Elizabeth Connors for The Monkey Cage:

My results suggest three more things that are cause for both pessimism and optimism.

First, discussing Republicans’ belief in election fraud could make the problem worse. Doing so reinforces the idea that Republicans believe there’s been election fraud while Democrats don’t — which reinforces the social pressure to respond accordingly.

Second, it’s very hard to measure what citizens really think about an election’s legitimacy. As political scientists Ryan Claasen, Michael Ensley and John Barry Ryan wrote in a recent TMC article, many partisans only believe certain actions are stealing the election when the other party does it.

My research findings complicate this further with the fact that those who genuinely believe the election was stolen are pressuring fellow party members to say they believe that as well.

Finally, my research suggests that the surveys finding widespread Republican belief that the 2020 election was fraudulent isn’t really as strong as we might think. Some people may simply be saying that’s what they believe in order to look like a good Republican.