Americans point finger at politicians on misinformation threat

Americans' top concern around misinformation right now — more than foreign government interference or AI — is politicians spreading it to manipulate their supporters, according to a new Axios Vibes survey by The Harris Poll.

Why it matters: The election is 40 days away and nobody trusts or believes anything.

• "It's like, 'The call is coming from inside the house,'" said John Gerzema, CEO of The Harris Poll, recalling the old horror-movie refrain. (The Harris Poll is not affiliated with Vice President Harris.)
• "In past elections, there was always fear of misinformation and election interference coming from abroad. But here we see the most likely source of concern is America's own politicians spreading misinformation.
• "It used to be, we were worried about China or Russia, fake ads or Facebook. Now, no, it's coming from the campaigns."

The big picture: 54% of respondents in the survey agreed with the statement, "I've disengaged from politics because I can't tell what's true."

• Half of voters polled — and nearly two-thirds of non-voters — said when it comes to political news and the media, it's becoming too difficult for them to tell what is true and what is false. That was especially true for independents (58%) and Republicans (55%) compared with Democrats (39%).
• 8 in 10 voters said they believe that misinformation can significantly affect election outcomes, political discourse and civility.
• Skepticism about the truth has so blurred the lines that respondents were as likely to say they regularly see misinformation in online mainstream news (77%) or cable TV (73%) as in their social media feeds (76%) or partisan news outlets (72%).

By the numbers: When survey respondents were asked to identify up to three top concerns about misinformation, 51% identified politicians spreading misinformation to control their supporters.

• That ranked ahead of social media companies failing to stop misinformation (35%), AI deceiving people (35%), media personalities spreading revisionist claims (34%) and foreign governments spreading misinformation on US social media (30%).
• 70% of respondents said they expect misinformation will have a lot or quite a bit of impact on the presidential election, and 57% felt it would impact local election results.

The intrigue: Though the survey was fielded amid the fallout over baseless claims spread by the Republican presidential ticket about immigrants eating people's pets in Ohio, pollsters found that Republicans are almost as worried as Democrats and independents about politicians spreading misinformation.

Between the lines: In one noteworthy partisan difference, however, Republicans are much more likely than Democrats to dismiss information that conflicts with their own views if it comes from a source they don't know.

• 41% of Republican voters said they'd likely see it as biased and not reliable, while 20% said they'd see it as credible and informative.
• Among Democrats, 34% said they'd see it as credible and informative while 26% would consider it unreliable.
• About 4 in 10 from each party said they'd seek to verify the information elsewhere before deciding.

Methodology: The findings in this Axios Vibes survey by The Harris Poll are based on a nationally representative sample of 2,122 U.S. adults conducted online from Sept. 12-14, 2024, where 1,837 identified as registered voters.

• The sampling precision of Harris online polls is measured by using a Bayesian credible interval. For this study, the data for the overall population is accurate to within +/- 2.6 percentage points using a 95% confidence level, and +/- 2.8 percentage points for respondents within the registered voters.