Since the Supreme Court struck down portions of the Voting Rights Act in 2013, Republicans have been emboldened to push voter suppression efforts, which disproportionately affect minority communities and are now seen as an crucial aspect of Republican electoral strategy. Additional court decisions and Trump’s unsubstantiated claims that he lost the popular vote in 2016 because of “the millions of people who voted illegally” have further emboldened the suppression efforts.

The voter suppression strategy supported by Trump and his allies in right-wing media includes making repeated and unsubstantiated claims of voter fraud to support attempts to purge voter rolls, pass voter ID laws, close polling places prior to the election, and monitor polling places and challenge ballots on Election Day. These efforts come despite the many studies that have debunked claims of widespread voter fraud, including by Trump’s own commission.

Now, amid concerns about the impact of COVID-19 on the 2020 election and Trump’s sliding poll numbers, Trump and right-wing media have renewed their voter fraud claims, laying the groundwork to question the results of the 2020 election and specifically focusing their ire on vote-by-mail programs. The pandemic has increased support for mail-in voting, which has the potential to increase voter turnout in November, though evidence shows that voting by mail does not affect one political party more favorably.

In this new study, Media Matters found that right-wing fearmongering, including claims of voter fraud, is leading discussion of voting and the 2020 election on Facebook. Posts on the site from right-leaning pages earned the most engagement (reactions, comments, and shares), with nearly 92 million interactions or 51% of engagement of all posts analyzed. Posts from left-leaning pages and nonaligned pages earned only 36% and 13% of engagement, respectively.

Top posts from right-leaning, nonaligned, and left-leaning Facebook pages illuminate the narratives being amplified by these social media ecosystems about voting and the 2020 election. Media Matters found that claims of voter fraud, including attacks on vote by mail, were typical for right-leaning pages, in addition to other narratives supporting Trump and criticizing Democrats and the media. Nonaligned and left-leaning pages mostly encouraged people to vote and amplified criticism of Trump, with none of the top posts from left-leaning pages even referring to vote by mail.

Media Matters analyzed 17,636 posts from 328 right-leaning pages posted between noon EDT on March 12 and noon EDT on June 12. These posts earned nearly 92 million interactions on Facebook and averaged approximately 5,200 interactions per post.

Media Matters identified the 10 posts about voting from right-leaning Facebook pages that earned the most interactions. All of these posts earned more interactions than any of the top 10 posts from nonaligned pages. Seven of the top 10 posts from right-leaning pages are directly from Trump, including one of the posts that Facebook took no action against when Twitter labeled it as election misinformation.

In addition to the usual narratives from right-leaning pages pushing support for Trump and criticizing Democrats, some of the top posts promoted claims of voter fraud, specifically attacking mail-in voting. Other highly engaged posts shared by Trump included claims that Democrats and the media were using the pandemic to hurt him politically. Beyond spreading these claims himself, Trump’s feedback loop with right-wing media provides a network that further amplifies such talking points. 

Claims of voter fraud and attacks on mail-in voting

Donald Trump For President

Donald J. Trump

Additional top posts shared by Trump

Donald J. Trump

Media Matters analyzed 15,218 posts from 326 nonaligned pages made between noon EDT on March 12 and noon EDT on June 12. These posts earned over 23 million interactions on Facebook and averaged approximately 1,500 interactions per post.

Media Matters identified the 10 posts about voting from nonaligned Facebook pages that earned the most interactions and found only two posts about mail-in voting. The post from nonaligned pages with the most engagement is from journalist Dan Rather; it earned only over 154,000 interactions, less than the top 10 posts from both right-leaning and left-leaning pages.

In addition to posts about mail-in voting, other posts amplified Republicans or Trump allies who have criticized him or said that they will not vote for him in November, provided general news about the election, and encouraged people to vote.

Promoting vote by mail

ACLU

Highlighting Republicans or Trump allies who criticized Trump

NPR

The New York Times

Sharing general news about the election

The New York Times

NBC News

Encouraging people to vote in November or promoting the importance of voting

Dan Rather

NBC Nightly News with Lester Holt

(This post from NBC Nightly News with Lester Holt was included because the subheading of the article quotes Terrence Floyd saying, “Let’s stop thinking that our voice don’t matter and vote.”)

Media Matters analyzed 13,554 posts from 361 left-leaning pages made between noon EDT on March 12 and noon EDT on June 12. These posts earned over 63 million interactions on Facebook and averaged nearly 4,700 interactions per post.

The post about voting with the most interactions, earning over nearly 1.5 million interactions and surpassing all posts from right-leaning or nonaligned pages, is former President Barack Obama's post about police brutality that also encourages people “to mobilize to raise awareness” and “to organize and cast our ballots to make sure that we elect candidates who will act on reform.”

Media Matters identified the additional nine posts about voting from left-leaning Facebook pages that earned the most interactions and found that none of the posts mention vote by mail. Instead, these posts encourage people to vote, highlight Democrats’ policies, and amplify criticism of Trump, his supporters, and his policies.

Calling for people to vote in November

Barack Obama

Hillary Clinton

Occupy Democrats

(This post from Occupy Democrats was included because the subheading of the article quotes Terrence Floyd saying, “Let’s stop thinking that our voice don’t matter and vote.”)

Amplifying criticism of Trump, his supporters, and his policies

Occupy Democrats

Media Matters compiled a list of 1,223 Facebook pages that pertain to news and media outlets, media figures, politicians, political parties, and issue-focused advocacy groups. Each page in this study also: (1) had over 500,000 page likes, (2) had primarily English-language content, and (3) posted content related to U.S. political news.

Pages were independently coded by two researchers and reconciled by a third researcher for two factors: (1) content related to political news and (2) ideological alignment (left-leaning, right-leaning, nonaligned, or “other”). Each page was individually reviewed, and only pages that regularly focused on news about American politics were included in the study. The ideological alignment of a page was determined by a page’s name, information in the “About” section, the page owner, and posts. Pages that expressed opposition to President Donald Trump or focused on issues primarily aimed at liberals (e.g., protecting abortion rights, calling for action against gun violence, etc.) were coded as left-leaning. Pages that expressed support for Trump or focused on issues primarily aimed at conservatives (e.g., restricting abortion rights, downplaying gun violence, etc.) were coded as right-leaning. All pages for right-wing and left-wing media outlets were automatically coded as right-leaning or left-leaning, respectively. Pages that did not have an ideological leaning in their content were coded as nonaligned. If there was doubt about whether to code a page as nonaligned or left-leaning, the page was coded as left-leaning. Pages were coded as “other” if they did not fit in any of the above categories or if they contained a mix of left-leaning and right-leaning content. These pages were excluded from the final dataset. The resulting list of pages were 384 right-leaning pages, 377 nonaligned pages, 435 left-leaning pages, and 27 “other.”

Media Matters compiled and reviewed data, including total interactions (reactions, comments, and shares), on Facebook posts about voting and the 2020 election that were shared by Media Matters’ list of 1,196 Facebook pages, excluding pages coded as “other,” between noon EDT on March 12 and noon EDT on June 12. We defined posts that mentioned voting as any post that had any of the following keywords in the post’s message or in an included link, article headline, or article description: vote, votes, voting, voter,voters, “polling place,” election, elections, “primary election,” “vote by mail,” “vote-by-mail,” “vote by-mail,” “vote-by mail,” “mail-in voting,” “mail in voting,” “mail-in-voting,” “mail in-voting,” “mail voting,” “mail-voting,” “mail ballot,” “mail balloting,” “mail ballots,” “ballot,” “ballots,” “ballot harvesting,” “voter fraud,” “voters fraud,” “voting fraud,” “election fraud,” “elections fraud,” “ballot harvest,” “voter suppression,” “ballot fraud,” “absentee ballot,” “early voting,” “absentee voting,” “mail-in ballot,” “mail in ballot,” “mail in-ballot,” “mail-in ballots,” “mail in ballots,” “mail in-ballots,” “false vote,” “false votes,” “false voting,” “election cheating,” “illegitimate election,” “vote fraud,” “ballot collection,” “ballot collections.” The resulting data set included 17,636 posts from 328 right-leaning pages, 15,218 posts from 326 nonaligned pages, and 13,554 posts from 361 left-leaning pages.