Poll: Non-White People Support Voter ID More than White People

People wait in line to vote in Georgia's Primary Election on June 9, 2020 in Atlanta, Geor
Elijah Nouvelage/Getty Images
Katherine Hamilton

After months of politicians like failed Georgia gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams and Sen. Raphael Warnock (D-GA) creating a hullabaloo over “racist” voting laws, data shows more non-white voters than white voters support photo ID laws.

According to a Monmouth University poll released Monday, 77 percent of white voters and 84 percent of non-white voters think people should have to prove their identity to vote.

Along party lines, 91 percent of Republicans, 87 percent of independents, and 62 percent of Democrats support photo ID laws, according to the poll.

The poll results come as Democrats shift their tone on photo ID laws ahead of the Senate vote on the “For the People Act” this week.

In an interview on CNN last week, Abrams was asked if she would accept Sen. Joe Manchin’s (D-WV) compromise to the “For the People Act,” even if voter ID was a part of it, the Washington Post reported. Abrams answered:

That’s one of the fallacies of Republican talking points that have been deeply disturbing. No one has ever objected to having to prove who you are to vote. It’s been part of our nation’s history since the inception of voting.

Abram didn’t mention her role in getting the Major League Baseball All-Star game yanked from Atlanta over Georgia’s new voter integrity laws — which include photo ID requirements — and losing the city as much as $190 million in revenue.

Warnock also changed his tune last Thursday, saying he has “never been opposed to voter ID.” He ignored his own history of bashing “unnecessary and discriminatory voter ID laws,” describing them as both “secretive” and “subversive,” Breitbart News previously reported:

In an October 19, 2018 piece titled “Attacks on voting hit at soul of our democracy,” Warnock wrote, “More than a decade ago, Republican legislators in the state of Georgia … led the way in turning the clock back on voting rights by passing unnecessary and discriminatory voter ID laws,” later referring to such laws as “onerous”:

Warnock also knocked voter ID laws in July 2020 and in 2012, Breitbart News reported.

Overall, Americans support photo ID laws when it comes to voting. As the Washington Examiner put it:

It’s actually a healthy process. What is happening is that some party leaders had gotten so carried away with fringe proposals, surfing on the support of activists and Twitter voices, that they lost touch with the opinions of their own voters. Now, with Manchin and the Monmouth poll, they are becoming reacquainted with their voters’ views. That’s a good thing.

The Monmouth poll was conducted by telephone from June 9 to June 14, 2021 with 810 adults in the United States. The question results had a margin of error of +/- 3.5 percentage points.

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