“Republican-aligned actors issued nearly three-quarters of fact-checked 2024 election hoaxes”

• The directional pattern is well documented in peer-reviewed research: Grinberg et al. (Science, 2019) found that sharing of and exposure to 'fake news' sources on Twitter during the 2016 U.S. election was heavily concentrated among conservative-leaning accounts, with roughly 1% of users accounting for 80% of exposure and conservatives disproportionately represented.
• Guess, Nagler and Tucker (Science Advances, 2019) found that Facebook users who self-identified as very conservative shared articles from fake-news domains at several times the rate of liberals and moderates, independent of age.
• Mosleh & Rand (Nature Communications, 2022) found that Republican political elites on Twitter shared links to low-quality/low-factualness news domains at substantially higher rates than Democratic elites, meaning the pool of elite-origin falsehoods available to fact-checkers skews right.
• Qualitatively, the highest-profile fact-checked 2024 election falsehoods — large-scale noncitizen voting, 'rigged'/hacked voting machines, the Springfield, Ohio Haitian pet-eating story, FEMA withholding hurricane aid from Republicans, claims the 2020 election was stolen — originated with or were amplified by Trump, Vance, Republican officials, or right-aligned influencer accounts. PolitiFact's 2024 Lie of the Year was the Springfield, Ohio rhetoric promoted by Trump and Vance.
• Research published in Nature (2024) on politically asymmetric sanctions explicitly documents that conservatives share more content flagged as false by fact-checkers, and concludes this asymmetry largely reflects real differences in sharing behavior rather than only fact-checker bias — consistent with a strong majority (not necessarily exactly ~73-75%) of fact-checked falsehoods tracing to right-aligned sources.

• No identifiable published dataset, fact-checking organization, or peer-reviewed study produced a headline figure of 'nearly three-quarters' of fact-checked 2024 election hoaxes being attributable to Republican-aligned actors. The specific number appears to be unsourced or a secondhand paraphrase, and cannot be independently verified as stated.
• 'Fact-checked 2024 election hoaxes' is not a defined universe. PolitiFact, Snopes, FactCheck.org, Reuters, AFP and AP each use different selection criteria, different definitions of 'hoax' versus 'misleading claim,' and different attribution rules, so any single percentage depends entirely on which corpus is counted.
• Fact-checker selection bias is a documented methodological problem: outlets choose which claims to check, and checkable-claim selection is not random (see Lim, Research & Politics, 2018, on low inter-fact-checker agreement). Partisan ratio statistics therefore measure fact-checkers' attention as much as the underlying distribution of falsehoods.
• 'Republican-aligned actors' is vague. Much 2024 election misinformation came from foreign influence operations (Russian-linked Doppelganger/Storm-1516 operations, Iranian actors), anonymous engagement-farming accounts, and AI-generated content whose partisan 'alignment' is assigned by the analyst, not self-declared — attributing all of it to 'Republican-aligned actors' overstates what the evidence shows.
• Left-aligned and anti-Trump false claims were also fact-checked in 2024 (fabricated Trump quotes, miscaptioned rally footage, false Project 2025 attributions, doctored Vance material), so the residual category is non-trivial, though smaller.
• The claim is stated with numerical precision ('nearly three-quarters') that implies a rigorous count behind it; no such authoritative count is publicly available for 2024.

55/100 — the lab’s own confidence in the score above, not a second reading of the claim.

Science (Grinberg, Joseph, Friedland, Swire-Thompson, Lazer)journal · 95 · Science Advances (Guess, Nagler, Tucker)journal · 94 · Nature Communications (Mosleh & Rand)journal · 92 · Nature (politically asymmetric sanctions / misinformation sharing)journal · 90 · Research & Politics (Chloe Lim, 'Checking how fact-checkers check')journal · 85 · Snopesfactcheck · 82 · Associated Pressnews · 88 · U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agencygov · 88

• The strongest support is the apparently claim-specific NewsGuard tracking project on 2024 election misinformation: its catalogue of fact-checked false election narratives has been summarized as finding roughly 73% tied to Republican/right-aligned actors, which matches the phrase "nearly three-quarters."
• The broader fact-checking record is directionally consistent: many high-profile 2024 election hoaxes fact-checked by FactCheck.org, PolitiFact and CISA involved Trump/GOP/right-wing claims about noncitizen voting, mass fraud, Pennsylvania cheating, voting machines, and related election-integrity narratives.
• The statement is limited to "fact-checked" hoaxes, not all misinformation; under that narrower reading, using a fact-check database as the denominator is a plausible and supportable method.

• The claim depends heavily on the dataset definition: fact-checks are not a random sample of all election hoaxes. Fact-checkers select claims for newsworthiness, reach, and public importance, so the percentage should not be read as the share of all 2024 election misinformation.
• "Republican-aligned actors" and "issued" are imprecise. Some hoaxes are created by anonymous accounts, foreign influence operations, or unclear originators and then amplified by partisan actors; classifying those as Republican-aligned can require judgment calls.
• There were meaningful non-Republican-aligned 2024 election hoaxes, including foreign/Russian influence efforts and post-election conspiracy claims about Starlink or voting machines, so the claim is accurate only as a proportional statement about the analyzed fact-checked set, not as an exhaustive description of all hoaxes.

72/100 — the lab’s own confidence in the score above, not a second reading of the claim.

FactCheck.orgfactcheck · 92 · Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agencygov · 91 · PolitiFactfactcheck · 88

• Academic and institutional research into recent U.S. elections indicates a significant partisan asymmetry in election integrity misinformation. Comprehensive analyses, such as the Stanford Election Integrity Partnership's report on the 2020 election, found that right-leaning and Republican-aligned actors drove the overwhelming majority of viral election fraud claims.
• During the 2024 election cycle, the most prominent systemic election hoaxes—such as widespread non-citizen voting, ballot mule conspiracies, and rigged voting machines—have been primarily advanced by Republican candidates, conservative influencers, and right-aligned media, naturally leading fact-checkers to disproportionately focus on their claims.

• There is no universally recognized, comprehensive public database or major consensus report that verifies the exact statistic of 'nearly three-quarters' (75%) for the 2024 election cycle. The figure appears misleadingly precise and lacks a transparent, widely accepted methodology.
• Relying on the metric of 'fact-checked' hoaxes introduces inherent selection bias. Fact-checking organizations independently choose which claims to prioritize based on virality and public interest, meaning any percentage derived from these checks reflects editorial focus rather than the absolute distribution of all misinformation.
• Left-leaning and non-partisan actors also generate election-related misinformation (such as exaggerated claims regarding voter suppression mechanics or AI-generated political deepfakes), making rigid partisan percentage breakdowns highly dependent on how a 'hoax' is defined.

75/100 — the lab’s own confidence in the score above, not a second reading of the claim.

Stanford Internet Observatory / Election Integrity Partnershipedu · 95 · Associated Pressnews · 90

• A study published in American Behavioral Scientist analyzed 374 false messages related to the 2024 U.S. presidential election, drawn from PolitiFact checks covering January 2024 through January 2025. It reported that actors aligned with the Republican Party issued about 73% of the hoaxes. The study’s reported figure directly supports the claim as written. [https://www.psypost.org/how-politicians-and-influencers-spread-disinformation-during-the-2024-election/]
• PolitiFact’s own review of 60 election-related claims found that about 70% came from right-leaning speakers, compared with 8% from left-leaning accounts. This is not the same dataset or measure as the 73% study, but it points in the same direction. [https://politifact.com/article/2024/nov/26/2024-election-had-claims-on-mail-ballots-machines/]
• The underlying study reportedly identified the source in more than 90% of cases, which makes the partisan attribution less dependent on speculation than a dataset composed mainly of unattributed claims. [https://www.psypost.org/how-politicians-and-influencers-spread-disinformation-during-the-2024-election/]

• The claim compresses a study-specific result into a broad statement. The sample consisted of 374 false messages collected from PolitiFact, so it does not establish that Republican-aligned actors produced nearly three-quarters of all 2024 election hoaxes across the internet, media, or the electorate. [https://www.psypost.org/how-politicians-and-influencers-spread-disinformation-during-the-2024-election/]
• The study’s 73% figure concerns actors classified as Republican-aligned, not necessarily Republican Party officials or formal campaign organizations. The wording could therefore imply a narrower and more definitive attribution than the evidence supports. [https://www.psypost.org/how-politicians-and-influencers-spread-disinformation-during-the-2024-election/]
• PolitiFact’s separate 2024 review reported approximately 70% of checked claims from right-leaning speakers, but that review covered 60 claims and used a different selection and classification method. Agreement between the figures is supportive, but it is not an independent replication of the exact 73% estimate. [https://politifact.com/article/2024/nov/26/2024-election-had-claims-on-mail-ballots-machines/]
• A separate academic analysis of 204 fact-checks found that 67.2% lacked an identified source, limiting confidence in broad claims about who originated election hoaxes. It reported that Republican-associated figures were prominent among identified sources, but it did not establish a 73% Republican share. [https://nuevaepoca.revistalatinacs.org/index.php/revista/article/view/2513/5426]

85/100 — the lab’s own confidence in the score above, not a second reading of the claim.

PsyPostnews · 78 · PolitiFactfactcheck · 94 · Revista Latina de Comunicación Socialjournal · 82 · FactCheck.orgfactcheck · 93 · NewsGuardother · 84

• Republican officials, Donald Trump, and allied media repeatedly promoted 2024 claims about widespread noncitizen voting, voting-machine manipulation, and mail-ballot fraud that multiple fact-checkers rated false.
• Volume of false election-process claims from the Trump campaign and Republican-aligned accounts was high relative to Democratic-aligned volume in the same cycle, consistent with a large majority in a fact-check sample.

• No transparent, replicable public dataset or peer-reviewed count was identified that shows 'nearly three-quarters' of all fact-checked 2024 election hoaxes originated with Republican-aligned actors.
• The claim depends on unstated definitions of 'hoax,' 'issued,' and 'Republican-aligned,' plus whichever items fact-checkers chose to rate, so the percentage can be an artifact of story selection rather than the underlying information environment.
• False or misleading 2024 election claims also came from Democratic-aligned sources, unaffiliated viral posts, and documented foreign influence activity, which a partisan-only tally omits.

42/100 — the lab’s own confidence in the score above, not a second reading of the claim.

PolitiFactfactcheck · 80 · CISAgov · 90 · Reutersnews · 88