For the past two decades, Americans have consistently exhibited a “winner’s effect” in judging whether votes were counted fairly in elections. The 2018 election broke that pattern. In particular, prior to 2018, it was common for voters who identified with the prevailing party in a federal election to acquire much […] Read more »
Americans are scattered and divided over which source they most trust for news
Far more Americans get their news from local and network TV than from cable TV, but when asked what political news source they trust most, more name cable channels CNN or Fox News than almost any other source. A Washington Post Fact Checker poll used an open-ended format to ask […] Read more »
The media consumers most likely to believe Trump’s falsehoods? Fox News watchers.
The good news in a new Washington Post Fact Checker poll is that most Americans don’t believe the various untrue claims that President Trump makes. Nearly two-thirds of respondents, for example, know that Russia tried to interfere with the 2016 presidential election, more than four times the percentage which said […] Read more »
Trump routinely says things that aren’t true. Few Americans believe him.
For months, President Trump has claimed that U.S. Steel has announced plans to build more than six new plants. Throughout the midterm election, he repeatedly said that Democrats had signed onto an “open borders” bill. And he has long charged that millions of fraudulent votes were cast in the 2016 […] Read more »
Agents of doubt: How a powerful Russian propaganda machine chips away at Western notions of truth
The initial plan was a Cold War classic — brutal yet simple. Two Russian agents would slip onto the property of a turncoat spy in Britain and daub his front door with a rare military-grade poison designed to produce an agonizing and untraceable death. But when the attempted assassination of […] Read more »
Cries of fraud and suppression haven’t impacted faith in the electoral system
… The aftermath of the 2018 elections has been tumultuous. Democrats have leveled charges (some potentially more valid than others) of voter suppression. Republicans have, in turn, have lobbied charges of voter fraud (with no proof so far). You might expect such accusations would hurt Americans’ faith in the electoral […] Read more »