Ben Dreyfuss tweeted last night about a study showing that Democrats and Republicans were equally likely to believe in conspiracy theories. This struck me as historically unsupported, but who knows? Maybe it's true today.
So I took a look at the study and discovered something odd. The top three conservative conspiracy theories are COVID, climate change, and the birther conspiracy (this was before January 6 and "Stop the Steal"). No problem there.
Meanwhile, two of the top five liberal conspiracy theories are exact opposites: Donald Trump faked COVID during the 2020 campaign (45% believed it) and Trump covered up the seriousness of his COVID infection (75% believed it).
Did half of Democrats really believe that Trump faked COVID? I don't remember that being a big thing at all. I had to Google just to remind myself about it and found barely anything at all. USA Today reported that the rumor was started by some guy named Richard Greene. The New York Times reported that overnight "hundreds of tweets" were posted in sympathy.
Anyone familiar with Twitter knows that hundreds of tweets is indistinguishable from zero. A meme is basically invisible until it gets to 100,000 or a million tweets. So is it really plausible that this caught on with half of all Democrats? Or that three-quarters believed the even more obscure theory that Trump was covering up his COVID?
There's something off here. Even assuming the polling is all correct, conservatives tend to believe in big, long-lasting conspiracy theories. Liberals, even if they believe in similar numbers of things, mostly believe in tiny, short-lived conspiracy theories. For the record, the top four among conservatives are:
- Climate change is a hoax.
- Barack Obama was born in Kenya.
- COVID has been exaggerated and isn't really that dangerous.
- Donald Trump won the 2020 election.
(I added the last one since it would certainly make the list today.) The top four among liberals are:
- Trump covered up the seriousness of his COVID infection.
- Republicans stole the 2000, 2004, and 2016 elections.
- Trump made a secret deal with Vladimir Putin/Trump is a Russian asset.
- Trump faked his COVID infection.
These sure don't seem the same to me. None of them ever became widespread except maybe Republicans stealing the 2000 election and, perhaps, a belief that Trump was open to Russian campaign help. And none of these have spawned a whole subculture of politicians and pundits who obsess about them.
For now, anyway, I'm sticking with my belief that everyone believes in conspiracy theories but modern conservatives sure believe in way more serious and consequential ones. Is there anything even remotely similar to Pizzagate or QAnon on the liberal side?¹
¹And that's not even getting into hyper-contemporary stuff like Haitians eating pet cats, currently believed by half of all conservatives.
If it's any consolation, DJT is trading below $12.50 right now and trading is heavy according to CNBC.
How soon before he can't sell? I'm thinking he doesn't care at this point. Dog forbids he wins his stock will surge in price and then he'll sell.
Kevin, you haven't been paying attention. Here's the rule: if Republicans do it then both sides do it. QED.
you would think after several years of tuesday panera lunches with his "sensible" republican friends he would know this.
Yes. A brief scan of this study suggests that the conclusions are suspect, simply because the choice of which "conspiracy theories" to study, and -- importantly, how many -- is so subjective. For one thing, there are some items on the list for which a true/false attribution is not so clear.
For example, the item "Trump made secret deal with Putin" refers to an *explicit agreement*, which is certainly unlikely, but it's hard not to see that there was a tacit collaboration in 2016, given that Russian influence operations were clearly anti-Clinton and Trump was openly encouraging more. The Mueller investigation didn't lead to any indictments of Americans simply because they couldn't uncover a documented Trump agreement with the Russian *government* but plenty of winking and nodding between the Trump campaign (Paul Manafort) and Russian cutouts.
On the other hand, something like "global warming is a hoax" is such a monumentally idiotic falsehood that it doesn't play in the same league as the speculation about a Putin-Trump agreement.
Furthermore, "Trump is a Russian asset" is such a close cousin of "Trump made agreement with Putin" that they really shouldn't be listed as two different "conspiracy theories."
More importantly, the Muller report explicitly stated that "collusion" is not a crime and therefore they offered no opinion on it. There were plenty of examples of collusion documented.
I never, ever heard that Trump faked his COVID infection. He would have had no motivation to do so since he was pushing the idea that the pandemic was going away and was no big deal anyway.
I followed a fair number of liberal publications and websites throughout 2020 and I never heard this even once. The idea that almost half of Democrats believed this is utterly ludicrous.
There is some reason to believe that Trump understated the seriousness of his covid infection. I'm not surprised that many people believe that one.
Adding: Trump has covered up and lied about pretty much everything related to his health---his past medical history, his annual physicals, his injuries this summer from getting shot, his mental health---so why would anyone believe what he said about his COVID case.
IIRC, his doctors did not have daily press conferences or release detailed reports while he hospitalized...or if they did they were as vague and ridiculous as the reports about his annual checkups. He went to great lengths (that limo ride waving to his fans) to create an illusion that he was fine when he was still sick (and highly contagious).
It's not "believing in a conspiracy theory" to think that a man who compulsively lies about his health most probably didn't tell the truth about a particular illness. (And that's above and beyond the usual effort politicians and other public figures routinely make to project a vigorous and healthy image.)
"There is some reason to believe that Trump understated the seriousness of his covid infection"
That's an understatement itself. Dude nearly died. All those stupid photos of him flopped over a table pretending to peer seriously at blank sheets of paper to show he was Just Fine And Working at the hospital and angry denunciations of anybody who dared to repeat what his own spokespeople let slip about him being on emergency oxygen.
And this: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/11/us/politics/trump-coronavirus.html
plus, we know donold was quite symptomatic at the debate with biden in october 2020 & he was using his salival protection as a bioweapon to try to assassinate biden.
But the conspiracy mentioned above was not that Trump played down his COVID infection (that I could believe), but that he "faked" his Covid infection, i.e. that he told people he had Covid when he didn't really have it. The USA Today piece linked above was that he had "faked" a positive Covid test.
That seems to be what the conspiracy idea was and it is utterly ridiculous. I can't believe anybody would have taken this seriously, much less 45 percent of all Democrats.
This is a longstanding problem with polls: if you ask an unexpected question that people haven't thought about, you will get BS answers. People have only seconds to respond so they'll say the first thing that pops into their head, even if that's not what they would say if they had some time to actually think about it.
"Who do you intend to vote for" and "do you approve of the president" are good polling questions that yield useful answers. "Do you believe this obscure factoid that most people never think about" is a bad question that yields useless answers.
The Republicans did steal the 2000 election, and the jury is out on whether Trump is owned by the Russians.
Owned not in the usual way. He's being used as an unwitting tool to destabilize NATO and the U.S.
Why "unwiiting"?
He wants to destabilize NATO and weaken the US.
Does he? Or does he want to appear tough in insisting NATO members pay more. He has no clue how NATO operates. All he "knows" is they aren't paying their fare share. He thinks NATO members pay us. When in doubt ask yourself how something benefits Trump. Then you'll know his motivation. In this case it's looking tough to impress Putin. He is probably oblivious to the fact that it undermines NATO to openly criticize our alliance publicly. Destabilizing NATO and this country isn't even on his mind. All he cares about is himself. Take the government shutdown for example. He thought it would be good for him, so it being bad for the GOP is irrelevant and besides the point.
To be more accurate, if Florida vote had been hand-counted, Gore would've won under certain criteria.
Certainly, Trump's relationship with the Russians -- Putin more specifically -- is very much hidden from the public view.
Here is how Gore lost:
If you get a ballot and punch the square or fill in the dot for candidate A, then candidate A gets your vote because it's clear who you voted for (hanging chads be damned). If you fill in a dot and also write candidate A's name in then it's absolutely clear who you voted for and candidate A should get your vote. I don't know why anyone would do this but the fact is that 80,000 people in Florida did this in 2000. After all the ballots had been recounted and handled a couple of times the Bush people noticed that 30,000 Bush voters did this and 50,000 Gore voters did this. "Aha!" sez Team Bush. "Let's pretend it's not clear what the intent is, and demand that all of these ballots get thrown out." This is total bullshit of course because the intent could not be more clear, but this tipped the scales toward Bush by 20,000 votes. Ugly? Yes. Did legitimate votes get thrown out? Yes. Is everybody done bitching about Nader? I hope so.
Gore should have demanded that they count every single legitimate vote rather than dance around individual counties, but by the time he wised up the SCOTUS had simply declared Shrub the winner by fiat.
This. The other controversies on how Gore lost too numerous too list but are there. But this never made sense, how is a ballot that punches and writes down the same name for president an invalid ballot? I would like to see the legal reasoning behind this.
From the Supreme Court then (or now), the legal reasoning is "nyah, nyah! Our guy won. Because we say so!"
Right: the NYT-led consortium that did the post-election analysis found that a statewide hand recount of disputed ballots would have given Gore the victory regardless of the specific criteria used to judge intent of the voter. But that wasn't in the cards because the court cases just turned on recounts in a few specific counties, which wouldn't have been enough to flip the margin on their own (they also found that under Republican pressure, officials counted legally-invalid overseas absentee ballots that were largely from folks serving in the military, which in some of the county-by-county scenarios allowed Bush to beat Gore).
So narrowly speaking the Supreme Court didn't exactly steal the election for Bush; they attempted to steal an election they'd already won. Still an unconstitutional power-grab!
Jury’s definitely still out on that one.
Conservatives also believe 'the woke agenda' is turning kids into transgendered furries who use litter boxes in the corners of classrooms.
When Dems are talking about the GOP stealing the 2000 election they have a very good reason to -- the GOP-appointed majority of the US Supreme Court halted the voting in a decision they said was a one off and should never be used as precedent. As a result George W Bush won Florida by 500 or so votes, and thus the presidency despite losing the popular vote. All subsequent efforts to count the ballots showed Gore actually won. It is not unreasonable to suggest that this was an election that should have gone the other way if not for GOP interference. I don't buy it since the fricking Democratic election official's stupid butterfly ballot and the terrible chad ballots cost Gore even more votes, but still.
I have NEVER heard anyone -- and I travel in some of the out there left circles -- that 2004 was stolen, and have only seen minor discussion of 2016 which usually relates to Comey and the FBI putting their thumb on the email scale.
There was some controversy regarding Ohio during the 2004 election: On Election Day, the Ohio Secretary of State's reporting web site was hosted by a company in Tennessee that also hosted the RNC's servers. To make matters worse, the Ohio SoS, Ken Blackwell, was also a co-chair of the Bush campaign. If the Ohio vote totals had in fact been tampered with to make Bush win the state, it would have been enough to swing the election. See https://www.wired.com/2007/04/did-ohio-electi/ for more info.
The biggest problem in Ohio in 2004 was that Ken Blackwell did everything in his power BEFORE the election to suppress Democratic votes. He severely limited voting machines in minority areas, and lines in some places were more than 6 hours. Hats off to those who waited that long to vote, but many didn't.
don't leave out walden o'dell!
Well, there was an Ohio? recount that was impossible due to not using paper ballots and the ceo of the company saying he gave the election to Bush. Not to mention the removal of voting machines from urban districts.
But Ohio was already leaning, and even some blue states had problems getting enough certified machines. So... even if it was stolen, it was at the margins.
I don't know if it's correct but I recently read that 99% of voting in the US is by scanned paper ballots now. A couple require everyone to use the BMDs (Ballot Marking Device) instead of a pen, but the result is the same and they see the actual filled in paper ballot before scanning it. And of course the punch card hanging chad system is gone.
Donald recently was going on about paper ballots because he doesn't really know anything much about anything, including today's TS rant about overseas ballots which was of course completely wrong.
You can probably dig up quotes from Keith Olberman at that time strongly suggesting that the R's screwed with the Ohio vote. Kerry lost Ohio by something like !30K votes -- pretty darn close for a state that size. With that, he would have won the electoral college, but lost the popular vote.
There were a whole mess of Ohio democratic districts that had hideously long lines, and had to be kept open late to clear them. But it was the usual thing that D districts got older, poorer equipment and less logistical support. I think some of that morphed into claims of outright fraud, but there was never any truly credible evidence.
I think the always reliable RFKJr was on that one.
The 2000 Fla vote count was the Dems fault. They owned PB county and could have fixed that crazy butterfly ballot.
According to "The Conspiratorial Mind: A Meta-Analytic Review of Motivational and Personological Correlates," a 2023 APA meta study, the single causal explanation of "conspiratorial ideation" is the tendency toward a perception of "oneself and one's ingroup as being superior to others."
Ergo, supporters of Donald Trump are conspiracy theorists by definition, and people who do not suffer from conspiratorial ideation are voting Democrat up and down the line. QED
For the record, Ben Dreyfuss suffers from conspiratorial ideation. Just sayin'.
That's really interesting. Thanks!
I can think of voters who vote D who are conspiracy-minded and who think of Ds as being superior. I can't think of many of them who are in leadership positions or office, though.
That's what I think the difference is that Kevin is perceiving.
Full disclosure: the study identifies what they call "a tripartite motivational model of conspiratorial ideation." Specifically, the authors suggest that conspiratorial thinking is driven by three key needs: understanding one’s environment (epistemic), feeling secure and safe (existential), and maintaining a superior image of oneself and one’s ingroup (social). But that's bonkers. People who don't want to understand their social environment, or who don't want to feel secure and safe, are suffering from some sort of mental disorder. Maybe the study's authors should perform a meta study of their own tendency toward conspiratorial ideation.
And what is the 'Trump covered up his COVID infection' that's not true? His campaign literally dodged the testing regime required for the debates, and lied about his symptoms until he was rushed to the hospital, where they then lied about why he was there.
Maybe some of it was miscommunication, but geez, what's the conspiracy theory?
But the most recent reporting was that Trump really did cover up the seriousness of his COVID infection. I believe I heard Susanne Craig, author of "Luck Loser" recently report that if not for the Regeneron treatments that Trump got when he had Covid that he very well might have died. His health was in much worse shape than they admitted at the time.
And the Republicans really did steal the 2000 election. The statewide recount that the newspapers did pretty much showed that under nearly all criteria one could have used, Gore won under a statewide recount. (And that's ignoring whatever fraction of military votes were cast "after the fact", undoubtedly there were some.) I don't believe that 2004 was stolen (Ohio), but I do believe that D districts routinely got shitty equipment that made the lines longer and more horrible in those districts. (Same was true in FL 2000, which is why Gore gained so much on the first reprocessing -- partially punched chads fell off the second time through, but predominantly in D districts since the R districts had better equipment, like optical scan machines.) 2016 wasn't stolen either, but Comey fucked with Hillary in ways he didn't with Trump, and the MSM media screwed with her too.
Trump is a Russian asset. An unwitting one. A "useful idiot". But an asset nevertheless. There was the September 2020 bipartisan Senate Report that pretty much agreed that Trump "colluded" with Russian (in the normal sense of what that word means). Hell, his campaign shared internal polling data with the Russians. The R's and D's in that report just disagreed over whether or not what he did was illegal. But they did agree collusion occurred.
So, those first 3 all have significant basis in fact. Yeah, so exactly like the Republican misbegotten beliefs.
I vaguely remember Al Gore conceding the election once SCOTUS gave the job to George W, and Kerry, Hillary, McCain and Romney conceded within hours of the elections being called by all the major news services. Meanwhile, that Orange shit stain and his MAGA morons are still screaming about 2020, and have yet to produce any of the evidence they promised to have found.
Given the evidence of Trump's fealty to Putin on many occasions, I still believe that Putin has damming evidence against Trump. Russian agent or useful idiot, Trump is the crowning achievement of the KGB/FSB's clandestine operations, giving the damage to US and the Atlantic alliance he has already caused and will cause if reelected. I would pray to god if I still believed.
Obsess? Good question. Ponder? Certainly one pundit has:
https://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2018/06/donald-trump-sure-seems-to-like-russia-a-lot-doesnt-he/
https://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2017/07/donald-trump-had-a-very-very-private-meeting-with-vladimir-putin/
etc. Via web search in the form of "trump putin asset site:motherjones.com/kevin-drum"
Meh. It's the difference between Trump being easily played by/susceptible to Russian intel ops (in no small part because Trump admires autocrats and hired weirdos like Manafort all over his campaign) and Trump being a Deep Cover Asset of the Kremlin with psyops training from Adropov Red Banner Institute.
There are probably some people who think the latter, but most folks think the former, and they are probably right.
VP Harris did a brilliant job of demonstrating how easily TFG can be manipulated, during the debate. Every time she goaded him, he responded. My favorite was Harris pointing out that at his rallies, he talks almost exclusively about himself — to which he responded by talking about himself. Plenty of others, including Putin, Viktor Orban, and Kim Jong-Il have demonstrated how easily he is swayed by flattery.
Thumbs up.
Didn't Donald have an hour or more long meeting with Putin with no one else present and the interpreter (was there even an American one? - not taking time for a dive into that) leaving no record?
And the Mueller report supporting all kinds of contact between Trump minions and Russians? And the extensive Russian funded internet BS during campaigns and after is a real thing and there's no doubt a lot more there.
He did. That was discussed in one of the links in my comment.
It's not a "conspiracy theory" if it's true (as others have said)!!
Bush did steal the 2000 election with the aid of the Supreme Court and a host of co-conspirators. At least two of the thieves (Cavanaugh and Coney Barrett) are now on the Supreme Court!
roberts was also a recount lawyer!
Speaking for myself, I can’t think of a single conspiracy theory I believe in. I’m even atheist so… don’t believe in anything or anyone. Though clearly there are lots of poor people who consider themselves democrats who are happy to blame others for their suffering.
A belief that "Trump was open to Russian campaign help" is a conspiracy theory? When was their "openness" debunked?
uscinski has been riding this hobby horse forever; it's his brand
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2014/08/22/no-all-americans-are-not-created-equal-when-it-comes-to-belief-in-conspiracy-theories/
2014 response from krugman
https://archive.nytimes.com/krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/08/23/attack-of-the-crazy-centrists/
(should have added that uscinski was an author of the study kevin linked to)
> Republicans stole the 2000, 2004, and 2016 elections.
With sufficient context, this is totally believable. Republicans have an inherent advantage in the electoral college; Republicans regularly gerrymander to maintain control.
> Trump made a secret deal with Vladimir Putin/Trump is a Russian asset.
Broadly, this is totally believable. We know that Trump accepted bribes from the Chinese, Saudis, and Tik Tok. Given his behavior, he must be accepting bribes from Putin as well. It's well known that Trump has had extensive ties to the Russian mob for decades.
It's not equivalent when one side has extensive evidence backing up their conspiracy theory and the other side has nuts.
I am 100% sure he hid how bad it was. He got double the dose of monoclonal antibodies.
Liberals believe the conspiracy theory China is eliminating its Uighur population through ethnic cleansing and forced migration. Liberals believe the conspiracy theory Russia wants and is seeking to recover its so-called Soviet empire, Eastern Europe's nations occupied to defeat Nazi Germany. Liberals believed the conspiracy Vietnamese attacked USN ships in the Tonkin Gulf. Liberals easily believe big, fantastic geopolitical conspiracies dreamed up by the war planners.
Goosedat is right, everybody! Uighurs probably don't even exist--they are just an invention of Liberal War Mongers jealous of the harmonious and celestial supremacy of the Chinese Communist Party and the Extreme Handsomeness of Xi Jinping, and most especially the diligent workers in the Xinjiang Uniform Joyous Voluntary Worker Area Camps.
Sadly, these Liberal War Mongers do not stop at inventing falsehoods about the millions of Happy Workers enjoying Retraining in Camp, but also make unwise statements about Taiwan wanting so-called "self-determination," and accuse Russia of conquering territory from its neighbors on the flimsy evidence that that is what it is doing!
Oh when, when will the criticism of poor, poor China and other totalitarian governments cease?
"Liberals believed the conspiracy Vietnamese attacked USN ships in the Tonkin Gulf."
Yeah, those shadowy sources claiming this happened had no credibility. Oh, excuse me, it was the President and the Pentagon.
Trump covered up the seriousness of his COVID infection
as a general principle, any conclusion based on the supposition that trump is lying is on pretty solid footing
and in this specific instance none of the authors has access to trump's medical records so not sure how this could be proven incorrect, let alone be cast as a loony conspiracy theory
That's weird. I'm a very online liberal, and have been since online became a thing.
I've never even heard of Liberal Conspiracy Theories #1 and #4. If those beliefs were widespread among liberals, surely I'd have heard at least one person espousing them?
Re the 2004 election: Far as I can tell, everyone believes that GWB (regrettably) won that one fair and square.
Re 2000 and 2016, that's not even a conspiracy theory. On the left it's widely believed that those results were constitutionally legitimate, but lacked some democratic legitimacy because the winner of the EC lost the popular vote. That's a perfectly valid opinion and not anything like a conspiracy theory.
Never heard of the "Trump faked covid" thing. I have heard people saying Trump purposely tried to give Biden covid, though.
The other "conspiracies" don't really seem like conspiracy theories at all. They seem to be unhappiness about reality. The 2000 election is about SCOTUS stopping the recount when Gore had a lot of uncounted votes in Florida. 2004 is about access to voting, and it's unknown how that election would have turned out if all states had the same voting practices as a state with better turnout, like Minnesota. 2016 is about anger at the undemocratic nature of the Electoral college.
You can complain about using the word "stole," but hyperbole is common in politics. When Republicans say that Democrats are "buying" votes with their policy proposals, no one calls that a conspiracy, even though buying votes is something distinct and illegal.
Trump really does appear to have been sicker than what was reported in the press at the time. The media usually issues more breathless accounts when a President gets a colonoscopy than they did for Trump's hospitalization. It is interesting that speculation about Biden's health is not included as a conspiracy at all. Right wingers periodically claim he is dead, and the mainstream press was so sure he was nearly incapacitated in early summer, it's almost hard to believe he's still alive today.
And what does Trump/Russia collusion even mean in terms of conspiracy theory? There sure were a lot of connections between Trump's campaign and Putin. Putin certainly tried to help Trump win. It's basically become this weird double standard where if you think there was anything going on between them you must therefore believe the conspiracy theory that Putin has the "pee tape" and Putin send Trump weekly instructions.
Conspiracy theories believed by liberals.
1. The recent inflation was due to a conspiracy among producers to raise prices.
2. The disproportionate number of black Americans in prison is primarily due to a gigantic conspiracy against them.
3. Nate Silver was overstating Trump's chances in 2016 to drive traffic to his website (and similar anti-Silver allegations in other elections).
4. IQ tests are significantly biased.
For what it's worth, Maggie Haberman was on Fresh Air on 9/19 and said that Trump was much much sicker with COVID than was generally known and might have perished if not for receiving Remdesivir treatment. Obviously she is not a doctor so your mileage may vary.
FWIW, your list is more about an echo chamber of false beliefs rather than straight up conspiracies.
Soros-Gates underlie many of the current conspiracy offshoots even as the global elite conspiracies have endured for decades. I see it more as a growing problem of an inequity of outcomes. Economic losers need someone or something else to blame to get over their cognitive dissonance.
They see certain rich people as heroes, despite their wealth, because these certain rich folks, shunned by many of their peers and desperate for fanbois to feed their fragile egos, dabble in populist rhetoric in support of these global elite conspiracies.
And to the extent that the white working class are migrating to MAGA, it's because they recognize that they and their communities are economic losers and, insofar that they are desperate to find blame, are susceptible to such conspiracies.
i have incontrovertible evidence that all these centrist extremists are philosophical zombies controlled by maggie haberman, david brooks, tom friedman, and nedra pickler via jewish space lasers
the biggest difference is that the republican conpiracy theories are demonstrably, factually false. the democratic ones are somewhere between plausible and likely. i literally just heard a report today from the trump whisperer herself, maggie haberman, that she was told by insiders that trump was much sicker than reported and could have died if he hadn't received the experimental antibody treatment. combine this with the fact the he even DID receive an experimental treatment, was airlifted to walter reed and spent 3 days in the hospital, and the contention that he was sicker than they admitted seems less like a conspiracy theory and more like a high probability based on publicly available information.
Ditto for republicans stealing the 2000 election and trump having a secret deal with putin.
I'm surprised no one has mentioned Reagan having a secret deal with Iran not to release the hostages until after the election. But then again, as many have already noted, is it really a conspiracy theory in the classic sense if it's true?
"Republicans stole the 2000, 2004, and 2016 elections."
The word "stole" is doing some heavy lifting here.
Do I beliee that Russian disinformation/propaganda efforts helped Trump win in 2016? It's hard to see how it didn't have some influence. Do I believe that Comey' email announcement influenced votes? I think that's indisputable. Do either of those things constitute theft: maybe not, but they rose to a level of ratfuckery that led many to question the fairness of the outcome.
As for 2000, the Supreme Court essentially decided which votes counted and which didn't. That's not a "conspiracy theory" it's a legitimate riticism of a judicial ruling.
For 2000 the case is clear: The Republicans on the Supreme Court stole the election. They stole it before knowing if it was even necessary, but that does not make it not stealing.
Depends what you call conspiracy, doesn't it?
Is it a conspiracy to claim that african-americans are poorer primarily because of white behavior?
That fewer women go into physics because men keep them out?
That orchestras don't hire minorities based on the minority identity rather than playing ability?
That America is the most racist society in the world?
That climate change will destroy all life on earth (or the weaker version: will destroy civilization)?
That something called "the patriarchy" exists and structures all our social interactions?
That nuclear power has killed many more people than coal?
That Israel is conducting a literal genocide right now?
Or how about even old chestnuts like
The Rosenbergs were innocent?
Sacco and Vanzetti were innocent?
Whittaker Chambers was innocent?
The Central Park 5 were guilty of NOTHING?
etc etc etc
You can get any result you want for this sort of survey by choosing the right conspiracies. But, of course, if you don't think these even are conspiracies, just what "all right minded people think"...
Others have metioned this as well, but basically "Republicans stole the 2000 election" is a clearly defensible opinion based on well documented reality. Seeing this included on a list of left-wing conspiracy theories is 100% proof positive that whomever is doing the comparison is an apologist for right-wing nutjobs.