Most coverage of QAnon has been sparked by growth in online activity or by observation of Trump rally attendees in QAnon regalia. But, claims that extrapolate from the number of QAnon Facebook pages or the number of people with Q T-shirts to broader public support are hard to square with polling data. Instead, polls repeatedly show that Q is neither well-known nor well-liked.
For example, in March 2020, Pew Research found that 76% of Americans knew nothing about Q, 20% knew a little, and only 3% knew a lot. In August 2019, an Emerson poll found that only 5% of voters believed in QAnon…
Q supporters, themselves, also do not appear to systematically exhibit political attachments to the Republican party or conservative label. Strikingly, the 2019 Emerson poll mentioned above found that “6% of both Democrats and Republicans say that they are believers in QAnon as compared to 2% of independents”.
In our own repeated polling over the last two years, we asked representative samples of both Floridians and Americans, more broadly, to rate QAnon on a 101-point feeling thermometer, ranging from very negative feelings (0) to very positive ones (100). We found that QAnon was one the least liked political groups included in our polls, earning an average rating of 22. Importantly, Republicans and Democrats, liberals and conservatives failed to consistently rate QAnon differently. Instead, QAnon beliefs are better explained by conspiratorial worldviews, which are themselves uncorrelated with political orientations.
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