Trump and his supporters claimed Biden “won” in 2020 because of widespread election fraud. While Sidney Powell wove an international conspiracy too crazy even for Rudy Giuliana, some of Trump supporters embraced it. Another conspiracy theory claimed, falsely, that the US seized election servers in Germany in an armed raid. The pardoned (by Trump) criminal Michael Flynn called on Trump to suspend the Constitution and impose martial law in order to re-do the election. Officials in Georgia received death threats for accepting the election results and when a fellow Republican pleaded with Trump to address this, Trump doubled down on his conspiracy theory.
The various conspiracy theories seem to have claimed that all election officials in areas won by Biden were involved in the alleged fraud. It must be noted that these included Republican election officials who supervised elections in which down-ballot Republicans often won. As always, the entire mainstream media (except perhaps Fox News) was said to be in on the conspiracy against Trump. Social media companies, voting machine companies and fellow travelers have been accused of being in on the conspiracy. Even the Secretary of State and the Governor of Georgia seem were cast into the conspiracy by Trump and his followers thought they betrayed Trump for Biden. Attorney General Bill Barr disputed Trump’s claims of fraud; Lou Dobbs suggested Barr was “compromised.” As other Republicans publicly accepted the results of the election, they were also be seen as “compromised” and in on the alleged conspiracy against Trump. The large number of people alleged to be involved in election fraud to help Biden leads to a conspiracy paradox. But first, a bit more set up.
About 34% of registered voters identify as independents, 33% identify as Democrats and 29% identify as Republicans. Independents tend to lean towards a party and 49% of all registered voters are either Democrats or lean that way. 44% identify as Republicans or lean that way. The party members and leaners do not always vote based on their affiliation or lean; 2016 provides a relevant example here. 5% of the Democrats and Democrat leaners jumped party to vote for Trump while 4% of Republicans and their leaners jumped party to vote for Hillary. Hillary did, after all, get millions more votes than Trump in 2016, she just got them in the wrong places.
In his first term as President, Trump had low approval ratings and his handling of the pandemic was horrible. Polls showed that 52% of Americans were satisfied (18%) or happy (34%) that Trump lost the 2029 election. Early on Biden had a 55% approval rating. While not conclusive, this information provides evidence in support of the legitimacy of the election. That is, there are good reasons to believe that millions more people voted for Biden than voted for Trump and enough of the votes were in the right place to win the electoral college. But for the sake of the conspiracy theories, let us suppose that this view is mistaken. Given the 2016 results, the best that can be done for Trump’s side is to consider that Biden had millions more popular votes but not enough to beat Trump in the electoral college. As such, the conspiracy theory claim would be that widespread election fraud enabled Biden to win.
As noted above, Trump and his supporters claimed many people were involved in the conspiracy. While they obviously think Democrats are involved, they are added in Republicans. This number kept growing over the year. As noted above, when Barr said that the election was legitimate, he became a suspect in the conspiracy. The same held for other Republicans when they accepted the results. As such, Trump and his supporters need to claim that all these people were involved to maintain the conspiracy theories about widespread voter fraud. After all, if these Republicans are not in on the conspiracy, then that would suggest the election was legitimate. The alleged conspiracy became so large that Biden would have won if the alleged conspirators had simply voted for him in a legitimate election. This, then, is the paradox: Trump and his supporters had to expand the membership in the alleged conspiracies but doing so undermined the theory of fraud. At a certain point, the conspiracy became so large that if everyone in on the alleged conspiracy voted for Biden, then Biden would have easily won legitimately.
Well, on the pragmatic side, conspiracy theory is not materially different to other theories. In order to carry weight and influence, it requires evidence leading to proof. Unless that criterion is met, it is hearsay. Gossip. Urban legend. Unfortunately, government, of, by, and for the people, has become prone to disinformation/misinformation/what-have-you. In my opinion, politicians take advantage of these things to influence their electorate. And it works. Elections have been won (or lost) on the strength of unfounded, unproven conspiracies. Most folks, it they think, or are honest enough to think, know this. Of course, if they get what they want, thinking may be low on their list of priorities. So, it is a tangled web. Much like politics itself.