The very-online right’s insane Taylor Swift conspiracy theories seemed Taylor-made for determining just how readily an increasingly conspiratorial Republican Party would believe virtually anything could be part of a deep-state plot.
We finally have our first indication of just how much this kind of thing can penetrate the party.
A new Monmouth University poll shows that Americans as a whole overwhelmingly reject the idea that Swift is part of a “covert government effort” to reelect President Biden in 2024, 73 percent to 18 percent.
But within the Republican Party, there is a remarkable level of support for the proposition. The poll shows that about one-third of Republicans — 32 percent — believe Swift is indeed part of that covert government effort. Another 57 percent say such an effort doesn’t exist.
It’s worth asking just how people interpreted the poll question. Do people understand a “covert government effort” to include the more absurd theories that the NFL effectively rigged things so Swift’s boyfriend Travis Kelce and the Kansas City Chiefs could win the Super Bowl and Swift could ride the publicity to helping Biden in 2024? Do they believe the theory floated by Fox News’s Jesse Watters that Swift is part of a “psyop” pushed by the Defense Department? Or do they understand this as merely the idea that Swift would endorse Biden in 2024, as she did in 2020? (Swift has made her left-leaning politics clear dating back to 2018.)
But the word “covert” seems to suggest something nefarious and underhanded. And the poll shows a substantial number of people say they’ve consumed news about the idea, including nearly half (46 percent) of Republicans.
Tellingly, the poll showed that Republicans who had actually heard of the theory were much more inclined to embrace it. Republicans who said they were familiar with the idea were nearly evenly split: 44 percent said such a “covert government effort” exists, while 47 percent said it didn’t.
(Republicans who had not heard of the theory wagered the effort didn’t exist by a 66-21 margin.)
These are small sample sizes with large margins of error. But the results suggest that pushing these ridiculous ideas into the ether can find a very credulous audience in the GOP. Perhaps it says more about people’s media diets — with more conspiratorial Republicans more likely to consume media that promotes such theories. Still, the fact that only about half who were familiar with the theory rejected it says a lot.
The poll is merely the latest to suggest that a significant segment of the Republican Party is inclined to believe baseless conspiracy theories about the deep state. For example:
Against that backdrop, we probably shouldn’t be too surprised.
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