'Soul-crushing': CNN anchor laments 'shocking' results of exit poll question about 2020 election

As polling places across the country were closing on Tuesday, the CNN election night panel expressed dismay at the high number of voters who told exit poll interviewers that they still believe the 2020 presidential election was stolen.

According to CNN polling expert David Chalian, voters were pressed for the opinion on whether Joe Biden legitimately won the election or if incumbent Donald Trump had it stolen from him.

As he explained, "We wanted to take a look at how confident people feel about their votes being fairly and accurately counted in this election, obviously a big conversation: Very confident, 50 percent of voters nationwide in this midterm election very confident that their state elections are fair and accurate. 30 percent are somewhat confident -- so eight in ten have a level of confidence, 13 percent not very confident and 6 percent are not at all confident."

"We also wanted to ask the straight-up question: do you believe Joe Biden was legitimately elected president back in 2020?" he said while standing in front of the studio display. "You see the results here: 63 percent of voters across the country, yes, believe Joe Biden was indeed legitimately elected. But a third of voters in this election do not believe that Joe Biden was the legitimately elected president in 2020, which brings in this concern about democracy."

"David Chalian, thanks so much," CNN host Jake Tapped interjected. "That is a shocking number."

Turning to his "State of the Union" co-host Dana Bash, Tapper prompted, "Dana Bash, one-third of the American people think that Joe Biden did not legitimately win the presidency in 2022."

"He did, of course, win legitimately the presidency in 2020 ," Tapper continued. "I mean, it's almost as if one-third of the country believes that the moon landing was fake."

"It's soul-crushing -- it is," Bash lamented. "Not because of who we're talking about but because of what we're talking about. We're talking about truth and facts and reality and this is just the latest piece of evidence that the former president has been able to convince most of his supporters that it's not true, that he did not lose the election."

"Well, you know, I mean, I think the other part of this to me is that I hear all the time from Republicans, 'Oh, this is just a fringe view, this is not a dominant view.' 34 percent of the country. that's a lot of people. That is millions and millions of people and I don't see really a lot of people owning up to that and doing anything about it. I think it's deeply problematic for the country."

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