OTTAWA — The Earth is flat. We have been secretly contacted by intelligent beings from other planets. Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin did not land on the moon in 1969. They may sound like bizarre statements, but a new poll suggests a sizable number of Canadians believe in these and other conspiracy theories.
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About five percent of us are in favor of a flat Earth, the poll suggests, while 11 percent believe the moon landings were a hoax. And one-third of respondents claim that evidence that aliens have been in contact with our planet is hidden from the public. .
Pollster Leger surveyed 1,529 Canadian and 1,011 American adults between Nov. 24 and Nov. 26, asking them about their ideals in several popular conspiracy theories. No margin of error can be assigned to the survey, since online surveys are not true random samples.
In all, 79% of Canadians and 84% of Americans surveyed reported believing in at least one of a list of conspiracy theories mentioned in the poll. In both countries, conservative-leaning voters were more likely to believe in conspiracies.
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Just over a quarter of Americans surveyed say global warming doesn’t exist, compared to 16% of Canadians.
The most popular, among Canadians and Americans alike, was the notion that the mainstream media is manipulating the information it disseminates. Fifty-five per cent of Canadian respondents and 67% of American ones say they believe that to be the case, while another 10% of Canadian survey participants said they don’t know.
Second, there was the entrenched theory that the assassination of John F. Kennedy was a cover-up. Kennedy was shot and killed while riding in a convertible in his motorcade on Nov. 22, 1963, in Dallas. Lee Harvey Oswald was arrested the same day and claimed he was not responsible. Oswald was shot and killed two days later by Dallas police. season.
More than a third of Canadian respondents and just under a fraction of Americans said they did not know the official version of the former president’s death.
Although the vote provided election theories, many popular conspiracies surrounding Kennedy’s assassination involve his Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson, the CIA, the Mafia and other countries, as well as Cuba and Russia.
About a third of respondents in both countries say they believe the car crash that killed Princess Diana in Paris in August 1997 was a murder rather than an accident.
The same number of Canadians (34 per cent) said scientists and governments are hiding a known cure for cancer.
Thirty-two percent of Canadians and 51 percent of Americans surveyed COVID-19 was created as a bioweapon in a lab.
U.S. intelligence officials released a report in June that rejected some points raised by those who argue COVID-19 leaked from a Chinese lab, stating that American spy agencies are divided over how the pandemic began.
That report said four intelligence agencies still believe the virus was transferred from animals to humans, while two agencies — the Energy Department and the FBI — believe the virus leaked from a lab. The CIA has not made an assessment.
The June report infuriated Republicans, some of whom argued at the time that a lab leak was the only practical option. The vote suggests that 70% of the Republican electorate favors the lab leak theory.
Republicans were also more likely to report they believe the government is hiding the truth about the harmfulness of vaccines, a conspiracy that had support from 63% of GOP voters and 49% of Americans overall.
These trends are also reflected in Canadian data: one-third of governments surveyed lie about vaccines, but that figure jumps to 45% among conservative-leaning voters.
The effects of the vote also suggest that among Canada’s four primary political parties, the conservative electorate leads in believing each and every conspiracy presented in the first ballot: half of the Bloc Québécois electorate is not convinced by the official narrative of the JFK assassination. Formation
There was also less of a discrepancy among voting intentions when it came to survey respondents who said they believe that evidence of alien contact is being hidden from the public. The survey also suggests the belief that mainstream media manipulates information is strong across the political spectrum, with those intending to vote Conservative at 69%, Liberal at 37%, the NDP at 47% and the Bloc at 44%.
A quarter of conservative supporters surveyed said the 2020 U. S. election was rigged and stolen from Donald Trump. That’s 8 points above the Canadian average of 17%, but well below the 57% of Republicans who feel the same way.
A regional breakdown suggests that Albertans have the highest likelihood of a secretive global elite running to form a global government, at 44 per cent, and that feminism is a strategy to allow women to control society, at 19 per cent.
The feminism-control theory was almost twice as popular among Canadian men than women.
– With from The Associated Press
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