2024 U.S. ELECTIONS RAPID RESEARCH BLOG
RESEARCH MEMO | NOVEMBER 8
This is part of an ongoing series of rapid research blog posts and rapid research analysis about the 2024 U.S. elections from the University of Washington’s Center for an Informed Public. This research memo identifies election rumors using a combination of qualitative, quantitative, digital ethnographic, and visual, methodologies. It was crossposted on the CIP’s election rumor research Substack newsletter.
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Though several states are still counting ballots, the results of the 2024 U.S. elections are mostly in. As counting winds down, post-election rumors and their dynamics are taking clearer shape. As noted in our two Election Day memos, election fraud speculation — initially prompted by tabulator errors in Pennsylvania — more or less died down by the end of Election Day. The one exception to this trend is in Arizona, where votes are still being counted in the uncalled U.S. Senate race between Democrat Ruben Gallego and Republican Kari Lake. Several right-wing “election fraud” influencers on X have questioned if there is widespread fraud at play, particularly because Donald Trump is currently leading in votes tabulated while Kari Lake is trailing behind the Democrat.
Across platforms, there was some rumoring on the left speculating about potential foreign election interference via bomb threats that could have contributed to voter suppression. That said, there is not a consolidated or networked conversation about election integrity among left or liberal communities on X or other platforms. No left-wing candidates or influencers have amplified any of the diffuse speculations of voter fraud or election interference. Simply put, there is no left-wing equivalent of the 2020 “Stop the Steal” mobilization effort.
This rapid research memo discusses some of the main rumoring trends post-election.
Allegations That the 2024 Popular Vote ‘Proves’ 2020 Was Rigged
Starting late on November 5 and picking up on November 6, a narrative took hold among right-wing communities that the aggregate popular vote count in 2024 — which was (at the time) perceived to be markedly lower than 2020, despite previous statements of “record turnout” — was “proof” that Biden cheated in the 2020 election. When the rumor took off, the final vote count was not yet known, and as of November 8, 2024, many states still have ballots to count. But in the first few days after the election, commentators on both sides of the political spectrum noted that the current (incomplete) vote totals were significantly lower than those in 2020.
Below is a cumulative graph (Figure 1) of the conversation comparing the 2020 voter turnout to the 2024 turnout. Around 1:30 AM EST on Wednesday, as ballots were still being counted in many states, a user with 61K followers questioned how Joe Biden could have won 81 million votes in 2020. This rumor took off about six hours later when partisan media outlet Zerohedge (~2M followers) tweeted a graph showing a 20 million deficit between Harris in 2024 and Biden in 2020, with Trump more or less earning the same amount of aggregate votes. About seven minutes later, conservative influencer and director of the election denial film 2000 Mules, Dinesh D’Souza, published an X post that explicitly argued the alleged 20 million missing votes were “proof” of widespread election fraud in 2020. Shortly thereafter, the conversation went viral on X, with reposts on alt-platforms and TikTok.
The graph posted by Zerohedge did not reflect the final voter turnout numbers. As of the morning of November 8, 10% of the votes have yet to be counted nationally, particularly in Arizona, California, and Washington.
Figure 1: Graph showing the cumulative number of posts on X related to rumors suggesting that the results of the 2024 election “prove” that the 2020 election was stolen. The time zone of the graph is UTC, which is five hours ahead of Eastern Standard Time (EST). The graph starts at 5:00 PM EST on election night, November 5, 2024. The y-axis shows the total number of related posts, but only posts with ten or more reposts are visualized. Circles are sized by their relative number of reposts, with highly-reposted tweets visualized with larger circles
There was a little bit of conversation on X and Bluesky among left-leaning accounts, speculating about reasons for turnout differences in 2024 vs. 2020, though the final numbers had yet to come in. Some posters alleged foul play, citing bomb threats in many swing states. These conversations were significantly smaller and were not driven by candidates or popular influencers. As such, there was no virality to these claims.
Left-rumoring on Bluesky diffuse and disjointed
There are disjointed and diffuse conversations on Bluesky among left-leaning communities speculating about potential fraud or malfeasance in election outcomes. This includes some discussion of recent events, such as the ballot arson cases in Oregon, Washington, and Arizona (and exaggerating their impact on the elections). Others claimed that election irregularities only happened in swing states. Some referenced the “missing” votes from 2020 (as mentioned above) as evidence of election fraud and malfeasance. There was a small effort to petition the White House to investigate election integrity citing various claims, including some that are misleadingly exaggerating the impact of specific election errors, turnout, and irregularities that would likely not have affected the presidential election result. Many of these rumors were vague and indirect.
No significant narratives are coalescing around a particular leader, an organization, or mobilization efforts, partly because no leadership, influencers, or candidates have amplified such calls. While a handful of minor left-wing influencers on X have also engaged in rumors that question or delegitimize election processes, these narratives are not getting traction in mainstream media, with political candidates, or figures that would allow these to achieve meaningful additional spread.
Alt-Platform Conversations About Election Fraud Continue, but Refocus on Down-ballot Races
Once Republicans’ victory crystalized at the national level, there was an overall drop off in rumors about election fraud on “alternative tech” platforms catering to conservatives. This drop-off was particularly evident on Trump’s own social media platform, Truth Social (Figure 2). Across Truth Social, Telegram, Gettr, and Gab, influencers and their audiences generally assessed that, while Democrats attempted fraud in 2024, support for Trump at the national level was “too big to rig” compared to 2020. The temporal graph below shows the volume of continuing discussion about fraud in swing states and down-ballot races across these platforms as the election results pointed toward a Trump victory.
Figure 2: A temporal graph showing the volume of rumors alleging electoral fraud in swing states and down-ballot races on Truth Social, Telegram, Gettr, and Gab, on election day and after.
In post-Election Day conversations, some right-wing election fraud activists persisted with claims of widespread fraud. But they refocused their efforts on the outstanding down-ballot races across the country, particularly in swing states where other Republicans on the ballot seemed to be underperforming relative to Trump. On Telegram, for example, election fraud activist Seth Keshel suggested that, while Trump won the election with “zero concerns,” the vote margins of down-ballot races in Wisconsin, Michigan, and Nevada still suggested “manipulated outcomes.” Some of these activists continued to demand an audit of the election results, falsely alleging that, even though Republicans managed to overcome alleged vote rigging at the national level, they were “screwed out” of down-ballot races.