PRRI American Values Survey Released Oct. 20, 2026 Finds 35% Agree the President Should Order Federal Agents to Seize Ballots and Take Over Vote Counting

Dates, typed. Fieldwork: interviews were conducted online between August 20 and September 7, 2026. PRRI release: October 20, 2026. Democracy Docket’s write-up, the secondary coverage that prompted this entry, carries the same October 20, 2026 date. The entry date is the release date, not the fieldwork date.

The finding. PRRI reports that 35% of Americans agree with the statement “if there are serious concerns about voter fraud in a local voting location, the president should order federal agents to seize the ballots and take over the vote counting,” and 59% disagree. Among Republicans 58% agree.

What “agree” is. In PRRI’s topline the agree figure is the sum of “completely agree” and “mostly agree”; it is a combined figure, not a single response box.

What the item does not say. It asks about “the president” generically and does not name Trump. The secondary write-up’s phrasing, that respondents support Trump doing this, goes beyond the item.

Method. PRRI designed and conducted the survey, online, on Ipsos’s KnowledgePanel with an opt-in supplement for small states: 5,200 adults on the panel plus an opt-in supplement. The margin of error for the national survey is +/- 1.6 percentage points including the design effect.

An opinion measure of a hypothetical, not an event: it records agreement with a statement, not any seizure order.