The relatively low number of QAnon believers among white Catholics may be related to their news consumption habits and their educational attainment. The authors of the study announcing the results of the poll note that “Americans without a college education are three times as likely as Americans with a college education to be QAnon believers (18% vs. 6%).â€
In fact, when the authors tried to isolate characteristics of QAnon believers, using a logistic regression model, it found little to differentiate major religious groups. “Accounting for everything else,†they write, “Hispanic Catholics (2.9) and Hispanic Protestants (2.7) are about three times more likely than the religiously unaffiliated to be QAnon believers.
Similarly, white Catholics (1.8), white evangelical Protestants (1.6), and white mainline Protestants (1.6) are nearly twice as likely as the religiously unaffiliated to be QAnon believers.†But those who trusted far-right news outlets more than any other information sources were 8.8 times more likely to be QAnon believers than were those who trusted the major broadcast networks the most.
The survey was conducted between March 8 and 30 by P.R.R.I. and I.F.Y.C., using a random sample of 5,149 U.S. adults and an additional 476 who were recruited by using opt-in survey panels. The full sample was weighted to be representative of the U.S. population.
Studies by a group of political scientists revealed that Republicans are more likely to believe governmental conspiracy theories when a Democrat is president, while Democrats are more likely to believe governmental conspiracy theories when a Republican is president. Qanon is a more extreme example of a fairly consistent pattern: It has flourished among members of the fringe political right, and it selectively portrays prominent liberal figures as exceptionally immoral and dangerous.
EDIT: “People make large, systematic errors when judging party composition,†Ahler wrote with co-author Gaurav Sood, an independent social scientist. “For instance, Americans believe that 32% of Democrats are gay, lesbian or bisexual (only 6.3% are, in reality), and that 38% of Republicans earn over $250,000 per year (just 2.2% do, in reality).â€
When Donald Trump ran in 2016, Jadhav said, the slogan “Make America Great Again†found an audience. It’s not that Trump was popular — to many, Jadhav said, he seemed “a horribly flawed candidate.†Still, Trump spoke to their values and insecurities, and Hillary Clinton didn’t.
“Rural voters who have been told for generations that the urban ‘other’ is getting ahead of them, unfairly taking their hard-earned opportunity — those folks,†Jadhav said, “probably spent the last four years feeling like their guy was under assault, even if they didn’t like their guy.â€
Several scholars, however, suggested that Democrats hold some responsibility for the repairing the cultural divide — because they helped to cause it. They have increasingly lost a sense of alliance with people in rural America and the declining industrial regions, said Berkeley sociologist Neil Fligstein, and as a result, they’re seen as distant, arrogant elites.
