Kanye West Presidential Poll in Kentucky Hoax
On October 13th, 2020, a tweet from prominent and accomplished artist Kanye West began to circulate. The tweet claimed that Kanye West was ahead of then candidates, Donald Trump and Joe Biden, on the presidential polls in Kentucky. The tweet included a chart with the Kentucky poll results. It showed Libertarian candidate Jo Jergensen with lead with 36% of the vote. Then Independent candidate, Brock Pierce, in the runner up with 29%. Seemingly, Kanye secures third place with 19%; Trump and Biden end with 14% and 2% respectively. Popular social media platforms like Facebook, Instragram, and ultimately Twitter were filling with articles with updates regarding the election. That week, Kanye West was in the forefront of discussion, trending for two days on Twitter. The chart itself was posted on the Lex18 website, an NBC affiliated news station in Lexington, Kentucky. Despite this, the constant continuity prevailed; the content of this social media statement spread throughout the internet and the celebrity status served as a catalyst of false rhetoric, instead of an alarm for skepticism.
Research Results
The image above is a modified version of the original post, as its been marked with a Twitter advisory note: Manipulated media. This was in fact the last step of revision and clarification of rhetoric. Furthermore, after the tweet was posted, a myriad of fact checking websites began posting the facts. Websites like Reuters.com traced the source of the data back to the Lex18 website, which as stated previously was NBC affiliated. For many fact checking websites, this seemed like a dead end for making a point against the original insincerity of information of Kanye’s tweet. The narrative remained, Kanye West was competing with the two most prominent candidates in the United States.
On the contrary, the narrative that seemed to lean on Kanye’s side began to turn as it turned out the poll results for Kentucky were not counted until November 3rd, which begged the question. Where did this data come from? Why did NBC allow publication of this false data? It turns out the data was actually just a test run used by the Lex18 website maintainers to prepare for the upcoming “real” results. Somehow, these faux poll results were published on the real website. It did not take long for blogs to acknowledge this false narrative and social media followed suit. It did not take long for Twitter to mark the post as “manipulated media”. Obviously, as Americans we know what the results of the election were, but at the moment of growing political intensity, this story came out of left field. Yet, it turns its a continuation of the common narrative of misinformation
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