Russia targeted Sanders supporters, pushing them to vote for Trump

He added that the tweets they examined “give us a much clearer understanding of the tactics they were using. It was certainly a higher volume than people thought.”

The Post reports:

Russia’s effort to promote Sanders as a way to influence the U.S. election began shortly after he declared his candidacy in the spring of 2015, according to Mueller’s indictment of the 13 Russians. The aim was to defeat or weaken Clinton, who had angered Russian President Vladimir Putin when she was secretary of state. 

One reason that Sanders was on Russia’s radar has been little noted: He, like Trump, opposed trade deals such as the Trans-Pacific Partnership. Putin had been critical of the TPP, saying it was secretive and “hardly facilitates sustainable development of Asia Pacific.”

During the primary race, Sanders gave at least three interviews to a Russia-controlled television network, RT, in which his trade stance was highlighted. The network in February 2016 criticized MSNBC for breaking away from a Sanders speech after he said he was “helping to lead the opposition to the Trans-Pacific Partnership.” RT posted an article headlined “Bernie Sanders ‘censored’ by MSNBC while criticizing trade deal.” 

Around the time that Sanders was featured on RT, Russian employees at the Internet Research Agency were given a document explaining how to influence the U.S. election. The workers were told to “use any opportunity to criticize Hillary and the rest (except Sanders and Trump — we support them),” according to Mueller’s indictment of the Russians. 

The Twitter database shows the impact. The tweets sent from Russia, cloaked to look as though they came from Americans, included: “Bernie Sanders looks to black voters to boost his underdog campaign”; “Hillary Clinton’s summer of drama creates openings for Bernie Sanders and Joe Biden”; and “I’m for Bernie all the way!” 

Then, in July 2016, WikiLeaks released emails from the Democratic National Committee that suggested the party machinery was tilted against Sanders. The DNC computers were later revealed to have been hacked by Russia.

The hack prompted Trump to stoke the divide among Democrats. “Leaked e-mails of DNC show plans to destroy Bernie Sanders,” Trump tweeted July 23, 2016. “ . . . On-line from Wikileakes [sic], really vicious. RIGGED.” 

Russian trolls significantly increased their efforts to persuade Sanders supporters to oppose Clinton in the general election. One of their methods was to try to convince African Americans that they couldn’t trust her. 

“#BlackMenForBernie Leader Switches to Trump! I will Never Vote for Hillary, Welcome aboard the Trump Train,” said a tweet from an account that was said to come from Texas and was identified as “Southern. Conservative Pro God. Anti Racism.” The account, actually operated by a Russian, had 72,121 followers. The message was liked 260 times and retweeted 295 times, according to the Clemson database.

Linvill, the Clemson researcher, said the Russians saw Sanders as “just a tool.” “He is a wedge to drive into the Democratic Party,” resulting in lower turnout for Clinton, he said. The tweets suggested either voting for Trump or a third-party candidate such as Green Party nominee Jill Stein, or writing in Sanders’s name. 

Researchers from Ohio State University have been researching – and will soon publish their findings on — one facet of the Kremlin’s successful pro-Trump effort: the effects of Russia’s dissemination of fake news on suppressing votes for Hillary Clinton.

The Post writes:

While it is impossible to show a direct correlation between a Russia-based tweet and someone’s vote in the United States, a post-election survey conducted for Ohio State University documented how false stories spread on social media may have caused a decline in turnout for Clinton. Only 77 percent of those surveyed who had voted for Barack Obama in 2012 supported Clinton in 2016; 10 percent backed Trump, 4 percent voted for third-party candidates, and 8 percent did not vote, according to the YouGov survey. 

In an effort to demonstrate how inaccurate information makes its way into the mainstream, the survey asked respondents about three demonstrably false articles that had been widely distributed. A quarter of respondents believed the false story that Clinton was in “very poor health,” 10 percent believed that Trump had been endorsed by the pope, and 35 percent (including 20 percent of Obama supporters) believed that Clinton had approved weapons sales to Islamic militants, “including ISIS.” 

The Ohio State team concluded in its soon-to-be-published final report that “belief in these fake news stories is very strongly linked to defection from the Democratic ticket by 2012 Obama voters.” Obama voters who recognized all three stories as false voted for Clinton at a rate of 89 percent, while 61 percent who believed one of the false stories voted for her, and 17 percent of those who believed two of the false stories supported Clinton.