the election; they cannot establish how either party's leaders will act afterward.
Asked by NBC News' Tom Llamas on Feb. 4 whether he would trust the midterm results if Republicans lost control of Congress, Trump said, “I will if the elections are honest.”
The survey also measured expectations for control of the House. Some 35% thought Democrats would win control, 16% thought Republicans would retain it, 28% called the contest a toss-up and 21% were unsure. Those were respondents' expectations, not projections of the election result.
The margin of sampling error was ±2 percentage points for the full sample and ±2.8 points for questions asked of half the respondents.
All 435 House seats and about one-third of Senate seats will be contested in the Nov. 3, 2026, congressional election.
