“As the nation heads toward Election Day in the midst of a persistent pandemic and simmering social unrest, a new Pew Research Center survey finds that Americans’ deep partisan divide, dueling information ecosystems, and divergent responses to conspiracy theories and misinformation are all fueling uncertainty and conflict surrounding the presidential election. While Americans across the political spectrum have been getting information about key election-related storylines, their knowledge and opinions about these issues – as well as the candidates themselves – differ strikingly based on their party affiliation and key news sources, according to the new survey, conducted Aug. 31-Sept. 7, 2020, as part of the Center’s American News Pathways project. One central issue creating confusion in this campaign is the reliability of voting by mail, which figures to be more widespread than ever this year as people try to avoid crowded polling places during the coronavirus outbreak. President Donald Trump has repeatedly promoted the unsupported idea that mail-in voting will lead to significant fraud and has put the U.S. Postal Service in the campaign spotlight.

While evidence indicates that mail-in voting is associated with only minuscule levels of fraud, 43% of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents identify voter fraud as a “major problem” associated with mail-in ballots. By contrast, only 11% of Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents say the same thing…”