Half of Republicans would refuse to accept a win by Hillary Clinton on Election Day, according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll released Friday evening.

Nearly 70 percent of GOP voters would blame Donald Trump's losing on a rigged system, the Oct. 17-21 survey concluded. The findings indicate Trump supporters are listening closely to their leader's claims over the past few weeks that the political system and media are against him. Surrogates for Trump's campaign have been encouraged to play up the candidate's claims of widespread voter fraud this week.

Trump and Clinton were neck-and-neck in national polls in September. But the businessman fell behind after the first debate, followed by a leaked "Access Hollywood" video in which he said he could grab women "by the pussy" and a number of women coming forward to claim Trump sexually harrassed or assaulted them in the past.

Trump has denied the allegations and said he has evidence to prove some of the claims are untrue, but he has yet to share that information with the public aside from a witness who disputes one incident.

Across the aisle, Democrats appear much more willing to accept an undesired outcome on Nov. 8, in which Trump wins. Seven-out-of-10 Democratic voters said they would accept Clinton losing, while just under 50 percent would blame voter fraud or rigging on their candidate losing.

"Republicans are just more worried about everything than Democrats," Lonna Atkeson, a professor at the University of New Mexico and head of the Center for the Study of Voting, Elections and Democracy, told Reuters.

Clinton has said she will accept the results regardless of the outcome.

The poll was conducted online with 1,192 American adults online from Oct. 17- 21. The results have a credibility interval of plus or minus 3.3 percentage points. The credibility interval for Democrats is 5.1 percentage points; for Republicans it is 5.5 points.