Taking a Close Look at a Big Number

A recent poll indicated that 78% of Republicans think that Biden stole the 2020 presidential election. That’s a proposition that, since the election, the disgraced former president and heavyweight Republican politicians and right-wing media personalities have been professing to believe in or assert is a reasonable possibility with such persistence that tens of millions of voters believe that it is, or might well be true, though there is no evidence that it is true and overwhelming evidence that it is false.

It’s so preposterous, in fact, that we can be sure that a large percentage of Republicans who answered the poll question by saying that they think Biden stole the election don’t believe any such thing, but answered in the affirmative because it’s the policy of the Republican Party and its leaders to sow doubt about the legitimacy of our electoral policies in order to justify enacting laws calculated to put Republicans in power in upcoming elections. It has become standard operating procedure for “good” Republicans to say they believe Biden stole the election even though they know he didn’t.