An overwhelming majority of people now say that belief in conspiracy theories is “out of control” in the United States, according to a new survey.
The Quinnipiac poll released on Wednesday found that 73% of adults surveyed said belief in conspiracy theories is out of control, while only 18% said that it was under control. Nine percent didn’t answer or said that they didn’t know.
The results were divergent along partisan lines, with 58% of Republicans saying conspiracy theories are out of control, compared to 87% of Democrats who said the same. More than a quarter of Republicans said that belief in conspiracy theories is under control, compared to only 8% of Democrats.
“Fed up with fabricated stories and clearly frightened by the dark and deluded motives of conspiracy theorists, Americans overwhelmingly agree, enough is enough with the pipeline of internet garbage,” said Quinnipiac University Polling Analyst Tim Malloy.
The 2020 presidential election brought a number of election-related conspiracy theories to the fore, including several that circulated as members of former President Donald Trump’s campaign and their allies claimed he won the election despite President Biden’s 306-232 Electoral College victory. Their arguments largely hinged on claims of election fraud that were rejected by election officials and the courts.
QAnon, another conspiracy theory pushing the belief that Trump was covertly battling a series of “deep state” plots and global conspiracies, including an alleged ring of sex traffickers that includes Democratic politicians, business leaders, and Hollywood elites, has emerged into the public spotlight in recent years.
GOP Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia was stripped of her committee assignments in a largely partisan vote as she faced outrage for past comments in support of conspiracy theories such as QAnon, flirtations with 9/11 trutherism, and social media posts that some took as threatening violence against House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.
“I was allowed to believe things that weren’t true, and I would ask questions about them and talk about it. And that is absolutely what I regret,” Greene said in a House floor speech before the vote earlier this month. “Later in 2018, when I started finding misinformation, lies, things that were not true in these QAnon posts, I stopped believing it.”
Greene also said that disinformation comes from many sources and argued that the media are “just as guilty as QAnon” of fabrication.
“I started seeing things in the news that didn’t make sense to me, like Russian collusion, which are conspiracy theories also and have been proven so. These things bothered me deeply, and I realized just watching CNN or Fox News, I may not find the truth,” she said, adding that media corporations can “portray [people] into someone that [they’re] not” via deceptive editing.
The poll was conducted from Feb. 11-14 among 1,056 respondents and has a 3-point margin of error.
