Poll: More than half of Republicans would support postponing 2020 election

A poll found that 52% of people who identify as or lean Republican said they would support postponing the 2020 election to ensure that only eligible citizens could vote if it was proposed by President Trump.

The survey, conducted by two academics and published in theWashington Post on Thursday, interviewed a sample of 1,325 Americans from June 5-20 and focused on the 650 people who said they were or leaned toward the GOP.

The poll also found that 56% said they would support such action — which would be taken to stop alleged voter fraud — if it was supported by both Trump and Republican members of Congress.

Trump has created a "voter integrity" commission to look at what he perceives as fraud in the U.S. election system. The commission met for the first time last month.

Still, it's important to note that no Republican politician, including the president, has actually suggested this. The academics behind the poll, Ariel Malka of Yeshiva University and Yphtach Lelkes of the University of Pennsylvania, said:

Our survey is only measuring reactions to a hypothetical situation. Were Trump to seriously propose postponing the election, there would be a torrent of opposition, which would likely include prominent Republicans. Financial markets would presumably react negatively to the potential for political instability. And this is to say nothing of the various legal and constitutional complications that would immediately become clear. Citizens would almost certainly form their opinions amid such tumult, which does not at all resemble the context in which our survey was conducted.

However, the results shouldn't be simply dismissed, the academics said, because they indicated that there was a high number of Republicans who were willing to buck democratic norms. 

Trump formed the voter integrity commission after saying, without evidence, that up to 3 million to 5 million people voted fraudulently in the 2016 election. While critics say the panel was created to justify Trump’s claim, civil and voting rights groups have more serious concerns about how the commission may be used to support new voting restrictions in GOP-controlled states.

The phrase "half of Republicans" gained some traction on Twitter after the survey results were published, with mixed reactions: