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By Clay Masters, Minnesota Public Radio News

Nearly 80 percent of voters surveyed in the latest Minnesota Poll have high to moderate confidence of an accurate vote count, although there is a deeper split when it comes to feelings about the methods in which ballots are cast.

The election process itself has become a prominent campaign theme in recent years, in part because close contests have led to efforts to discredit results or raise doubts about the handling of ballots. Election officials have stepped up their work to quickly knock down false narratives and respond to intimidation tactics toward poll workers.

While voters in Minnesota — home to some of the highest turnout anywhere — broadly have faith in the vote count, there are party divides.

In the latest MPR News, KARE 11 and Minnesota Star Tribune poll, Democrats and Independents had more confidence in the vote count than Republicans. And they also were considerably more likely to trust absentee voting.

The poll of 800 likely voters was conducted by Mason Dixon Polling & Strategy between Sept. 16 and 18. The poll’s margin of sampling error is plus or minus 3.5 percentage points.

Many voters who cast their ballots Friday at the Ramsey County Elections Office on the first day of early voting in Minnesota told MPR News they have full faith in the state’s election integrity.

Kristen Ciancio, a St. Paul resident, takes issue with candidates who push narratives about voter fraud.

“I don’t appreciate it and I will actively vote against anybody who says that we have voter tampering in this country because we don’t,” Ciancio said after she cast her early ballot.

More than 80 percent of Democrats in the poll say absentee voting is sound.

Among Republicans, about 40 percent had low or no confidence in an accurate vote count. And 78 percent of self-identified Republicans polled see mail-in voting as vulnerable to fraud.

Former President Donald Trump has rallied against absentee voting and continues to push false narratives about a rigged 2020 presidential election as he runs for his old job.

“If you can’t talk about a bad election, you really don’t have a democracy, if you think about it,” Trump told a crowd in La Crosse, Wis., to cheers and applause. The same rally had signs encouraging his supporters to vote early.

Trump’s view also has been pushed by groups that argue there aren’t enough safeguards to prevent people who are ineligible to vote from getting ballots. There has been little proof of that happening in big numbers and legal challenges didn’t really go far in Minnesota after the 2020 election.

AK Kamara is a Republican National Committee member for Minnesota. He said his party is emphasizing the ability to vote early this election despite what the former president and others in the party say.

“The actual strategy that we are continually talking about is: Make a plan to vote, bank your vote, go and vote early,” Kamara said. “Now once we have power, we can look at how we do things that address these issues that obviously a significant portion of the Republican Party base believes are issues.”

Secretary of State Steve Simon, a Democrat, is adamant that Minnesota’s elections are fair, secure and accurate.

“There’s been a lot of misinformation about elections equipment and tabulators, but remember, the ultimate backup is paper we don’t put fingers on a keyboard like an ATM machine or anything else,” Simon said. “We have paper that you can touch and feel and see and that we have to keep for two years under lock and key after every single election.”

As for how Minnesotans plan to vote, a solid three-quarters intends to show up at local polling places on Election Day. That comprises majorities of voters in all parts of the state and among all gender, party, age group and race categories.

With early voting already under way, people can expect campaigns to push them any way they can to cast their ballots between now and Nov. 5.

After all, turnout historically goes up in presidential years. The same poll shows a close match-up between Trump and Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris, who is sharing the ticket with Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz.

Editor’s note: Detailed poll results and complete methodology are available in a report prepared by APM Research Lab, MPR News’ sister organization. For continually-updated results of election-year polling in Minnesota, see Minnesota Poll Watch 2024.