Shortly after Donald Trump was declared the winner of the 2024 US presidential election in the early hours of Wednesday morning, conspiracy theories began to flood Elon Musk’s X platform. According to data from research company PeakMetrics, the number of posts questioning the election results and calling for a recount skyrocketed on Wednesday morning, reaching a peak of 94,000 posts per hour on centibillionaire Elon Musk’s X platform. Many of these posts received significant attention and amplification, with some receiving over 1 million views. One post by author John Pavlovitz, questioning the record turnout and decrease in votes, was viewed 5.3 million times. The CEO of NewsGuard, Gordon Crovitz, reported that the term “Trump cheated” was trending on X with 92,100 mentions since midnight. While the exact details of the conspiracy theories are still being developed, they are being shared by supporters of Harris who are using her loss as a reason to spread baseless disinformation about the election being stolen. In contrast, the pro-Trump election denial movement that emerged after the 2020 election remained relatively quiet on Wednesday morning. According to Nina Jankowicz, former Biden administration disinformation czar and CEO of the American Sunlight Project, these baseless allegations, regardless of their source, have a damaging impact on trust in the democratic system. The posts calling for a recount used hashtags like #donotconcedekamala and phrases like “math ain’t mathing,” often claiming that “something is very off.” The main claim being made is that there are 20 million “missing votes,” but this can easily be explained by the fact that not all votes have been counted yet. David Becker, executive director of the nonpartisan Center for Election Innovation and Research, emphasized that election denial is anti-democratic, regardless of political affiliation, and that votes are still being counted in many states.
