Who is more popular in US: Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris or Republican stalwart Donald Trump? Over the past month, we have been bombarded with reports claiming Harris’s momentum is growing and she is outpacing the Trump campaign.
ABC News/Ipsos poll, The Wall Street Journal and Suffolk/USA Today polls; all have shown Harris ahead of Trump by several percentage points.
Now, this is really confusing because Trump’s polices on border and economy are generally way more popular than those of Kamala Harris.
Is it a possibility that these polls, surveys could be misleading and rigged?
Ahead of the 2024 presidential elections, a Chinese campaign known as “Spamouflage” has been exposed. The campaign features several accounts on social media claiming to be American voters and U.S. soldiers.
These fake accounts, controlled by Chinese bots, keep pushing narratives about hot-button topics including reproductive rights, homelessness, U.S. support for Ukraine, and American policy toward Israel.
Graphika reveals that while these bots have published content targeting Joe Biden and Kamala Harris in the past, their attacks have increased against former US president Donald Trump of late.
The report says that China is “engaging in these more advanced deceptive behaviours and directly targeting these organic but hyper-sensitive social rifts.” Now, this indicates that Chinese bots may have rigged all these polls and surveys to show Trump trailing.
It highly likely that these accounts may first push pro-Trump content to gather conservative following and then impose AI-driven anti-Trump narrative to dissuade fence-sitters not to vote for the GOP.
For example, a TikTok account managed under the Spamouflage campaign posed as a conservative American news outlet and published video mocking Biden in July that was viewed 1.5 million times. This might give us an impression that Chinese bots are working to help Trump win the elections.
But such accounts are known for switching their allegiances overnight, thus tricking their followers into consuming propaganda content.
Make no mistake, Chinese influence in US elections is real. In April this year, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken himself admitted that China was attempting to “influence and arguably interfere” in US elections.
He had said: “We have seen, generally speaking, evidence of attempts to influence and arguably interfere, and we want to make sure that that’s cut off as quickly as possible.”
But surprisingly, his government has taken no action to stonewall the Chinese efforts. And as the Graphika report reveals, these Chinese efforts have only increased.
You see, Trump and his running mate JD Vance view China as the USA’s biggest threat.
JD Vance recently described China by saying, “That’s the biggest threat to our country and we are completely distracted from it.”
Even US businesses are preparing for a trade war with China given the high prospects of increased US tariffs on Chinese goods, as was seen in the Trump 1.0 administration.
Wall Street Journal reports that given the dire state of Chinese economy today, it may not be able to withstand another trade war with its biggest trading partner. It would be a nightmare for China.
Chinese media has already started blasting Trump’s trade policies.
China has a history of influencing foreign elections to help liberals stay afloat. For example, Canada’s domestic spy agency in April determined that China interfered in the nation’s last two elections.
It’s clear China may deploy or may have already deployed its wide network of bots to influence US elections and public sentiments against Trump and in favour of Joe Biden. So, the next time you see a new poll claiming Harris leading Trump by X,Y,Z points; take it with a pinch of salt.