In this USAFacts/AP-NORC poll conducted a few months before the 2020 election, almost half of Americans said they were paying close attention to information on elections and politics. But many said they were finding it difficult to get trustworthy information. 

Forty percent said they found it difficult to know whether the candidates were making true statements, and 38 percent felt the same concerning information about the election. 

Many were also skeptical that what the candidates said was based in fact. Fifty-one percent thought that Donald Trump's campaign messages were rarely or never based in fact, and 39 percent thought the same about Biden's campaign. However, few people were having trouble finding information about how to register to vote (11 percent) or cast their ballot (16 percent). 

Trust in government information on many topics remained low, and over half of Americans (59 percent) said that the President's political beliefs had a lot of influence on the information provided by the government. Compared to 2019, Americans were even more likely to believe that a reliance on different facts is a cause of political division in the country (43 percent). 

The nationwide USAFacts/AP-NORC Poll was conducted from September 15 to 25, 2020, using NORC's AmeriSpeak® Panel. Online and telephone interviews using landlines and cell phones were conducted with 1,043 adults. The margin of sampling error for all respondents was +/- 4.1 percentage points.

Find more survey results on the AP-NORC website.