Whereas at publication time the Related Press’ vote depend was certainly 16 million votes decrease than that for the 2020 election, the reason is trivially easy: Everything of the vote hasn’t been tabulated but.
“Election denial is anti-democratic, whether or not it comes from the left or the correct,” David Becker, govt director of the nonpartisan Middle for Election Innovation and Analysis, wrote on X. “No, 20 million votes aren’t lacking. Votes are nonetheless being counted in lots of states, together with hundreds of thousands in CA alone. Variety of votes in 2024 very near 2020, when all are reported “
Posts relating to those conspiracy theories started to realize traction round 2 am Japanese, PeakMetrics knowledge reveals, which coincides roughly with the time the election was known as for Trump—however at the same time as Individuals went to mattress, the variety of posts didn’t decline.
“By 8 am ET, the variety of posts per hour had surged to 31,991,” PeakMetrics wrote in an evaluation shared with WIRED. “There was maybe a stunning lack of in a single day drop-off in posts from 2 am to 7 am ET—when sometimes posts would decline because the US hits sleeping hours. The regular improve in posts on the Kamala recount/lacking votes narrative all through the in a single day hours might merely replicate the depth of this dialogue—or might level to inauthentic or automated posting conduct.”
Not like the election denial motion in 2020, which was impressed by Trump’s refusal to simply accept the outcomes, these conspiracy theories haven’t acquired any assist from the candidate. On Wednesday, Harris urged her supporters to simply accept the outcomes and guaranteed them her crew “will have interaction in a peaceable switch of energy.”
The phenomenon of left-leaning or anti-Trump accounts posting conspiracy theories on social media platforms, known as BlueAnon, got here to prominence earlier this yr within the wake of the assassination attempt on Trump’s life in July.
“Any occasion that appears inconceivable will at all times invite conspiracy theories about what ‘actually’ occurred,” says Mike Rothschild, an creator who writes about conspiracy theories and extremists. “On this case, it is a factually incorrect narrative that there are tens of hundreds of thousands of lacking votes and that Russian bomb threats sabotaged the Harris marketing campaign. Neither are true—turnout seems to be down, and lots of states, together with California, are nonetheless nicely into counting. And whereas bomb threats are by no means acceptable, they are not the rationale why the Harris marketing campaign misplaced each swing state. To write down Trump’s win off to conspiracy theories is to not stay in actuality.”
