What's going on with Republican women?

While the percentage of GOP women who had heard of the QAnon conspiracy was smaller than the percentage among Americans overall, those who have heard of it were more than twice as likely as the general public to believe it. Republican women are also significantly more likely than the general public and Republican men to believe in a range of public health conspiracies, including that GMO foods are harmful to humans, vaccines cause autism, and drug companies withhold information about their products that are important to public health and welfare.

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Republican women appear to be far more predisposed to accept conspiracy-related theories and positions than the rest of the public. This doesn’t hold for all conspiracy theories—for instance, Republican women are not more likely than men to believe that President Obama wasn’t born in the United States—but when it comes to QAnon and to information relating to public health, Republican women are more likely to believe unsubstantiated and highly inflammatory information.

Social media platforms and habits appear to be an important factor in feeding women’s interest in conspiracy-related materials. On platforms like Facebook and Instagram, a “pastel QAnon” has emerged that repackages conspiracies in “live, laugh, love” fonts and with softer and more aesthetically pleasing imagery than has been typical for sites that propagate conspiracy theories. This repackaging acts as “breadcrumbs” that first grab women’s attention and then lead them deeper into the QAnon world.

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