Conspiracy Theories and the 2016 Presidential Election

<p>Conspiracy theories have become a U.S. past-time. 25% of U.S. citizens believe in a 9/11 conspiracy theory (Cassino and Jenkins 2013). As recently as this past week a video was published and widely shared which intended to show a break-through theory about how COVID-19 was a planned pandemic. U.S. citizens enjoy conspiracy theories no matter if based in facts or not. During the 2016 election, hundreds of conspiracy theories were posted throughout numerous online news sites, blogs, and videos. Shockingly, these theories went on to be spoken about by the future President of the United States at rallies, or on his Twitter account. Hillary Clinton, his general election challenger, was often the target of the conspiracy theories mentioned.</p> <p>Throughout the campaign many conspiracy theories were pushed into public life revolving around the Secretary’s political history, personal history, and health. Research on conspiracy theory belief has been sparse in political science, but has often been the focus of research in psychological research. Throughout this paper, a descriptive analysis of propensity to believe in conspiracy theories is presented. Though not providing one single mechanism for what causes belief in conspiracy theories, I examine the possibility that political anxiety, hope or hopelessness, and party identification strength impact an individuals belief in CTs.</p> <p>The wide-spread belief in conspiracy theories is never based on the ordinary. Theories exist that try to explain life-altering, defining moments, not events that only one individual experiences. This mass-experience provides researchers with the ability to test for characteristics of individuals who participate in the mass-belief of conspiracy theories. Utilizing the oft-unexplored open-ended responses on the American National Election Survey from the 2016 presidential election, this paper provides a novel measurement technique for belief in conspiracy theories.</p> <p>Overarching this is the implicit goal of trying to understand how nonfactual theories are able to influence public opinion, and, in turn, impact elections. Previous research has relied on direct measurement of primed CT belief that address a specific theories within the prompt of the question. By using free-space opinions of individuals, researchers can better understand the beliefs of individuals, as well as some of the underlying propensities of these CT beliefs.</p>