Georgia voters appear less confident about the accuracy of the outcome run-off races in their state to determine control of the US Senate than they were in the presidential election results two months ago.
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Edison Research's exit poll of more than 5200 voters who cast ballots in the two Senate contests on Tuesday shows more than seven in 10 very or somewhat confident their vote would be counted accurately.
That's down from 85 per cent who registered confidence on that score in its November 3 exit poll.
Republican incumbents David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler face Democratic challengers Jon Ossoff, a documentary filmmaker, and Reverend Raphael Warnock, a pastor at a historic black church in Atlanta.
Georgia has been the focus of intense squabbling since the presidential race, when Joe Biden narrowly prevailed over Donald Trump in the state, one of a clutch of key races that ultimately delivered Biden a victory.
Biden won the state by 11,779 votes. He is due to be sworn in as the 46th US president on Jan. 20.
Trump is yet to accept the outcome from either Georgia or the national election and has lambasted the state's Republican governor and secretary of state for rejecting his bids to overturn the outcome.
All his efforts, including legal challenges and multiple recounts of the Georgia outcome, have failed.
Worries Trump's incessant complaints about the election - including false claims of fraud - would drive down confidence in Tuesday's outcome appear to be validated by the Edison poll.
Still, the poll found more than half of voters in the Georgia run-off races believe the 2020 presidential election was conducted fairly, while around four in 10 said it was not.
The poll, which included voters who cast ballots on Tuesday and some of the more than 3 million who voted early, also found the racial mix of voters appeared to be roughly the same as in November's general election.
About six in 10 identified as white, while roughly three in 10 were black and the remainder were split among Latinx, Asian and other races.
Voters also came largely from the same regions of the state, with nearly three in 10 from the Atlanta suburbs, two in 10 each from the city of Atlanta or the north or central parts of the state.
The rest came from the Georgia coast or the south.
A little more than half of the voters said they had experienced financial hardship during the coronavirus pandemic, with a bit less than half saying they had experienced no hardship at all.
Australian Associated Press
