Russian Influence Measured

[TSwizzle]

Ah, damn it dude. You really need to turn it off and get outside. Nice out here.

I second this motion

I third this motion.

 

[Koyaanisqatsi]

Ah, damn it dude. You really need to turn it off and get outside. Nice out here.

I second this motion

I third this motion.

We already have your non-substantive indirect confirmation on file, but thanks for re-asserting it.

 

[Koyaanisqatsi]

Hillary lost, better luck next time

Yet another vapid non-response response from a usual suspect. This is great! Thanks you guys. You're perfect reverse barometers.

It seems Tswizzle is just fine with another country interfering in our elections. More evidence Republicans can't win unless they cheat and they're just fine with that.

Which only tends to affirm the evidence itt as there is certainly no logical argument behind the ludicrous notion of a "deep state" conspiring with the entire intelligence community (of the US and other nations, too, no less) to conduct such a "hoax" over their evidently bipolar obsessive love for Hillary Clinton.

It's the very definition of an irrational, emotionally entrenched belief. Yet it still persists in spite of the fact that Mueller confirmed its existence (which they deny) while NOT exonerating Trump (which they claim he did).

It's ALL purely emotional, nonsensical derangement that they have likewise been programmed to turn around onto anyone challenging their TDS.

And, of course, endlessly ironic that they--the most paranoid of our society in regard to government control--are the ones who have been weaponized, thereby turning their own paranoia against them; into the ones being so easily controlled.

It's a fucking Romero b-movie that just doesn't end.

 

[Elixir]

It's ALL purely emotional, nonsensical derangement that they have likewise been programmed to turn around onto anyone challenging their TDS.

That would be the case, except that all the alt-white arguments are very well evidenced and supported by "alternative facts". Look at it from their perspective - if you accept that FFvC's inaugural crowd was the largest ever, the Mueller report totally exonerates the President, Obama was born in Kenya etc., then YOUR facts - you know, stuff like "CO2 concentrations correlate with global average temperatures" or "Obama was born in Hawaii" - those things are the "alternative facts", and the Mueller report totally exonerating Cheato - - that is just a plain FACT.

 

[steve_bank]

It is being said by the pundits that while Nixon was corrupt and a son of bitch, he was a loyal American in that he would not directly act to harm the nation.

 

[Jolly_Penguin]

This is all very bizarre. Is Russia accused of hacking voting machines, taking voters off of voter lists, etc? Or is Russia just accused of ... talking to Americans?

 

[Bomb#20]

Why is that significant? All candidates, after all, have such rallies. Well recall that Trump ran unopposed in the Republican primaries, so why such an unprecedented number of rallies during the primaries? He certainly did not need them to prove himself the best candidate as he was already the only candidate running.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Results_of_the_2016_Republican_Party_presidential_primaries

More Republicans voted against him than for him in the primaries.

In the end, yes, but by Super Tuesday (March 1st)--which Trump took by 7 out of 11 states--Trump was a delegate lock,

According to your link:

"Cruz’s campaign had appeared to stall out after a poor showing in South Carolina. But he extended his lease on 2016 political life by taking Texas — his home state and the richest delegate prize of the night — scoring a spillover victory in Oklahoma, and also narrowly winning Alaska. Cruz’s Texas win was keyed by his support among “very conservative” voters, whom he won by a margin of 56-23 over second-place Trump. ... His field of competitors remains recklessly divided. Cruz put up a decent fight on Super Tuesday, winning more than 200 delegates; he’s in it to win it, but the map going forward doesn’t favor him."

That's a funny definition of "delegate lock". Is that a phrase you use to mean "ahead"?

but Cruz got a misguided ego-boost from winning his home state. By the beginning of May (when Cruz finally dropped out and Trump took Indiana), it was officially over, but it was Super Tuesday that coronated Trump and he'd already won all of the early states (except Iowa) by huge percentages.

Where by "all of the early states (except Iowa)" you mean "75 delegates out of 2472"?

So, I guess I should have said Trump effectively ran unopposed to qualify I wasn't being literal, but I took that as granted.

So by "effectively ran unopposed" you mean "his opponents opposed him ineffectively"? That describes every winner of an election.

But the fact that it was all in spite of your point--that more Republicans voted against him in the end than for him--only underscores the fact that he should not have been doing as well as he did (in the primaries or in the general). So something else was helping him along the way. Something that he rode and exploited that was counter to even Republican sensibilities.

Well sure: winner-take-all primaries. If you let a guy have all the delegates when he gets a third of the votes you're just begging for something like this to happen.

 

[Koyaanisqatsi]

According to your link:

That started with:

Any candidate who can take primary elections in both Massachusetts and Alabama — the yin and the yang of American political life — is probably a lock for their party’s nomination.

Did you miss that part?

That's a funny definition of "delegate lock".

As Politico noted at the time:

Super Tuesday represented the biggest delegate haul of the 2016 nominating contest with a total of 595 delegates — nearly half those needed to secure the nomination — were up for grabs across a dozen states.

Going into ST, Trump had already secured 82 delegates. On ST he picked up 256 more for a total of 338 coming out of ST. Cruz only had 236 total coming out of ST.

Is that a phrase you use to mean "ahead"?

No, that's the phrase I use to mean Cruz never had a chance after Super Tuesday:

Trump’s victories in the South — winning Georgia, Tennessee and Alabama easily — on Tuesday were particularly bad news for Cruz, who has called Super Tuesday “the single most important day in the entire Republican primary.”

The slate of southern states that voted — heavily populated with conservative and evangelical Christians — were supposed to be Cruz’s bulwark but Trump carried evangelicals over Cruz by wide margins in many places, leading by 25 percent in Alabama, 19 percent in Tennessee and 15 percent in Georgia, according to exit polls.

Cruz did carry Texas by a decisive margin — which he had declared a must-win — and finished a clear first in next door Oklahoma, as well. In Alaska, he took 36 percent to Trump's 33.5 percent.
...
Rubio had tried to cast Cruz as a failure even before the polls closed. “Tonight was supposed to be Ted Cruz's big night,” Rubio told reporters in Minnesota. “I mean, his whole campaign was built on his Super Tuesday strategy.”

“If you can't sweep up Super Tuesday, where in this country are you going to have a big showing?” Rubio said of Cruz, though the sentiment could easily be applied to his own candidacy.

By Super Tuesday II (i.e., fourteen days later), Trump had the momentum and the predictive percentages of delegates in the key states to see where things were going. He picked up 229 delegates to Cruz's 51. That trend only continued and by April it was all over.

But this isn't about reliving the possibilities open to underdogs in a race that hasn't happened. This is about applying hindsight to a race that's over, in regard to what we now know about how effective was the Russian influence.

As many people--Republicans and Democrats alike--said at the time and still say, Trump never should have got anywhere near the numbers he received. He was a terrible candidate, broke every rule, said and did despicable things constantly.

In the desperation to try to explain how that was working, pundits and reporters--who were not aware of the clandestine emotional influence warfare that had laid the groundwork for Trump for about three years prior--the only "explanations" were straw grasping. Trump seemed to speak their language and say the things that they wanted to hear and was tapping into dormant emotional hot-buttons (like fears of muslims and the economy and Obama hatred) etc.

What seemed to be the case, however, was evidently not the case; at least not in the way it was being manipulated. Again, if you gradually turn the heat up over several years--and particularly among those with strongly held ties and extremist opinions to begin with who then, over those years, spread that emotional contagion to their secondary ties, who in turn spread it to their secondary ties, etc--then by the time you introduce the catalyst (Trump) all he has to do is trigger those extreme emotions (which he did literally in the first official words he says). That's the lighting of the fuse of the powderkegs already stoked and put in place. From the Oxford study:

In early 2016, just over half (3,799 of 7,451) of all organic posts were for campaigns targeting conservative users (Being Patriotic, Heart of Texas, South United, and Stop All Invaders). This content prior to Trump’s securing the Republican nomination was not particularly oriented towards his campaign. In 2015, there are relatively few mentions of him on these campaigns targeting conservative voters. Rather, they stressed (and inflated) the harms of immigration, with a particular focus on Muslims and terrorism. Many ads focused on President Obama, accusing him of being a Muslim, building on ongoing biased reporting on Obama. While antagonism towards Muslims and President Obama were common in 2015, the majority of posts were positive stories about members of the armed services and patriotic slogans, often consistent with the content in the sponsored ads. Explicit mentions of Donald Trump increased in early and mid-2016, as his primary campaign gained momentum. These campaigns, however, seemed to be geared towards extending the anti-immigrant rhetoric that Trump’s campaign frequently made use of.

[Fake Accounts Like] United Muslims of America significantly increased its activity in this period, as did Blacktivist. For Blacktivist, United Muslims of America, and LGBT United, organic posts in the primary season were not particularly focused on any candidates—for example little mention is made of Bernie Sanders or Hillary Clinton. During this time, Blacktivist tended to post information on attacks on African Americans by police officers, Black Lives Matter, and messages about slavery and ongoing discrimination and mass incarceration affecting African Americans. United Muslims of America tended to provide a positive image of Islam and Muslims and often condemned terrorist attacks across the world. There is little evidence to suggest that during the primaries, these campaigns were focused on ongoing political campaigns by Clinton, Sanders, or Trump. Instead, the goal may have been to create a following for these pages, laying the foundation to later push content to audiences in 2016

And that's what the primaries showed; a lit fuse touching off strategic powderkegs that rapidly formed an inexorable momentum where Trump kept inexplicably and progressively winning, always out ahead of the field when conventional wisdom--hell, unconventional wisdom--was that he should not be on the stage after the first month of the shit he pulled, let alone the first day. Cruz only got a shot in the arm by winning his home state; something everyone expected. In regard to Super Tuesday, however, he got decimated, which was not expected. Quite the opposite in fact.

Again, could it be that Trump was just magic in a bottle; the right man at the right time? That was certainly the narrative that formed without what we now know about the Russian emotional contagion groundwork and influence.

And note too, of course, that the influence has been so desperately denied and attacked and downplayed right from the start--and still continues--in a manner that instantly betrayed its importance long before any of these studies came out. And the more we find out about the effects--such as the research presented here, which is still not exhaustive, as the studies all reiterate--the bigger the impact of the influence becomes.

Put it this way, if we simply remove partisanship from the equation and just look at these events with dispassion and pure calculation, then what would we expect would happen given the information already presented itt? We would expect a consistent, yet inexplicable momentum of wins for the catalyst candidate among the strongest allied group (in this case that would be Republicans) and that's exactly what we saw in the Republican primaries.

Trying to influence non-allied groups--in this case, Democrats--to nevertheless change their minds and vote for your preferred Republican candidate would not be in keeping with the findings of any of these studies. It wouldn't work, iow.

So what would the findings say would work? A campaign to discourage voting, particularly among minorities, such as African Americans, who are stronger-tied groups.

And what did we see happen? Voter turnout among African Americans dropped:

A record 137.5 million Americans voted in the 2016 presidential election, according to new data from the U.S. Census Bureau. Overall voter turnout – defined as the share of adult U.S. citizens who cast ballots – was 61.4% in 2016, a share similar to 2012 but below the 63.6% who say they voted in 2008.

A number of long-standing trends in presidential elections either reversed or stalled in 2016, as black voter turnout decreased, white turnout increased and the nonwhite share of the U.S. electorate remained flat since the 2012 election.
...
The black voter turnout rate declined for the first time in 20 years in a presidential election, falling to 59.6% in 2016 after reaching a record-high 66.6% in 2012. The 7-percentage-point decline from the previous presidential election is the largest on record for blacks. (It’s also the largest percentage-point decline among any racial or ethnic group since white voter turnout dropped from 70.2% in 1992 to 60.7% in 1996.) The number of black voters also declined, falling by about 765,000 to 16.4 million in 2016, representing a sharp reversal from 2012. With Barack Obama on the ballot that year, the black voter turnout rate surpassed that of whites for the first time. Among whites, the 65.3% turnout rate in 2016 represented a slight increase from 64.1% in 2012.

As Nate Silver noted:

But if there was one area where Democratic turnout was undeniably weaker in 2016 than 2012, it was among African-Americans — and this is borne out in my own analysis of the 2016 voter files, which consisted of comparing actual 2016 turnout to pre-election modeled turnout expectations. While most of the conversation around electoral demographics has focused on the growing Latino population, African-Americans are still the most electorally influential nonwhite group because they make up a larger share of the voting population both in the U.S. overall and in swing states in particular. And for Democrats, the influence of black voters is further amplified because, as a group, they vote for Democratic candidates by such large margins. Clinton won about 66 percent of Latino voters, compared to Trump’s 28 percent; she won African-American voters 89 percent to 8 percent.

Much has been made about this, but note that 89% is still huge. Obama only took 93% in 2012 (a 4 point difference).

Further, according to PEW:

[W]hites made up 73.3% of voters in 2016, a share unchanged from 2012, when they accounted for 73.7%. Meanwhile, blacks made up 11.9% of voters in 2016, down from 12.9% in 2012.

That's only a 0.6% differential.

Further from Nate Silver:

(B)lack turnout declined nearly uniformly across all the swing states in 2016
...
Turnout did not decline equally among all parts of the African-American electorate. The dropoff was particularly steep among men, and especially young men. Across the swing states for which we have voter files, turnout among black men aged 18-29 was 22 percent lower than 2012 levels, while it rose 7 percent among white men in the same age group. Age aside, we also see steeper differences in turnout rates along gender lines among African-Americans than any other racial group.

Who did the Russians target? Young black "activist" (i.e., strong-tie) males in swing states:

Two new reports on Russia’s widespread online influence campaign detail how purported Russian trolls used social media to target with laser-like precision the African-American vote ahead of the 2016 presidential election, and then continued to sow social and political discord in the U.S. in the months after President Donald Trump was elected.

The reports, prepared for the Senate Intelligence Committee by outside researchers at Oxford University and the social network analysis firm Graphika, as well as the cybersecurity firm New Knowledge with input from researchers at Columbia University and Canfield Research, are the result of the analysis of millions of social media engagements. They provide some of the most detailed views yet of the purported influence campaign by Russia’s St. Petersburg-based troll factory known as the Internet Research Agency (IRA).

Among the findings, New Knowledge’s report says that the Russians “created an expansive cross-platform media mirage targeting the Black community, which shared and cross-promoted authentic Black media to create an immersive influence ecosystem.”

For example, New Knowledge identified a “Black Matters” campaign that the IRA ran like a “midsized media ‘brand,’” with its own dedicated Facebook pages, Twitter account, Instagram account, YouTube videos, Tumblr page, Google ads, Facebook ads and even an associated SoundCloud account. That “brand,” however, was just part of a larger online network where it was intertwined with other IRA content targeting African-Americans as well as legitimate African-American-focused pages and accounts.

“The degree of integration into authentic Black community media was not replicated in the otherwise Right-leaning or otherwise Left-leaning content,” the report says.

The Oxford report says one goal was to persuade African-Americans to boycott the election or to follow incorrect voting procedures to suppress the vote.

More specifically, from the New Knowledge study (which, btw, is a new study to this thread that I have not fully explored yet, so expect more):

Some of the most sophisticated IRA efforts on Facebook and Instagram specifically targeted Black American communities. Although they produced content targeting many political and cultural groups, the IRA created a uniquely expansive, interlinked fraudulent Black media ecosystem consisting of their own sites interwoven with authentic Black media and Black-owned small businesses to a degree not seen with other communities or groups. These efforts exploited organic American protest movements and focused on widespread, pre-existing societal issues.
...
The ads cross-promoted IRA Pages – for example, Instagram accounts @_born__black_ and Facebook Page Blackluive promoted Black Matters content, likely with the goal of increasing the perception of legitimacy and popularity for the media properties, and further encompassing targeted groups within the IRA’s media mirage. The ads also directed users to outside sites owned by the IRA. Blackmatters.us, Donotshoot.us, black4black.info, dudeers.com, hilltendo.com, musicfb.info were IRA-created domains. Bonfirefunds, another outside site, is a custom t-shirt making platform that was used by Black Matters. Represent.com sold custom shirts for BM, Black4Black, Fit Black, Nefertiti’s Community, Pan-African Roots, Williams & Kalvin, Blacktivist, and Woke Blacks. The merchandise strategy, discussed in the Instagram section in this report (that is where it was most prevalent), enabled fundraising, brand building, and the collection of addresses and potentially credit card information.

Meetup.com was used to organize black self-defense classes for the Fit Black/Black Fist IRA accounts. The vast majority of the ads achieved substantially higher clickthrough rates (CTR) than typical Facebook ads; according to Wordstream Advertising Benchmarks, the average CTR for Facebook across all industries in .9% (as of August 2018). Although the IRA ran its ads earlier, from 2015-2017, 1182 of the 1306 unique ads in the dataset provided by Facebook (90%) that had documented spend achieved a CTR higher than .9%. This suggests that the Internet Research Agency had well-defined audiences, and reached them with resonant content. This perception is reinforced by the October 2018 Department of Justice indictment, which highlights the degree to which the IRA prioritized understanding the interests and communication styles of groups it targeted.

And from the Oxford study (note, once again, the bit about organic content, which is clandestine):

While there were many campaigns, a handful resulted in significant user engagement: the vast majority of the organic posting activity was concentrated in 81 pages, which produced 67,502 organic posts between them. Almost all the engagement by users, that is, shares, likes, and comments, was received by only 20 pages, representing 99.6% of all engagement (Table 5). These 20 pages primarily targeted African American users and conservatives. In total, IRA content was shared by about 31 million users, liked by almost 39 million users, garnered almost 5.4 million emoji reactions, and generated almost 3.5 million comments.
...
It is evident that the campaigns sought to demobilize African Americans, LGBT, and liberal voters. This was attempted through organic posts that attacked Hillary Clinton. Content referred to President Clinton’s 2016 signing into law of the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) as an attack on the gay community, and in another, argued that Hillary supports Muslims, who the post insinuates are anti-gay. Attacks on Clinton and calls for voter disengagement were particularly clear in Blacktivist during September, October, and November 2016, with statements such as “NO LIVES MATTER TO HILLARY CLINTON. ONLY VOTES MATTER TO HILLARY CLINTON” (Blacktivist, 29 October 2016), another one argues that black people should vote for Jill Stein (Blacktivist, 7 October 2016), or not vote at all, with the claim: “NOT VOTING is a way to exercise our rights” (Blacktivist, 3 November 2016).

It should also be noted that Black Voters Propelled Blue Wave, Study Finds in the 2018 Midterms:

The report by the NAACP, the racial justice nonprofit Advancement Project, and the political action group African American Research Collaborative found that across competitive elections 90 percent of black voters supported Democratic House candidates, compared to 53 percent of voters overall. It also found 91 percent of black women, 86 percent of black men and 50 percent of white voters believe Trump and the GOP are using toxic rhetoric to divide the nation.

“This poll dispels the myth of black voter apathy,” said Judith Browne Dianis, Advancement Project executive director. “Clearly black voters are not only engaged, but they are central to the resistance against Trumpism.”

Again, Hillary got 89% of the black vote, so what are we seeing in 2016? Small, yet significant changes--or, rather, that became significant only in regard to the electoral college, but not in regard to the popular vote--exactly like those described in the findings of these studies.

The black vote was suppressed enough while the white vote was boosted enough to make a small change significant, but only in regard to the electoral college.

Again, set aside for ten seconds any partisan-ship. Pretend, if you prefer, that the roles were flipped and we're talking about a Clinton win with the help of Russian clandestine emotional contagion. The correlations between the findings in these studies and what happened in both the GOP primaries and the general are nearly one to one.

And considering, once again, that both sides employed overt tactics that effectively cancel each other out in regard to even playing field, the fact that one side had a clandestine laser-guiding system on their hammer evidently turned the otherwise inexplicable tide.

Or, if you still don't buy that as what actually happened, the evidence here establishes that it certainly could have happened as speculated. Iow, the evidence that Russian influence could have been sufficient on its own to result in the outcome we saw has, at the very least, been demonstrated.

That is obviously significant, because the first hurdle any such theory must get over is whether or not it could work. So far, I believe the evidence presented here shows that in abundance. And the evidence is just starting to come in.

 

[Trausti]

That started with:



Did you miss that part?

That's a funny definition of "delegate lock".

As Politico noted at the time:

Super Tuesday represented the biggest delegate haul of the 2016 nominating contest with a total of 595 delegates — nearly half those needed to secure the nomination — were up for grabs across a dozen states.

Going into ST, Trump had already secured 82 delegates. On ST he picked up 256 more for a total of 338 coming out of ST. Cruz only had 236 total coming out of ST.

Is that a phrase you use to mean "ahead"?

No, that's the phrase I use to mean Cruz never had a chance after Super Tuesday:

Trump’s victories in the South — winning Georgia, Tennessee and Alabama easily — on Tuesday were particularly bad news for Cruz, who has called Super Tuesday “the single most important day in the entire Republican primary.”

The slate of southern states that voted — heavily populated with conservative and evangelical Christians — were supposed to be Cruz’s bulwark but Trump carried evangelicals over Cruz by wide margins in many places, leading by 25 percent in Alabama, 19 percent in Tennessee and 15 percent in Georgia, according to exit polls.

Cruz did carry Texas by a decisive margin — which he had declared a must-win — and finished a clear first in next door Oklahoma, as well. In Alaska, he took 36 percent to Trump's 33.5 percent.
...
Rubio had tried to cast Cruz as a failure even before the polls closed. “Tonight was supposed to be Ted Cruz's big night,” Rubio told reporters in Minnesota. “I mean, his whole campaign was built on his Super Tuesday strategy.”

“If you can't sweep up Super Tuesday, where in this country are you going to have a big showing?” Rubio said of Cruz, though the sentiment could easily be applied to his own candidacy.

By Super Tuesday II (i.e., fourteen days later), Trump had the momentum and the predictive percentages of delegates in the key states to see where things were going. He picked up 229 delegates to Cruz's 51. That trend only continued and by April it was all over.

But this isn't about reliving the possibilities open to underdogs in a race that hasn't happened. This is about applying hindsight to a race that's over, in regard to what we now know about how effective was the Russian influence.

As many people--Republicans and Democrats alike--said at the time and still say, Trump never should have got anywhere near the numbers he received. He was a terrible candidate, broke every rule, said and did despicable things constantly.

In the desperation to try to explain how that was working, pundits and reporters--who were not aware of the clandestine emotional influence warfare that had laid the groundwork for Trump for about three years prior--the only "explanations" were straw grasping. Trump seemed to speak their language and say the things that they wanted to hear and was tapping into dormant emotional hot-buttons (like fears of muslims and the economy and Obama hatred) etc.

What seemed to be the case, however, was evidently not the case; at least not in the way it was being manipulated. Again, if you gradually turn the heat up over several years--and particularly among those with strongly held ties and extremist opinions to begin with who then, over those years, spread that emotional contagion to their secondary ties, who in turn spread it to their secondary ties, etc--then by the time you introduce the catalyst (Trump) all he has to do is trigger those extreme emotions (which he did literally in the first official words he says). That's the lighting of the fuse of the powderkegs already stoked and put in place. From the Oxford study:

In early 2016, just over half (3,799 of 7,451) of all organic posts were for campaigns targeting conservative users (Being Patriotic, Heart of Texas, South United, and Stop All Invaders). This content prior to Trump’s securing the Republican nomination was not particularly oriented towards his campaign. In 2015, there are relatively few mentions of him on these campaigns targeting conservative voters. Rather, they stressed (and inflated) the harms of immigration, with a particular focus on Muslims and terrorism. Many ads focused on President Obama, accusing him of being a Muslim, building on ongoing biased reporting on Obama. While antagonism towards Muslims and President Obama were common in 2015, the majority of posts were positive stories about members of the armed services and patriotic slogans, often consistent with the content in the sponsored ads. Explicit mentions of Donald Trump increased in early and mid-2016, as his primary campaign gained momentum. These campaigns, however, seemed to be geared towards extending the anti-immigrant rhetoric that Trump’s campaign frequently made use of.

[Fake Accounts Like] United Muslims of America significantly increased its activity in this period, as did Blacktivist. For Blacktivist, United Muslims of America, and LGBT United, organic posts in the primary season were not particularly focused on any candidates—for example little mention is made of Bernie Sanders or Hillary Clinton. During this time, Blacktivist tended to post information on attacks on African Americans by police officers, Black Lives Matter, and messages about slavery and ongoing discrimination and mass incarceration affecting African Americans. United Muslims of America tended to provide a positive image of Islam and Muslims and often condemned terrorist attacks across the world. There is little evidence to suggest that during the primaries, these campaigns were focused on ongoing political campaigns by Clinton, Sanders, or Trump. Instead, the goal may have been to create a following for these pages, laying the foundation to later push content to audiences in 2016

And that's what the primaries showed; a lit fuse touching off strategic powderkegs that rapidly formed an inexorable momentum where Trump kept inexplicably and progressively winning, always out ahead of the field when conventional wisdom--hell, unconventional wisdom--was that he should not be on the stage after the first month of the shit he pulled, let alone the first day. Cruz only got a shot in the arm by winning his home state; something everyone expected. In regard to Super Tuesday, however, he got decimated, which was not expected. Quite the opposite in fact.

Again, could it be that Trump was just magic in a bottle; the right man at the right time? That was certainly the narrative that formed without what we now know about the Russian emotional contagion groundwork and influence.

And note too, of course, that the influence has been so desperately denied and attacked and downplayed right from the start--and still continues--in a manner that instantly betrayed its importance long before any of these studies came out. And the more we find out about the effects--such as the research presented here, which is still not exhaustive, as the studies all reiterate--the bigger the impact of the influence becomes.

Put it this way, if we simply remove partisanship from the equation and just look at these events with dispassion and pure calculation, then what would we expect would happen given the information already presented itt? We would expect a consistent, yet inexplicable momentum of wins for the catalyst candidate among the strongest allied group (in this case that would be Republicans) and that's exactly what we saw in the Republican primaries.

Trying to influence non-allied groups--in this case, Democrats--to nevertheless change their minds and vote for your preferred Republican candidate would not be in keeping with the findings of any of these studies. It wouldn't work, iow.

So what would the findings say would work? A campaign to discourage voting, particularly among minorities, such as African Americans, who are stronger-tied groups.

And what did we see happen? Voter turnout among African Americans dropped:

A record 137.5 million Americans voted in the 2016 presidential election, according to new data from the U.S. Census Bureau. Overall voter turnout – defined as the share of adult U.S. citizens who cast ballots – was 61.4% in 2016, a share similar to 2012 but below the 63.6% who say they voted in 2008.

A number of long-standing trends in presidential elections either reversed or stalled in 2016, as black voter turnout decreased, white turnout increased and the nonwhite share of the U.S. electorate remained flat since the 2012 election.
...
The black voter turnout rate declined for the first time in 20 years in a presidential election, falling to 59.6% in 2016 after reaching a record-high 66.6% in 2012. The 7-percentage-point decline from the previous presidential election is the largest on record for blacks. (It’s also the largest percentage-point decline among any racial or ethnic group since white voter turnout dropped from 70.2% in 1992 to 60.7% in 1996.) The number of black voters also declined, falling by about 765,000 to 16.4 million in 2016, representing a sharp reversal from 2012. With Barack Obama on the ballot that year, the black voter turnout rate surpassed that of whites for the first time. Among whites, the 65.3% turnout rate in 2016 represented a slight increase from 64.1% in 2012.

As Nate Silver noted:

But if there was one area where Democratic turnout was undeniably weaker in 2016 than 2012, it was among African-Americans — and this is borne out in my own analysis of the 2016 voter files, which consisted of comparing actual 2016 turnout to pre-election modeled turnout expectations. While most of the conversation around electoral demographics has focused on the growing Latino population, African-Americans are still the most electorally influential nonwhite group because they make up a larger share of the voting population both in the U.S. overall and in swing states in particular. And for Democrats, the influence of black voters is further amplified because, as a group, they vote for Democratic candidates by such large margins. Clinton won about 66 percent of Latino voters, compared to Trump’s 28 percent; she won African-American voters 89 percent to 8 percent.

Much has been made about this, but note that 89% is still huge. Obama only took 93% in 2012 (a 4 point difference).

Further, according to PEW:

[W]hites made up 73.3% of voters in 2016, a share unchanged from 2012, when they accounted for 73.7%. Meanwhile, blacks made up 11.9% of voters in 2016, down from 12.9% in 2012.

That's only a 0.6% differential.

Further from Nate Silver:

(B)lack turnout declined nearly uniformly across all the swing states in 2016
...
Turnout did not decline equally among all parts of the African-American electorate. The dropoff was particularly steep among men, and especially young men. Across the swing states for which we have voter files, turnout among black men aged 18-29 was 22 percent lower than 2012 levels, while it rose 7 percent among white men in the same age group. Age aside, we also see steeper differences in turnout rates along gender lines among African-Americans than any other racial group.

Who did the Russians target? Young black "activist" (i.e., strong-tie) males in swing states:

Two new reports on Russia’s widespread online influence campaign detail how purported Russian trolls used social media to target with laser-like precision the African-American vote ahead of the 2016 presidential election, and then continued to sow social and political discord in the U.S. in the months after President Donald Trump was elected.

The reports, prepared for the Senate Intelligence Committee by outside researchers at Oxford University and the social network analysis firm Graphika, as well as the cybersecurity firm New Knowledge with input from researchers at Columbia University and Canfield Research, are the result of the analysis of millions of social media engagements. They provide some of the most detailed views yet of the purported influence campaign by Russia’s St. Petersburg-based troll factory known as the Internet Research Agency (IRA).

Among the findings, New Knowledge’s report says that the Russians “created an expansive cross-platform media mirage targeting the Black community, which shared and cross-promoted authentic Black media to create an immersive influence ecosystem.”

For example, New Knowledge identified a “Black Matters” campaign that the IRA ran like a “midsized media ‘brand,’” with its own dedicated Facebook pages, Twitter account, Instagram account, YouTube videos, Tumblr page, Google ads, Facebook ads and even an associated SoundCloud account. That “brand,” however, was just part of a larger online network where it was intertwined with other IRA content targeting African-Americans as well as legitimate African-American-focused pages and accounts.

“The degree of integration into authentic Black community media was not replicated in the otherwise Right-leaning or otherwise Left-leaning content,” the report says.

The Oxford report says one goal was to persuade African-Americans to boycott the election or to follow incorrect voting procedures to suppress the vote.

More specifically, from the New Knowledge study (which, btw, is a new study to this thread that I have not fully explored yet, so expect more):

Some of the most sophisticated IRA efforts on Facebook and Instagram specifically targeted Black American communities. Although they produced content targeting many political and cultural groups, the IRA created a uniquely expansive, interlinked fraudulent Black media ecosystem consisting of their own sites interwoven with authentic Black media and Black-owned small businesses to a degree not seen with other communities or groups. These efforts exploited organic American protest movements and focused on widespread, pre-existing societal issues.
...
The ads cross-promoted IRA Pages – for example, Instagram accounts @_born__black_ and Facebook Page Blackluive promoted Black Matters content, likely with the goal of increasing the perception of legitimacy and popularity for the media properties, and further encompassing targeted groups within the IRA’s media mirage. The ads also directed users to outside sites owned by the IRA. Blackmatters.us, Donotshoot.us, black4black.info, dudeers.com, hilltendo.com, musicfb.info were IRA-created domains. Bonfirefunds, another outside site, is a custom t-shirt making platform that was used by Black Matters. Represent.com sold custom shirts for BM, Black4Black, Fit Black, Nefertiti’s Community, Pan-African Roots, Williams & Kalvin, Blacktivist, and Woke Blacks. The merchandise strategy, discussed in the Instagram section in this report (that is where it was most prevalent), enabled fundraising, brand building, and the collection of addresses and potentially credit card information.

Meetup.com was used to organize black self-defense classes for the Fit Black/Black Fist IRA accounts. The vast majority of the ads achieved substantially higher clickthrough rates (CTR) than typical Facebook ads; according to Wordstream Advertising Benchmarks, the average CTR for Facebook across all industries in .9% (as of August 2018). Although the IRA ran its ads earlier, from 2015-2017, 1182 of the 1306 unique ads in the dataset provided by Facebook (90%) that had documented spend achieved a CTR higher than .9%. This suggests that the Internet Research Agency had well-defined audiences, and reached them with resonant content. This perception is reinforced by the October 2018 Department of Justice indictment, which highlights the degree to which the IRA prioritized understanding the interests and communication styles of groups it targeted.

And from the Oxford study (note, once again, the bit about organic content, which is clandestine):

While there were many campaigns, a handful resulted in significant user engagement: the vast majority of the organic posting activity was concentrated in 81 pages, which produced 67,502 organic posts between them. Almost all the engagement by users, that is, shares, likes, and comments, was received by only 20 pages, representing 99.6% of all engagement (Table 5). These 20 pages primarily targeted African American users and conservatives. In total, IRA content was shared by about 31 million users, liked by almost 39 million users, garnered almost 5.4 million emoji reactions, and generated almost 3.5 million comments.
...
It is evident that the campaigns sought to demobilize African Americans, LGBT, and liberal voters. This was attempted through organic posts that attacked Hillary Clinton. Content referred to President Clinton’s 2016 signing into law of the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) as an attack on the gay community, and in another, argued that Hillary supports Muslims, who the post insinuates are anti-gay. Attacks on Clinton and calls for voter disengagement were particularly clear in Blacktivist during September, October, and November 2016, with statements such as “NO LIVES MATTER TO HILLARY CLINTON. ONLY VOTES MATTER TO HILLARY CLINTON” (Blacktivist, 29 October 2016), another one argues that black people should vote for Jill Stein (Blacktivist, 7 October 2016), or not vote at all, with the claim: “NOT VOTING is a way to exercise our rights” (Blacktivist, 3 November 2016).

It should also be noted that Black Voters Propelled Blue Wave, Study Finds in the 2018 Midterms:

The report by the NAACP, the racial justice nonprofit Advancement Project, and the political action group African American Research Collaborative found that across competitive elections 90 percent of black voters supported Democratic House candidates, compared to 53 percent of voters overall. It also found 91 percent of black women, 86 percent of black men and 50 percent of white voters believe Trump and the GOP are using toxic rhetoric to divide the nation.

“This poll dispels the myth of black voter apathy,” said Judith Browne Dianis, Advancement Project executive director. “Clearly black voters are not only engaged, but they are central to the resistance against Trumpism.”

Again, Hillary got 89% of the black vote, so what are we seeing in 2016? Small, yet significant changes--or, rather, that became significant only in regard to the electoral college, but not in regard to the popular vote--exactly like those described in the findings of these studies.

The black vote was suppressed enough while the white vote was boosted enough to make a small change significant, but only in regard to the electoral college.

Again, set aside for ten seconds any partisan-ship. Pretend, if you prefer, that the roles were flipped and we're talking about a Clinton win with the help of Russian clandestine emotional contagion. The correlations between the findings in these studies and what happened in both the GOP primaries and the general are nearly one to one.

And considering, once again, that both sides employed overt tactics that effectively cancel each other out in regard to even playing field, the fact that one side had a clandestine laser-guiding system on their hammer evidently turned the otherwise inexplicable tide.

Or, if you still don't buy that as what actually happened, the evidence here establishes that it certainly could have happened as speculated. Iow, the evidence that Russian influence could have been sufficient on its own to result in the outcome we saw has, at the very least, been demonstrated.

That is obviously significant, because the first hurdle any such theory must get over is whether or not it could work. So far, I believe the evidence presented here shows that in abundance. And the evidence is just starting to come in.

So your thesis is that Black people are unable to think for themselves?

 

[Jolly_Penguin]

I wouldn't put it passed the Russian government to try to hack the election results or to have spies trying to fix the results, hack voting machines, purge voting lists, bribe Trump, etc. But all this outrage is just about them talking to Americans?

So your thesis is that Black people are unable to think for themselves?

Dude, that would be racist.

 

[Tom Sawyer]

This is all very bizarre. Is Russia accused of hacking voting machines, taking voters off of voter lists, etc? Or is Russia just accused of ... talking to Americans?

That does seem to be the case. If all they did was spend money to support a candidate on social media, that doesn't sound particularly illegal, regardless of how effective their actions may have been. There's no law about making fake accounts on Facebook and there's no law against lying in posts on Facebook.

 

[Trausti]

We can take from this thread that Koyaanisqatsi was all set to vote for Hillary Clinton in 2016; but was influenced by the *RUSSIANS* to instead vote for Trump. This thread is xir's confessional.

 

[scombrid]

But all this outrage is just about them talking to Americans?

That is all that is needed for disinformation campaign; especially when they can hide behind the anonymity of the internet and use bots and "alt news" sites to amplify sensational and fake content as well as to generate hoaxes and original fake content.

http://www.2ndlight.com/fusetalk/forum/messageview.cfm?catid=4&threadid=179701

Alt-right guy shared that video to a local forum. Tell me why the alt-right guy would have seen that video in the first place? Tell me why most of the videos on that channel have fewer than 500 views but this particular video got 500,000 in days? The guys on the local forum; crankit, johnny, obx2, Fish Killer fell for the hoax 100% and doubled down on belief in the hoax even after it proved false. The stuff just gets spoon fed into their bubble.

There is active disinformation working when stuff like that gets promoted through social media. The bots are great. Of course there's nothing saying a lot of the disinformation isn't homegrown from groups like The Heartland Institute and The Heritage Foundation.

Flat Earth, Anti-GMO, Anti-Vaccine, everything from Alex Jones and Natural News. The more fringe the more better for these guys to promote; anything to promote chaos. Sometimes I think they have actually taken over Natural News but really I think that Mike Adams is just a useful idiot.

 

[Tom Sawyer]

But all this outrage is just about them talking to Americans?

That is all that is needed for disinformation campaign; especially when they can hide behind the anonymity of the internet and use bots and "alt news" sites to amplify sensational and fake content as well as to generate hoaxes and original fake content.

http://www.2ndlight.com/fusetalk/forum/messageview.cfm?catid=4&threadid=179701

Alt-right guy shared that video to a local forum. Tell me why the alt-right guy would have seen that video in the first place? Tell me why most of the videos on that channel have fewer than 500 views but this particular video got 500,000 in days? The guys on the local forum; crankit, johnny, obx2, Fish Killer fell for the hoax 100% and doubled down on belief in the hoax even after it proved false. The stuff just gets spoon fed into their bubble.

There is active disinformation working when stuff like that gets promoted through social media. The bots are great. Of course there's nothing saying a lot of the disinformation isn't homegrown from groups like The Heartland Institute and The Heritage Foundation.

Flat Earth, Anti-GMO, Anti-Vaccine, everything from Alex Jones and Natural News. The more fringe the more better for these guys to promote; anything to promote chaos. Sometimes I think they have actually taken over Natural News but really I think that Mike Adams is just a useful idiot.

But what's the problem with a disinformation campaign and why would it be illegal? People lie on social media all the time. Your President does it a dozen times a day. 90% of campaign ads consist of absolute bullshit, whether they're from the candidates or from other organizations supporting one of the candidates. I fail to see why the Russian government doing it makes it a thing that rises to a level of criminality.

 

[Trausti]

But all this outrage is just about them talking to Americans?

That is all that is needed for disinformation campaign; especially when they can hide behind the anonymity of the internet and use bots and "alt news" sites to amplify sensational and fake content as well as to generate hoaxes and original fake content.

http://www.2ndlight.com/fusetalk/forum/messageview.cfm?catid=4&threadid=179701

Alt-right guy shared that video to a local forum. Tell me why the alt-right guy would have seen that video in the first place? Tell me why most of the videos on that channel have fewer than 500 views but this particular video got 500,000 in days? The guys on the local forum; crankit, johnny, obx2, Fish Killer fell for the hoax 100% and doubled down on belief in the hoax even after it proved false. The stuff just gets spoon fed into their bubble.

There is active disinformation working when stuff like that gets promoted through social media. The bots are great. Of course there's nothing saying a lot of the disinformation isn't homegrown from groups like The Heartland Institute and The Heritage Foundation.

Flat Earth, Anti-GMO, Anti-Vaccine, everything from Alex Jones and Natural News. The more fringe the more better for these guys to promote; anything to promote chaos. Sometimes I think they have actually taken over Natural News but really I think that Mike Adams is just a useful idiot.

But what's the problem with a disinformation campaign and why would it be illegal? People lie on social media all the time. Your President does it a dozen times a day. 90% of campaign ads consist of absolute bullshit, whether they're from the candidates or from other organizations supporting one of the candidates. I fail to see why the Russian government doing it makes it a thing that rises to a level of criminality.

Because if a foreign government supposedly does it for political groups we think are icky, that's bad foreign meddling. However, if a foreign government does it for political groups which smell of roses, that's good foreign meddling.

Zedillo Key to End of Prop. 187, Villaraigosa Says

California Assembly Speaker Antonio Villaraigosa thanked President Ernesto Zedillo here Tuesday for helping defuse Proposition 187, saying the Mexican leader played a key role in scuttling the controversial state measure that denied benefits to illegal immigrants.

"As leader of the state Assembly, I say President Zedillo had great impact in defeating Proposition 187," Villaraigosa told a news conference after he and a state delegation met the Mexican chief executive. Zedillo's visit to California in May "pushed the process" that eventually invalidated most of the measure, the speaker said.

 

[scombrid]

Which is it? They aren't meddling or they are meddling but it is okay because other people do or have done it?

After the white supremacist rammed that crowd in Charlottesville "yournewswire" and "Ruptly" had hoax stories that the murderer was a Soros plant. Then Ruptly had a video that was altered in an attempt to make it look like the murderer was fleeing. I saw those stories not because I followed Russian media but because it was always my rigth-wing acquaintances that were sharing the stories. Allen B. West fell for them and spread them.

 

[Tom Sawyer]

Which is it? They aren't meddling or they are meddling but it is okay because other people do or have done it?

The latter. They are clearly meddling, but ... so what? They're posting shit on social media, not stuffing ballot boxes.

 

[Trausti]

Which is it? They aren't meddling or they are meddling but it is okay because other people do or have done it?

After the white supremacist rammed that crowd in Charlottesville "yournewswire" and "Ruptly" had hoax stories that the murderer was a Soros plant. Then Ruptly had a video that was altered in an attempt to make it look like the murderer was fleeing. I saw those stories not because I followed Russian media but because it was always my rigth-wing acquaintances that were sharing the stories. Allen B. West fell for them and spread them.

It's that the third-person effect is bullshit. Everyone thinks that the other guy is more susceptible to misinformation. Nah.

 

[Elixir]

I think I'll stop for now to see other's responses and additions.

The ostrich contingent has cute memes: "The Third Person Effect" etc..
Nobody really falls for that russian bullshit. Some people just like to do stuff like shoot holes in the ceilings of pizza shops. It's not like they were INFLUENCED or anything...

 

[scombrid]

Yeah, its all right wing people posting links to yournewswire, RT, Ruptly, etc... because the disinformation is having no impact. Censor it? Maybe not. But it needs to have a light on it.