On Fertile Ground: How Racial Resentment Primes White Americans to Believe Fraud Accusations

Abstract

White Americans face a democratic dilemma: remain committed to electoral democracy (which has been historically beneficial for them), or abandon it as non-white groups gain political stature. We argue "fraud'' narratives offer white Americans a solution: they can reject specific democratic outcomes, while remaining committed to democracy as an ideal. We thus expect-and demonstrate-that fraud beliefs have a specifically racial valence. In three studies, we show that Black cities were at the epicenter of fraud dialog on Twitter; that electoral confidence deteriorated most for racially-resentful whites post-election in 2020; and, in a survey experiment, show that racially resentful white Americans are especially likely to believe accusations of fraud when these accusations are racialized. At a time when America's multiracial democracy appears fragile, groups poised to lose power draw on rote narratives linking race and criminality to legitimize their own denial of free and fair elections.

Keywords: Voter Fraud, Racial Resentment, Social Identity, Misinformation, Experiment