Another post shared on the social platform X by a far-right account with more than 3 million followers included a chart on turnout by party, which appeared to show Democratic turnout had doubled in 2020. But the chart used a manipulated axis and preliminary data to exaggerate the difference. The post was viewed nearly 2 million times.
The theorising from the left came from voices with far less prominence than Carlson’s, though their missives still earned millions of views on X, according to a report by Cyabra, a company that monitors disinformation. The company found that posts from profiles with few followers were able to reach tens of millions of views after posting about the conspiracy theory. Cyabra blamed the posts for “undermining trust in the 2024 election process and democratic institutions”.
Election workers count votes in Oregon City, Oregon, last week.Credit: AP
Claims from the left have focused on interference from Russia or a number of bomb threats that were made to polling sites in swing states. Many also echoed claims that Trump supporters had made after the 2020 election, including suggestions that Harris’ large crowd sizes showed that Democratic enthusiasm was greater. Experts say crowd sizes are not a useful predictor of election day turnout.
The hashtag #DoNotConcedeKamala trended on X with more than 650,000 mentions by Friday, according to data from NewsGuard, a company that tracks misinformation. The morning after the election, there were more than 30,000 mentions of the hashtag along with the words “rigged”, “fraud” and “stolen”, NewsGuard found.
“If anyone could fund a massive election fraud scheme, it’s Elon Musk,” wrote Dean Obeidallah, a host of a show on SiriusXM’s Progress channel, to more than 50,000 followers on Threads. He called for the Department of Homeland Security to examine the results to “alleviate concerns that Trump and Elon Musk somehow cheated to win”. Musk, the owner of X, is a vocal Trump supporter. Obeidallah did not respond to a request for comment.
So far, fears among disinformation researchers that the clamour could build into a larger movement were tempered by Democratic leaders, who have widely endorsed the results – something Trump and his allies refused to do in 2020.
Harris conceded the race in a speech on Thursday AEDT. The House minority leader, Hakeem Jeffries, said that Democrats would accept the results and that they “believe in free and fair elections”.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
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