February 7, 2021
QAnon has been in the news a lot in recent weeks. Polling shows that many people at least partially blame it for the insurrection at the US Capitol on January 6, and it’s a scary and dangerous conspiracy theory.
But we should be clear that it truly is a fringe movement. True QAnon believers are a very small percentage of the population. Republicans should have little electoral fear of speaking out against QAnon in particular, even if certain conspiracy theories (such as falsely believing Donald Trump lost reelection only because of fraud) have been prevalent in some circles.
Last month, the NBC News poll asked voters whether they had positive, negative, neutral or no views of QAnon. A mere 2% held positive views. The rest were either negative (42%), neutral (11%), or weren’t sure or didn’t know (45%).
Keep in mind here that this poll was taken after the US Capitol insurrection, when many blamed QAnon for spreading misinformation that in part led to the event.
The insurrection and other events over the last few months (including Trump’s defeat in the November election) seem in aggregate to have made QAnon even more unpopular than it was. While the percentage who weren’t sure or didn’t know dropped from 56% in September to 45% in January, the positive views of QAnon went from 3% to 2%. Meanwhile, the negative views jumped from 30% to 42%. Neutral is still at 11%.
Continue reading at edition.cnn.com
