Americans Were Primed To Believe The Current Onslaught Of Disinformation - FiveThirtyEight

[BootinUp]

By Kaleigh Rogers

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Protesters like these in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, have been primed to believe disinformation about the outcome of the 2020 election, which Joe Biden won.

Spencer Platt / Getty Images

It started with a drizzle but quickly turned into a downpour: Disinformation about the election, and in particular unfounded claims of election fraud, has flooded the internet over the past week. And Americans were primed to believe it.

Dozens of false claims shared on social media have kept fact-checkers busy and partisans energized. Pro-Trump Facebook groups that dispute the election results have attracted tens of thousands of users and become a lively marketplace for exchanging disinformation (until the social media network shuts them down). And President Trump’s supporters have shown up in person as well to rail against what they perceive to be election fraud.

Meanwhile, polls show a substantial percentage of the population, particularly Republicans, believe (without evidence) that voter fraud has occurred. According to a poll from YouGov and The Economist conducted Nov. 8-10 among registered voters, 82 percent of Republicans said they did not believe that Joe Biden had legitimately won the presidential election, even though he has. This followed a Nov. 7 YouGov poll among registered voters that found 79 percent of Republicans believed voter fraud had occurred and affected the outcome of the election. Similarly, in a Politico/Morning Consult poll conducted Nov. 6-9 among registered voters, 70 percent of Republicans said they didn’t believe the 2020 election was free and fair — double the 35 percent of Republicans who answered that way in a poll conducted before the election.

To a certain extent, disinformation about the results of the election was expected. Experts have been warning about it for weeks. “But I do think the volume of the garbage and the inability of social media platforms to have effective means to stop the undermining of results of the election is really concerning,” said Craig Silverman, a journalist at BuzzFeed News who has been tracking disinformation throughout the election. “When it became very clear that Trump wasn’t going to concede, the machinery of justifying that decision has really kicked into high gear. I feel like today it was as bad as it was leading up to Election Day.”

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1. They have vilified the media and big tech so much

That the act of fact-checking or contrary reporting becomes simply provides confirmation of what they believe.

This is no way to run a democracy

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2. This video from Gingrich in 2016 set my spidey senses tingling

In being asked why Trump's RNC 2016 speech was so dark and disconnected from reality, he basically said facts don't matter. Only how people feel. Of course missing in that equation was that the entire political and media apparatus making them feel that way.

I saw this as an incredibly damaging and dangerous way of thinking. And here we are four years later.

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[Midnight Writer]

3. Republicans have been grooming the American electorate for decades.

The American oligarchs need people to vote against their own interests.

For example, here in Illinois the people just voted down a progressive state income tax, even though over 90% of the folks here would get a tax cut.

It was unreal to walk through the dirt poorest sections of town and see yard signs AGAINST the progressive tax.