Former US president Donald Trump and the Republican Party have made allegations of election fraud a centerpiece of this year’s US presidential election campaign.
During the debate between Trump and Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris in September, Trump baselessly charged that Democrats were conspiring to have illegal immigrants vote and swing the election in their favour.
Trump pointed at Harris and said, “These people are trying to get [illegals] to vote. And that’s why they’re allowing them to come into our country.”
Throughout the campaign, Trump has repeated the claim that voter fraud is rampant and that the only way he can lose the election is if Democrats cheat.
This sentiment has permeated the Republican Party establishment at the state and national level. A recent survey indicates that upwards of 88% of Republican voters are concerned that illegal votes will be cast in the upcoming election.
Such allegations are scurrilous — both disconnected from the evidence and transparently dishonest.
Independent studies consistently show that US elections are extremely clean and free from voter fraud.
However, charges by Republicans that Democrats and others engage in vote rigging have serious consequences for the political climate and the risk of violence in the US.
Checking attitudes
My recently published online survey experiment examined the impact of allegations of voter fraud on ordinary Republicans’ tolerance of the use of political violence — defined as violence intended to achieve political goals or to express political viewpoints.
Allegations of fraud were found to activate xenophobic and intolerant attitudes among Republicans, prompting them to normalise the idea of political violence.
My study looked at a group of 140 Americans recruited online who self-identified as Republicans. The participants were randomly assigned to one of two groups — a treatment group and a control group.
Republicans in the treatment group were asked to read a short letter from a politician running for Congress.
In the letter, the politician first explained his support for a set of policies — ones that are not particularly controversial and that enjoy popular support from Republicans and Democrats alike (for example, helping senior citizens with prescription drug costs , honouring military veterans, and so on). The letter was fictitious, a fact revealed to participants only after they finished the study.
In the last paragraph of the short letter to the treatment group, the politician assailed Democrats for engaging in voter fraud and claimed that Democrats had corrupted the election system.
Participants in the control group were asked to read the same letter, but without the final paragraph making election fraud allegations against Democrats.
This enabled a comparison between two groups of Republican participants: those who were directly told by a Republican politician that Democrats cheat in elections and those who were not.
After reading the letter, all participants were asked questions about their backgrounds and their attitudes on various political subjects, including whether they thought it was acceptable to use violence to achieve their political goals or to express their political opinions.
Republican participants who had read the version of the letter alleging Democratic election fraud (the treatment cohort ) were around 18.6% more likely to say that they supported political violence than participants who had read the version of the letter that did not mention election fraud.
The next step of the study was to find out what explained the impact of allegations of Democratic voter fraud on Republican participants’ increased support for political violence.
Through a technique called mediation analysis, the study found that Republican participants who read the letter alleging Democratic voter fraud displayed greater mistrust of racial and religious minorities, and that this worked to reinforce their attitudes in favour of political violence.
In other words, when presented with misinformation about Democratic voter fraud, Republicans in the study became more openly xenophobic, which served to further normalise the acceptability of political violence.
Not a ‘both sides’ issue
Would Democratic participants respond the same way when confronted with the same claims about the opposing party’s conduct?
To answer that question, the study was run again — this time for a group of self-identified Democratic participants. The treatment group received a letter alleging that Republican politicians engage in practices such as voter suppression and other unfair tactics, while the letter to the control group made no such claims.
The results found no significant statistical difference between the treatment group and the control group.
Allegations of election misconduct simply did not provoke the same response for Democrats as they did for Republicans.
These findings are perhaps not surprising when one considers several points about allegations of election fraud in contemporary America.
Political scientists note that voter fraud is a more salient concern for Republicans than for Democrats.
Indeed, the argument that US elections are rife with cheating has become something of an article of faith among Republican politicians and voters. Democrats, in contrast, express much greater confidence that US elections are clean.
Political scientists have also found that Americans who believe that election fraud is rampant are also more likely to express mistrust toward racial and religious “outgroups” — people of different races or religious traditions.
This is particularly true for Republicans, who are primed to mistrust racial and religious minorities as the two political parties in the US become increasingly polarised by race and religion.
Making violence acceptable
Republican elites — politicians, pundits, activists and conservative media commentators — play an important role by reinforcing several narratives: US elections are riddled with fraud; legal and illegal immigrants are swamping the country; Democrats and others are seeking to use immigrants to “replace” whites; illegals and non-citizens are voting in election; and so on.
A large body of research in political science and other fields shows that this situation is ripe for the normalisation of political violence.
Studies show that the demonisation and dehumanisation of minorities and migrants that permeate the discussion about election integrity in the US serve to make political violence more socially acceptable. This moves political violence from the fringe to the mainstream and allows it to become more likely to occur.
Looming over the upcoming election is the shadow of the violent insurrection at the Capitol on January 6, 2021, which was fueled by unfounded allegations of election fraud.
Trump has made statements strongly suggesting that he would not accept the outcome if he were to lose the upcoming election. Moreover, a recent survey finds that around one in five Republicans say he should “declare the results invalid and do whatever it takes to assume office” should he not win. In the context of an election season marked by virulent xenophobic misinformation, this raises real concerns of an increase in the normalisation, and possibly the occurrence, of political violence around the US elections this year.
Originally published under Creative Commons by 360info™.
