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> 98% of Dems think election victory is legitimate That leaves 2% of Dems that disagree. They aren't wrong in saying their stated figure includes Democratic p

by dafoex 6y ago

> 98% of Dems think election victory is legitimate That leaves 2% of Dems that disagree. They aren't wrong in saying their stated figure includes Democratic party voters, just misleading. > 97% think there was no widespread voter fraud Assuming this reflects all polled people and not just Democratic party voters, then yes, 3% ≠ 1/3 and they are wrong. Assuming this figure only reflects Democratic party voters, that seems to suggest that 1% of Dems believe that there was widespread fraud, but still think the victory was legitimate.

gfodor 6y ago
I apologize if this was misleading, my point was to emphasize that the population involved in the "one third" proportion was not Republicans. (It's a third of Americans, not Republicans.) Thinking a third of Republicans think there was widespread election fraud would be concerning and somewhat surprising (at least to me, given "widespread fraud" is far from being in evidence) so it felt worth emphasizing that was not the population, but it in fact includes polled Democrats and Independents. In fact, it's much worse than that: a third of Americans believe it (which shows its appeal to centrists and/or the depth of Republican belief), and if you dig into the crosstabs, the number of Independents who believe it (approx 1/3rd) and Republicans who believe it (approx 3/4ths) is quite concerning. For such an extreme question ('widespread fraud') I would have expected this to be a fringe belief. The belief that would have made these numbers less surprising would have been questions such as "do you believe there is some evidence of targetted fraud" etc. Given that I'd suspect nearly 100% of Republicans believe some form of fraud occurred. If so, the entire losing party believes they were cheated to some degree. This isn't a recipe for reduced conflict from here. It means that the radical end of the party is large enough to be meaningful, and it means that large parts of the population will be less likely to condemn actions they take given the widespread shared beliefs.

by dafoex 6y ago

gfodor 6y ago

I apologize if this was misleading, my point was to emphasize that the population involved in the "one third" proportion was not Republicans. (It's a third of Americans, not Republicans.) Thinking a third of Republicans think there was widespread election fraud would be concerning and somewhat surprising (at least to me, given "widespread fraud" is far from being in evidence) so it felt worth emphasizing that was not the population, but it in fact includes polled Democrats and Independents. In fact, it's much worse than that: a third of Americans believe it (which shows its appeal to centrists and/or the depth of Republican belief), and if you dig into the crosstabs, the number of Independents who believe it (approx 1/3rd) and Republicans who believe it (approx 3/4ths) is quite concerning. For such an extreme question ('widespread fraud') I would have expected this to be a fringe belief. The belief that would have made these numbers less surprising would have been questions such as "do you believe there is some evidence of targetted fraud" etc. Given that I'd suspect nearly 100% of Republicans believe some form of fraud occurred. If so, the entire losing party believes they were cheated to some degree. This isn't a recipe for reduced conflict from here. It means that the radical end of the party is large enough to be meaningful, and it means that large parts of the population will be less likely to condemn actions they take given the widespread shared beliefs.