A new poll demonstrates that voters are deeply skeptical over whether President Donald Trump will accept the outcome of the 2026 midterm elections, which Democrats are currently favored to win.

The Washington Post/ABC News/Ipsos poll, published earlier this week, asked respondents how confident they were regarding how Trump will react to the midterms. Only 28 percent said they were “very confident” or “somewhat confident” that he would accept the results. Meanwhile, 70 percent of Americans are “not too confident” or “not at all confident” that he will back the outcome.

The poll comes as Trump himself has repeatedly indicated that he won’t accept the results if Democrats win over Republican Party candidates.

Trump has spent much of the 2026 midterm campaign season sowing unfounded doubts about the legitimacy of American elections. His administration has acted in kind, publishing dubious reports that baselessly suggest that tens of thousands of people ineligible to vote took part in the 2020 presidential race that Trump lost. The president has also pushed states to remove residents that he claims are illegal voters from their voting rolls, and has called for “nationalizing” the elections, despite the U.S. Constitution placing management of elections in the hands of states, not the federal government.

In June, Trump reacted furiously when “Meet the Press” host Kristen Welker pressed him for evidence of his claims of voter fraud, storming out of the interview.

And in February, Trump said in an interview that he would only accept the midterm results if he deemed the elections to be “honest.” If not, “something else has to happen,” he said.

Analysts have expressed concerns about Trump’s comments regarding the midterms, with some theorizing that he is potentially setting the stage for an event similar to what happened at the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021, when a mob of his loyalists stormed the building in an attempt to overturn his loss in the 2020 presidential election.

One theory contends that Speaker of the House Mike Johnson, himself a staunch loyalist to the president, could replace the House Clerk with someone equally dedicated to helping Trump, if Democrats do indeed win the midterms. That individual could then refuse to seat the newly elected lawmakers, keeping the older, unelected ones in place, using the same baseless claims of election fraud in order to justify doing so.

Trump could also encourage his supporters to be at the Capitol on January 3, the day new lawmakers are supposed to be sworn in, to incite action from Johnson and Republicans — much like he did in 2021, when he said a “wild” event would take place at the Capitol.

Election law scholars doubt the legality of such a move, but it could still be attempted, delaying the swearing-in ceremonies or even resulting in violence, if Trump refuses to accept the results.

Notably, Johnson has behaved this way before. Earlier this year, after then-Rep.-elect Adelita Grijalva (D-Arizona) won a special election in her district, Johnson refused to seat her for several weeks, claiming he couldn’t do so because the House was out of session (despite having sworn in Republican lawmakers while the House was out of session). At the time, Grijalva was seen as being the last vote needed to pass a bill to release the Epstein files, which Johnson opposed.

Polling data indicates that Democrats are expected to win control of the House in this November’s elections, and have a strong chance of winning the Senate, too. According to polling site FiftyPlusOne, as of Wednesday morning, Democrats have a 99 percent chance of winning the House, and a 74 percent chance of taking over the Senate.

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