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According to a new Monmouth University poll, Americans overwhelmingly reject the idea that Swift is part of a “covert government operation” aimed at President Biden’s re-election in 2024, by a vote of 73% to 18%. are doing.
But there is a surprising level of support for the proposal within the Republican Party. According to the poll, about one-third (32%) of Republicans believe that Swift is indeed part of a covert government operation. Additionally, 57% said no such initiative exists.
It’s worth asking how people interpreted the poll questions. More that the NFL effectively rigged things so that Swift’s boyfriend, Travis Kelce, and the Kansas City Chiefs won the Super Bowl and Swift could ride the hype and support Biden in 2024. Do people understand the “secret government effort” to include ridiculous theories? Do they believe the theory put forward by Fox News’ Jesse Watters that Swift is part of a “psychological operation” being promoted by the Pentagon? Or do they understand this as just the idea that Swift will support Biden in 2024 just like she did in 2020? (Swift makes his own leftist politics clear Back in 2018. )
But the word “secret” seems to suggest something nefarious. And polls show that a significant number of people, including nearly half (46 percent) of Republicans, say they read news about this idea.
Obviously, polls show that actually heard Proponents of this theory were much more likely to accept it. Republicans who say they are familiar with the idea are nearly evenly split, with 44% saying such a “covert government effort” exists and 47% saying it does not.
(Republicans who were unaware of this theory bet by a 66-21 margin that the initiative never existed.)
These have small sample sizes and large margins of error. But the results suggest that pushing these crazy ideas out could create a highly implausible audience within the Republican Party. Perhaps this article says more about people’s media diets — that the more conspiratorial Republicans are, the more likely they are to consume media that promotes such theories. Still, the fact that only about half of those who were familiar with this theory rejected it says a lot.
This poll is just the latest to suggest that a significant segment of the Republican Party is inclined to believe baseless conspiracy theories about the deep state. for example:
- An August 2022 YouGov poll after the Mar-a-Lago raid showed that 38% of Republicans believed the FBI planted evidence at Mar-a-Lago. Only 23 percent opposed the proposal (and 39 percent said they were “don’t know”).
- In a YouGov poll the following month, a majority of Republicans said it was at least “probably true” that the FBI fabricated classified documents.
- A Suffolk University poll shortly after January 6, 2021 found that 58% of Donald Trump supporters said the Capitol riot was “primarily an Antifa-inspired attack, with only a small number of Trump supporters involved.” It was just that.” No evidence remains of this.
- In a recent University of Maryland Washington Post poll, 34% said it was at least “probably true” that the FBI organized and encouraged the storming of the Capitol. (About half of them believed there was “hard evidence” of this.)
- A December YouGov poll found that 42% of Republicans believe “many top Democratic politicians” are involved in child sex trafficking rings, and 35% believe they are involved in promoting gun control. 28% believe the government used the COVID-19 vaccine to implant microchips. Among the people.
- The same poll showed that a whopping 60% of Republicans believe there is “a single group secretly controlling events and governing the world together.” (Democrat support for this proposal was about half, or 28 percent.)
- And of course, polls generally show that more than 6 in 10 Republicans continue to believe that the 2020 election was stolen from Trump, despite a complete lack of evidence more than three years later. It is shown that there is.
Given this background, perhaps we shouldn’t be so surprised.
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