Trump’s election results-bashing tweets erodes trust among loyalists, study finds

But researchers admit their study has ‘important limitations’ as president continues attacking election results

Donald Trump’s tweets attacking the US presidential election’s legitimacy does have some impact on his supporters, a new study finds.

The president is refusing to accept the results of the election, which show Joe Biden with well over the 270 Electoral College votes needed to win. Mr Trump remains at 214.

“BALLOT COUNTING ABUSE!” the president tweeted on Tuesday, drawing a rebuke from Twitter with a disclaimer that his claim has been “disputed.”

Researchers led by a Stanford University political scientist examined such tweets by Mr Trump, and found “virtually no evidence that exposure to election-related or general norm violations substantially affects respect for trust in elections, election norms, support for political violence, or support for democracy.”

“We also find no significant differences in effect between the election and norm violation treatments,” they wrote.

But what they did find was hardcore Trump backers being swayed by his tweets.

“Exposure to these norm violations has pernicious effects among Trump’s supporters. Among people who approve of his performance in office, repeated exposure to norm-violating rhetoric about electoral fraud erodes trust and confidence in elections and increases belief that elections are rigged,” states the study.

“Trump’s election norm violations decrease trust and confi- dence in elections among people who approve of his performance in office by 0.24 stan- dard deviations on average across waves (p < .005),” the researchers added. “By contrast, exposure to the election norm violation tweets actually increases trust and confidence in elections among Trump disapprovers by 0.11 standard deviations on average.”

But they also were notably honest about their research’s limitations.

“While we strove for realism in the design of our treatments, participants nonetheless encountered Trump’s tweets in the context of an online survey rather than the way they would on Twitter or in other settings in which they are exposed to political news and information,” they wrote. The effects of Trump’s tweets likely also vary by whether they are reinforced or countered by other information … a design variant that should be evaluated in future research.”

“Second, we conducted our experiment in a saturated news environment in which many respondents had presumably already been exposed to Trump’s statements multiple times via other means,” according to the report, “the effects of additional exposure, including potential normalization or desensitization, may therefore have been limited.”

Mr Biden is on track to be sworn in as the 46th president in 71 days. No federal judge has yet to side with the Trump campaign in their nearly 20 lawsuits that even RNC Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel acknowledged on Monday might not be enough to reverse vote tallies in enough swing states to hand Mr Trump the election.