A Conspiracy for Both Republicans and Democrats!
(But with some important differences.)
In the days after the election, a bogus conspiracy about a drop in Democratic voters was shared in both left and right-wing media bubbles.
The claim was that there were millions fewer Democrats voting this year than in 2020. Republicans sharing it claimed it was evidence that the 2020 election was stolen. Democrats sharing it claimed it was evidence the 2024 election was stolen. But there are two problems with this claim:
The votes were still being counted when the data was shared, so the Democrat turnout was still unknown.
Turnout varies with each election, and partisan identification is not stable. It may be that fewer Democrats did vote this year than in 2020. And some who identified as Democrat in 2020 may no longer identify as such in 2024.
Changes in partisan turnout is not evidence of election fraud!
NYT gift link: “Drop-Off in Democratic Votes Ignites Conspiracy Theories on Left and Right”
This episode illustrates how partisanship influences how we receive and share information. The information you're seeing online and in social media is curated especially for your biases. So be extra careful when reading and sharing information that seems designed to confirm those biases.
There is one big difference between how Republicans and Democrats are getting this information that is worth pointing out. For Democrats, their leaders have been reassuring them that our elections are secure. For Republicans, their leaders, especially former president and president-elect Donald Trump, are leading the way in spreading misinformation about our elections.
Also, Republicans and Democrats are by and large living in separate information environments. Perhaps more than any other modern presidential election, Republicans and Democrats are getting their news and information from different sources. There is little shared information, due to 1) the rise of right-wing alternative media sources, and 2) social media algorithms designed to give users more of what they like, which usually means confirming their biases.
But here again, there's an important difference. While Democrats are mostly getting their news from sources with a liberal bias, most of those sources at least maintain some ethical journalism standards. The same cannot be said about where Republicans get their news.
Here's a graphic that has gotten a lot of attention after the election.
A little over half the voters chose Trump while believing and sharing things that aren't true. They thought the stock market was bad (it's near an all time high). They thought FEMA withheld aid from disaster areas (it didn't). They thought violent crime was high is most cities (it's way down). They thought inflation was still high (it's also way down). And they thought illegal immigration was high (also way down). They believed false information because that is what their news and information sources were telling them.
This portends a challenging four years. Those same voters will continue to receive and share information distorted to support the Trump administration. It'll be like the state-run media in authoritarian countries. So while Trump implements his campaign promises of increased tariffs, mass deportation, and vengeance, right-wing Americans will be told it's all going swimmingly.
And now for the real bad news.
That's only part of the problem. It may be that even if Republican voters were getting factual information, they still would've chosen Trump. The misinformation they shared could simply be the reasoning they provided to do thing they wanted to do. As Jonathan Haidt pointed out in The Righteous Mind, "intuitions come first, strategic reasoning second." Without the misinformation, other reasons would've been provided to do the thing their intuitions want them to do.
A portion of MAGA will witness the true horrors of abandoning Ukraine and NATO, mass deportation, and politicized law enforcement, and they'll like it. Other MAGA supporters, however, will be persuadable but shielded from seeing the horrors by their news sources and social media algorithms.
This second group is where AVC can have the biggest impact during the second Trump administration and beyond. These are deep-seated problems that must be addressed relationally, in our homes, friendships, and places of worship. And as I pointed out in last week's newsletter, this is a generational project. Our mission was designed specifically for this task.
Watch
 | A guest post by
|