Some 80 million Americans voted for and many actually think Trump won in 2020, regardless of evidence. Much of them also think the events of 1/6/21 were fake or a non issue.
Think of someone you know of average intelligence then remember that 50% of the nation is under that bar. That's a lot of voters.
I don't think Trump won based on people thinking he was right, or that his positions (what positions?) were correct. There were some people who believed that, but not enough for him to win. Trump won because there were enough people who voted "not Hillary" to put Trump over the top.
You don't persuade people like that with facts. You persuade them by running a candidate less flawed than Hillary.
I think it's a fairly large assumption to make that they all voted for him specifically. I don't think it's too crazy (given he won <50% of the popular vote in the 2016 primaries) to assume a large number of those voters voted "Not Democrat" or voted Republican instead of voting Trump specifically.
"I find it somewhat implausible that half the population is dumb, racist and all those other labels. "
No - they aren't.
The answer is very easy: They believe Donald Trump.
Trump has credibility in their minds, and when he repeats the lie, over and over - that 'the election was stolen' - they believe it.
On election night - he literally came out and said 'If you count the fake votes, Biden won' - declaring mass fraud, without any evidence.
His followers believe him.
Contemplate the implications of that.
These people do not watch CNN, they watch Fox, OAN, Breitbart etc. where the falsehoods are propagated, or at least never debunked.
They are simply misinformed.
On CNN they were interviewing quite a number of protesters and unanimously 'they believed the election was stolen'.
A close observer will have noticed that the court cases were thrown out, that Homeland Security and the DoJ cleared it etc. - but that truthful information is not passed on to people in the Trump Bubble.
Trump's base don't get their news from sources that will explicitly and clearly debunk the conspiracies.
It's important to contemplate what this means: it's almost entirely not a political divide - it's mostly a divide based on what the facts are.
Consider the corollary: Trump won the election, but there was point-blank, irrefutable evidence that he rigged it. The DoJ, Homeland Security - everyone - points out his fraud.
Trump could merely deny the allegations, declare that he is 'under attack' and rally people to his cause on Twitter and Facebook.
His followers would believe him.
Meanwhile - how would you feel? Literally the election was stolen by Trump. Point-blank evidence.
Would you hit the streets in protest?
Would you 'occupy DC'?
Millions would be enraged, we'd see protests like we've never seen before.
So just contemplate that a considerable number of Americans are completely misinformed and deeply believe the election was stolen and that the Republic is being usurped.
From that perspective, their actions seem more rational.
I've been watching the right-wing media carefully - and while Fox mostly doesn't openly support Trump's claims, they don't spend a lot of time debunking, and they 'go along with it' in a sneaky way by saying 'Millions feel there was fraud and their voices must be heard' - essentially avoiding taking the position that Fox agrees there was fraud, but rather sympathizing with the angry masses who they darn well know are misinformed.
FYI it's actually considerably easier to 'cast doubt' on elections where there is always some small degree of fraud whereupon the tiniest case can be used as 'evidence'.
This insurrection is not about racism or any of that (these things overlap obviously) it's an election based on Fake News.
I know that HN is pretty serious about 'Free Speech' - but folks - Twitter is Trump's primary tool of misinformation - it's his daily dose of koolaid and falsehoods to quite a few million who absolutely take his word for it.
And finally - the opposite is also true: these followers assume that CNN, NBC, NPR etc. are entirely made up of lies. Nothing on those channels has any credibility in their eyes.
That's a lot of handwaving and speculation about what was going on in the voters' minds. I'm going to Occam's Razor this and say that ~54% of voters voted for Not Donald Trump.
Even if this was the reason everyone voted for Trump (a dubious claim at best), that still wouldn't make it the majority opinion because the majority of voters didn't vote for him.
Reality distortion on the right. Trump has falsely claimed (lied) that he won the popular vote, so his supporters parrot it, when it's clearly not true.
They did think they were affirming the correct outcome rather than changing it. Whatever else you can say, most of those people genuinely believed Trump won the election.
Trump supporters turned out to be 47% of voters and it's been said many times he had a strong base of energized young people. It's entirely possible it's fully legitimate in my mind at least.
I wonder if this isn't some kind of mass denial happening in some subset of the world. I've been seeing a lot of theories abot why Trump won, including mass manipulation and Russian influence. But what about the simplest explanation - that he won because people voted for him (usual vote counting shenanigans that happen every election aside)? Is this fact so scary people need to rationalize it away?
I would tend to agree with this. What I am worried is that Trump has been making a fool of himself for the last 74 years. Yet, more than 70.000.000 people voted for him. So there must be something wrong about our assumption...
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