The unlikely demographic that’s fueling post-election conspiracy theories

It didn’t take long after the presidential election for the conspiracy theories to unspool. People on X, posters on Threads, TikTok influencers, viral Substack newsletters all hummed with breathless speculation about vote totals and Elon Musk’s Starlink satellite’s being used to upload and switch votes. Maybe Vice President Kamala Harris was referring to Starlink interference in her speech when she referred to “stars,” They suggested. In the r/Iowa community on Reddit, a user posted a picture of a notice from the local county auditor saying the mail-in ballot hadn’t been counted because it wasn’t signed. “Surprise surprise,” the poster commented, implying that the ballot was intentionally not counted. Former radio DJ and self-published author Tara Dublin has racked up millions of views by reposting election conspiracies with a chain letter titled “Duty to Warn” on her Substack and making false claims about election fraud on X. Gabrielle Blair, an influential mom blogger, posted on Threads that Democratic voters should demand a hand recount to ensure fairness.

There is absolutely no evidence to support any of these claims. Even the “Duty to Warn” letter cites stories referring to debunked claims about the 2020 election. The main difference between the theories from Republicans about 2020 and the ones from Democrats about 2024 is that so far no one in party leadership has repeated any false claims. But they keep rising to the surface, like drowned bodies in the water.

There is a reason for that. And no, it’s not because there was widespread voter fraud. As our social and political institutions fail us and churches and religious spaces are increasingly politicized, conspiracy theories have become the new American religion.

Americans’ trust in the media, politicians, higher education, the Supreme Court and organized religion has cratered to all-time lows among members of both parties. The explanation is obvious: In recent years, rights that Americans considered settled law have been overturned, and now LGBTQ rights are under attack, worker wages stagnate even as corporate profits soar, schools are overcrowded and underfunded, and a man convicted on 34 felony counts is now poised to be the president.

Despite the attention paid to the “Stop the Steal” conspiracies and the Jan. 6 insurrection, the misinformation economy isn’t just the realm of Republicans. Conspiracy theories are the safe haven of the disenfranchised and the powerless or those who perceive themselves as powerless. They provide a comfortable fiction that affirms what we want to believe about ourselves and our country rather than the unpopular truth.

And right now, many of the conspiracies about the 2024 election are promoted by women who practice alternative medicine and nonreligious spirituality. Women who work online as mediums and psychics are predicting that Harris will still win. One woman told me via email that her mother, a former evangelical who has embraced alternative medicine, firmly believes in conspiracies about election fraud. Brook Easton, a Harris voter, told me she sees conspiracies popping up in the astrology community, which is largely dominated by women, queer people and people of color — people who are vulnerable feel afraid for their rights under a Trump administration. “Honestly, people are truly just looking for any thread of hope that this new reality is a nightmare we will wake up from,” Easton told me.

Conspiracy theories, for members of both parties, are a religion that spins delusion, rather than preaches truth. During the 2016 election, grifters spinning tales about a “pee tape” and game theory were rewarded with the approval of the attention economy. Social media users smashed “share” buttons and followed and liked until the line between reality and the truth became completely blurred, creating a media economy in which nothing seemed true and everything seemed possible. 

There was never a real reckoning for that period of time of unchecked misinformation. Unless you want to call this election that moment. 

Now, in 2024, some Democrats find it easier to believe that there was widespread fraud than to believe the truth, which is that this is the America that the plurality of voters wanted. That, in a time of distrust in public institutions, voters chose the person who vowed to destroy those institutions.

Right before the election, a Harris campaign ad telling women that their husbands wouldn’t know about their votes went viral. The ad concerned me at the time: Both women in the ad were white, and it felt like a truth we wanted to believe about white female voters. The reality is that white women who vote for Donald Trump are rarely coerced. A majority of white women voted for him because they find more benefit from allyship with the patriarchy and the control of others.

Despite those who insist otherwise, no matter how you slice the electoral pie or the popular vote, Trump won the presidency, and Republicans won the Senate and the House in a free and fair election giving Trump power to enact his policies, which include mass deportations, the further erosion of reproductive care and the reinvention of our political system. 

We don’t need conspiracy theories to explain our collapsing institutions. We don’t need to invoke Starlink to know that grocery store CEOs gouged prices above inflation. We don’t need to believe in tampering with voting machines to know that gerrymandering exists. We don’t need to believe in coordinated misinformation campaigns to know that private equity gutting America’s newsrooms has led to a dearth of good reporting and news.

But facing the reality that the election wasn’t stolen means examining some things about ourselves, our country and our neighbors and families that are deeply uncomfortable. For example, how quickly the Democratic Party backtracked on the #BlackLivesMatter movement after the protests over the death of George Floyd in 2020. How swiftly the party moved to be as strict or stricter on immigration than even the Republicans. How the party refused to push for a cease-fire in Gaza. And the willingness of liberal pundits and politicians to blame pro-trans policies, Black men and Latino men, anyone except the largest group of voters who backed Trump: white men and women.  

We can’t change our country if we keep following the false prophets of conspiracy. Because the ugly truth about this election isn’t a conspiracy; it’s right there in the open — racism, gendered grievance, all thinly veiled as economic anxiety, brought us here. 

This article was originally published on MSNBC.com