News Station's Early Election Results Disaster Has Conspiracy Theories Flying

In what is definitely a preview of the potential fallout from the U.S.' forthcoming November 5, 2024 presidential election, conspiracies are already running at full gallop (or is it Gallup?). A mere week or so before Americans are set to choose their next commander-in-chief, we've got a facepalm-worthy blunder rivaling President Joe Biden's recent "garbage" comment. Or for the conspiratorially minded, we've got evidence of a coup to rig a democratic election ... Or something. It's not quite clear. Enter: The recent Formula 1 Mexico Grand Prix televised on October 27.

During that (thankfully) much faster-than-a-presidential-race race, viewers in Pennsylvania had the opportunity to witness what looked like a glimpse of the future: A banner on the bottom of the TV screen. There, written next to a blue-encircled letter "D" and "Harris," the screen read "52%," with a numerical value of 3,293,712. Underneath appeared a red-encircled "R" and "Trump" next to "47%" and a numerical value of 2,997,793. 

So did the aliens finally send us the election results prophecy we've all been waiting for? Did someone accidentally release to the public 100% verifiable proof of behind-the-scenes wheeling and dealing indicative of a conspiracy to rig a Harris victory in Pennsylvania? Or (wait for it) was it a mistake during testing, as ABC local affiliate WNEP-TV claimed in a statement released after the incident? Because we live in 2024, the answer could be "all of the above" depending on the online trough from which one feeds. Online chatter on sites like X certainly depict as much.

We need not go too deep into the online rabbit hole to get a glimpse of the reaction to ABC affiliate WNEP-TV's flub. And to be clear, it was indeed a flub in the form of "randomly generated test results" intended to "make sure their [news outlets'] equipment is working properly in advance of election night," as the station said in its statement. "Those numbers should not have appeared on the screen, and it was an error by WNEP that they did," it claimed, concluding that it has "taken steps to ensure that it does not happen again." Anyone who's ever elected for the "turn it off and on again" approach to technology should understand that electronics can get confusing, and mistakes happen. 

But rather than simply shrug and go about one's business, online reactions to the televised mistake jumped straight for the conspiratorial throat — particularly, theories about rigged elections. Responses under one image of the WNEP-TV banner posted on X (viewed over 30 million times) read things like, "We must make this too big to rig," "The cheat is on! Stop the steal!," "They're rubbing it in our faces that they're cheating," "They leaked the script!," and, "Remember the vote counts before we went to bed?," the last of which cites ballot numbers from the 2020 presidential election between Trump and Biden. Such concerns take on particular significance in a swing state like Pennsylvania — this is where WNEP-TV's test results aired, and the region is strongly responsible for swaying final electoral college numbers.

We can't disprove the existence of a vast cabal of conspirators intent on wresting rightful control away from the public, or some such thing — an inability to be disproven is one of the appeals of conspiracy theories, after all. But we can at least say with confidence that television stations do not decide who wins a vote. It's simply not the case that a banner on a network displays election results and they're therefore true. Denial of true results would necessitate every single person along the chain of ballot boxes to television stations to be in on the plot, and well ... Let's just say some humans have trouble collecting the ingredients for a single dinner, let alone organizing a goal so enormous.

It is possible, however, to glean information based on who's reported about the incorrect election banner in question. Out of 22 sources that have reported the story as of this writing, Ground News shows that 87% of them lean to the political right. This includes the New York Post, Fox News, Breitbart, and more. 

Meanwhile, Monmouth University published its Pennsylvania poll results regarding the upcoming presidential election, which show a story different to WNEP-TV's incorrect banner numbers. Most significant is the "definitely not" category of voters. Since Monmouth's last poll, the number of people who will definitely not vote for Trump has risen slightly from 46% to 49%. The number of those who will definitely not vote for Harris has risen more, from 44% to 50%.

For further reading, here are some false things you believe about U.S. elections.