The study does not prove Russian interference swung the election to Trump. But it did find Trump’s poll numbers improved when Russian trolls were active.
WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump and his allies have long insisted that Russian’s 2016 propaganda campaign on social media had no impact on the presidential election.
A new statistical analysis says it may well have.
The study, by researchers at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, does not prove that Russian interference swung the election to Trump. But it demonstrates that Trump’s gains in popularity during the 2016 campaign correlated closely with high levels of social media activity by the Russian trolls and bots of the Internet Research Agency, a key weapon in the Russian attack.
View the complete July 1 article by Ken Dilanian on the NBC News website here.