Donald Trump's 2024 election victory is fueling claims of fraud on both sides of the political divide. His right-wing supporters claim the outcome vindicates their debunked claims that the 2020 election was stolen from him. To a smaller degree, those on the left are circulating their own baseless claims casting doubt on this year's results.
The election denial movement Trump inspired has spent the past four years building an infrastructure and community around false claims that 2020 was rigged. This year, it invested heavily in raising similar alarms that voting would again be compromised — only for those claims to evaporate as returns came in.
The narrative twist emerging in the wake of Election Day shows how the movement is continuing to sow doubt about the voting process even after their preferred candidate won. The new claims center on comparing popular vote totals in 2020 and 2024: Four years ago, Joe Biden received around 81 million votes; as of Friday afternoon Vice President Harris' total stood at 69 million, according to the Associated Press.
Election deniers have framed the difference as "missing" Democratic ballots that validate their suspicions about cheating in 2020. Some recirculated disproven theories about late-night ballot "dumps" that resulted in states that had early leads for Trump in 2020 shift to Biden as more votes were counted.
There are a couple straightforward reasons for the gap between Harris' and Biden's totals. First of all, votes are still being tallied, including in the most populous state, California.
"Most people just don't really understand how election administration and the tabulation of election results actually works in this country," said Kathy Boockvar, who oversaw elections in 2020 in Pennsylvania as its secretary of the commonwealth. "And that of course leads, unfortunately, to susceptibility to conspiracy theories and false information."
The process of certifying votes varies from state to state. In many cases it takes weeks to complete, as officials process overseas and military ballots, review provisional ballots, and conduct audits.
Jennifer Morrell, a former elections official who now runs the advisory firm the Elections Group, says when considering claims about "missing" ballots, it's important "to recognize that there are these checks and balances and audits and tests that happen throughout the election."
Numerous investigations and audits, often led by Republicans, were conducted after the 2020 election and no evidence of widespread fraud was discovered. Those checks will continue for the 2024 election over the coming weeks.
Turnout also varies from election to election. In 2020, 160 million people voted — a record high. While turnout in 2024 is expected to be close to that, Trump made gains across the country, even in Democratic states Harris won. That means she will almost certainly fall short of Biden's total number of votes.
Boockvar said there are many times in U.S. political history where "the country went in a drastically different direction" from one election to the next. "Where Democrats might vote for Republican candidates or Republicans vote for Democratic candidates, or people come out more in force [or] people come out less," she said. "This is normal."
Posts about the gap first emerged on X, formerly Twitter, overnight on Election Day and into the early hours of Wednesday, Nov. 6, according to research by the University of Washington's Center for an Informed Public, which tracks rumors about election administration.
Soon, pro-Trump influencers began sharing them to their own large audiences. Their numbers varied — some said there were 20 million "missing" Democratic votes, while some put it at 15 million, depending on how many votes had been counted for Harris at the time they were posting. But the message was consistent.
"Where did those 20 million Democratic voters go? The truth is, they never existed. I think we can put the lie about Biden's 80 million votes to rest once and for all," wrote Dinesh D'Souza, who popularized conspiracy theories about ballot boxes after the 2020 election. His post has been viewed more than 4 million times on X.
A similar post from YouTuber Benny Johnson was viewed more than 22 million times.
The narrative took visual form in a bar chart shared by the far-right website ZeroHedge in a post that has received 20 million views. Images are a potent and easily shareable way of communicating ideas online, and the graphic comparing 2024's incomplete count with totals in 2016 and 2020 was quickly picked up and passed along by many other accounts.
The D'Souza and ZeroHedge posts in particular accelerated the spread of the misleading narrative. "That's what made the conversation go boom," said Danielle Lee Tomson, research manager at the Center for an Informed Public.
On Nov. 7, Cleta Mitchell, an influential Republican election attorney who was at the center of Trump's failed attempts to overturn the 2020 election and has become a pivotal figure in the right-wing "election integrity" movement, weighed in with a post noting not just the difference between Biden and Harris' vote totals, but also the change in Trump's votes.
"Where did 20 million votes go between 2020 and 2024? 15 million for Biden, 5 million for Trump. Who believes Trump received 5 million fewer votes in 2024?" she asked.
Kate Starbird, a UW professor and co-founder of the Center for an Informed Public, said the dynamic reflects how figures like Mitchell have built their brands on these claims.
"There are folks that are making a living right now on talking about election fraud," said Starbird. "2024 isn't going to give them much material for that, because it's not going to advance their political goals."
"So they may be replaying 2020 and and trying to bring the events of Election Day 2024 and some of the outcomes into those conspiracy theories about 2020," said Starbird.
The "missing" Democratic votes theory also circulated among left-leaning social media users, alongside allegations, without evidence, that Republicans committed fraud this year. Many of these posts were accompanied by the hashtags #DoNotConcedeKamala or #TrumpCheated.
Some of these posts got millions of views. But overall, claims of fraud from left-leaning accounts did not gain the level of prominence, virality or impact as the pro-Trump election denial movement in 2020, according to UW researchers.
"Simply put, there is no left-wing equivalent of the 2020 'Stop the Steal' mobilization effort," they wrote.
That could be because the left doesn't have the kind of online infrastructure that exists on the right to amplify election fraud claims and to generate "evidence" — often misleadingly framed photos and videos — to support those claims, UW's Tomson said.
What's more, Harris and other Democratic leaders didn't encourage them. Use of the #DoNotConcedeKamala hashtag dropped off after the vice president conceded the race, UW found.
"There isn't the same kind of network or improvisation of large left-wing influencers or candidates who are having and sharing in the same kind of conversation in order to get it to get that attention and virality," Tomson said.
Boockvar, the former Pennsylvania election official, said the conspiracy theories on both sides show just how much trust in elections has been eroded by sustained attacks on election integrity.
"I just want to say, 'Stop already,'" she said of the resurgence of fraud claims. "We have a democratic republic where all eligible voters can vote and we have election systems where the election officials follow defined rules, defined processes and standards and security and integrity."
Ultimately, she said, Americans need to "to separate their faith in the [electoral] process and in the people [who conduct elections] from disappointment over whether their candidate wins or loses."
NPR's Miles Parks contributed reporting.
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