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Sunday, December 18, 2016

Perception vs. Reality: The Popular Vote, Putin, And The Russian Hack

Click here for an article at Daily Kos, by Hunter, entitled "Half of Republicans believe Trump won popular vote; less than a third bothered by Russian hacking."

  • Did Trump win the popular vote? No, he did not; Hillary's lead is upwards of 2.8 million votes and counting, as absentee and mail-in ballots continue to be counted.
Do people think Trump won the popular vote? Well, quite a lot of people do, according to a survey cited in the article: 52% of Republicans surveyed, 24% of independents, and 7% of Democrats.

60% of Republicans without college degrees believe Trump won the popular vote, as opposed to 37% of those with a college degree.

The survey asked, Are you bothered a great deal/quite a bit by Russian interference in the election? 86% of Democrats said yes, as opposed to 29% of Republicans.

In an article by Politico staff entitled "Morell calls Russia's meddling in U.S. elections 'political equivalent of 9/11,'" former CIA acting director Michael Morell said about the Russian hacks:
“A foreign government messing around in our elections is, I think, an existential threat to our way of life. To me, and this is to me not an overstatement, this is the political equivalent of 9/11,” Morell said in an interview posted Sunday on The Cipher Brief. “It is huge and the fact that it hasn’t gotten more attention from the Obama Administration, Congress, and the mainstream media, is just shocking to me.”
But only 29% of Republicans are concerned. Are they not aware that U.S. intelligence agencies have agreed that the Russians hacked the election (that is, various servers connected with the Democratic party)? Or do they not believe the intelligence community's assessment? Or do they believe the assessment and they just don't care, or don't think it's significant?

  • Is Trump too friendly with Putin? 61% of Democrats say yes, as opposed to 8% of Republicans.

  • Do Americans have a favorable opinion of Vladimir Putin? 37% of Republicans do, while 47% view him at least somewhat negatively. 12% of Democrats and 20% of independents view him favorably.

Draw your own conclusions.

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