If President Trump does end up losing reelection, one big area that will be ripe for an autopsy is the role that Fox News played in making that happen.
A mammoth new poll from the Public Religion Research Institute helps underscore another way this may prove to be the case. It finds that Republicans who place great trust in Fox News say in truly overwhelming percentages that they are “not at all” confident that vote-by-mail will be secure against fraud.
This is precisely an outcome that Republican strategists worried about. Last spring, when Trump was pushing false and unsubstantiated claims about fraud in vote-by-mail particularly hard, Republicans loudly voiced their fears this would put them at a disadvantage in key swing states.
Those Republicans noted that Democrats were likely to request absentee ballots in far higher numbers. And they fretted that less committed GOP voters who were dissuaded from voting by mail might not turn out on Election Day, needlessly costing Republicans a way to lock down their votes.