Research note: Examining false beliefs about voter fraud in the wake of the 2020 Presidential Election
Name
pennycook_voter_fraud_elections_20210111.pdf
Description
Published version
Size
1.57 MB
Format
Adobe PDF
Checksum (MD5)
079121bfc04b21d6f8fc74058b283104
Author(s)
Pennycook, Gordon
Rand, David G
Date Issued
2021
Journal
Harvard Kennedy School Misinformation Review
Publisher
Shorenstein Center for Media, Politics, and Public Policy
Citation
Pennycook, Gordon and Rand, David G. 2021. "Research note: Examining false beliefs about voter fraud in the wake of the 2020 Presidential Election." Harvard Kennedy School Misinformation Review.
Version
Final published version
Abstract
The 2020 U.S. Presidential Election saw an unprecedented number of false claims alleging election fraud and arguing that Donald Trump was the actual winner of the election. Here we report a sur-vey exploring belief in these false claims that was conducted three days after Biden was declared the winner. We find that a majority of Trump voters in our sample – particularly those who were more politically knowledgeable and more closely following election news – falsely believed that election fraud was widespread and that Trump won the election. Thus, false beliefs about the elec-tion are not merely a fringe phenomenon. We also find that Trump conceding or losing his legal challenges would likely lead a majority of Trump voters to accept Biden’s victory as legitimate, alt-hough 40% said they would continue to view Biden as illegitimate regardless. Finally, we found that levels of partisan spite and endorsement of violence were equivalent between Trump and Biden voters.
MIT Department
Sloan School of Management
Terms of Use
Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license
Persistent DSpace Link
DOI of Published Version
https://doi.org/10.37016/MR-2020-51
