Research note: Examining false beliefs about voter fraud in the wake of the 2020 Presidential Election

• Main Authors: Pennycook, Gordon (Author), Rand, David G (Author)
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Shorenstein Center for Media, Politics, and Public Policy, 2022-08-08T16:12:52Z.
• Subjects: Article
• Online Access: Get fulltext

 <jats:p>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.</jats:p>