Top Highlights

• The results challenge the common belief that partisan voters' positive reactions to misinformation from their party leaders are solely because of laziness or bias leading them to confuse factually inaccurate information for truth. Instead, the evidence consistently shows that voters are flexible with the facts – exhibiting factual flexibility.
• Yet they also provide consistent evidence of moral flexibility, whereby voters justify demagogic fact-flouting, or disregarding or ignoring facts, as an effective way of proclaiming a deeply resonant political “truth.”
• Compared to other topics, Trump’s allegations that the election was stolen were portrayed as factual. There is less moral flexibility with this issue, possibly because these claims were presented more as facts. However, the emphasis on factual accuracy concerning the big lie still varies based on people’s political affiliations.

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