Some thoughts about polls that come out about "X% of republicans think such and such":

For many, polling is cheering. It's not about giving an accurate, literal answer. It's about being on your team's side, giving the 'right' answer for your team. It's symbolic belief.

thread https://twitter.com/rickklein/status/1350048716691025920

Any political-coded question about 'was Trump good or bad' is going to have large numbers of GOP voters who give the Trump good/Democrats bad answer no matter what. Even if it's something completely fictional like "Did Donald Trump help invent the AIDS vaccine in 1997?"

2/8

There's a long history of small percentages of people answer yes to fringe statements. Hillary Clinton was a demon. Obama was the antichrist. etc. Everything about the John Birchers. These beliefs mostly stayed fringe when they weren't amplified much beyond the fringe.

3/8

What worries me about modern conservatism is how much they amplify absurdities and bunk. Conservative news is almost universally conspiratorial and extremist. Social media amplifies exciting lies far faster than the boring truth, faster and further than ever before.

4/8

They're taking advantage of the 'lots of people will symbolically believe and agree with any positive statement about their team' dynamic. But instead of extremism, conspiracies and fascism being denounced by a responsible mainstream media/party they're amplified.

5/8

And when it's repeated over and over, what if the belief sticks? That's what I worry about. Suggestible people are introduced into a nonsense idea. Then it's repeated so often it becomes truth, a known fact. Why would it be on TV, on facebook so much if it wasn't true?

6/8

As long as 'conservative news' exists in its own ghoulish world, disconnected from reality, amplified by social algorithms, events like 1/6 are possible. It's the reason "Joe Biden stole the election and we should overthrow him" is the mainstream GOP position.

7/8

I don't have a solution. But unless the conservative media reforms/improves for some reason, or unless conservative institutions regain the ability to effectively block/censure conspiracies and extremism, we might be stuck with this horrifying version of the GOP base.

/end