The Manhattan Institute has done a detailed poll of Republican Party supporters and the different groups they might fall into. The whole thing is worth reading, but one result that jumps out is on conspiracy theories. Republican voters are markedly more likely to believe an array of these, including 41% saying that 9/11 was an inside job, 37% endorsing Holocaust denial and 33% that vaccines cause autism. If we just focus on Holocaust denial and look at demographic groups, the report reads:

“Younger men [who vote Republican] are especially likely to hold this view (54% of men under 50 vs. 39% of women under 50). Among men over 50, 41% agree, compared with 18% of women over 50. Racial divides are particularly striking:

“77% of Hispanic GOP voters

“30% of white GOP voters

“66% of black GOP voters”

There are similar age differences around racism. “Among the Current GOP under 50, a notable minority report that they themselves openly express racist (31%) or antisemitic (25%) views. Among those over 50 in the Current GOP, these figures drop to just 4% for each.”

Does this speaks to the collapse of any agreed reality and the corrosive effects of social media? Nor is the UK immune from similar thinking. Net immigration has fallen very substantially in the last two years, yet British Future in polling from this summer note that “a worrying 1 in 5 people (21%) simply refused to believe the numbers had fallen by that much. […] 37% of Reform UK voters refused to believe that immigration had fallen, even when presented with the numbers from the Office for National Statistics.”

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