The first serious study on the impact of "fake news" on the electorate found that—contrary to the claims of the establishment media, Democrats and others on the left appalled by the election of Donald Trump—fake news probably had a very negligible effect, if any, on the election results.

The study was produced by economics professors Hunt Allcott of New York University and Matthew Gentzkow of Stanford University, both with the National Bureau of Economic Research, who surveyed 1,200 Americans, crunched the data and applied the latest theories, to see just how much of an impact exposure to fake news had on voters' electoral decisions.

In short, they found that if fake news were to have significantly influenced the election, it would have to have been about 36 times as influential on a voter as a television political ad. In other words, the hysterics over fake news (by which the establishment media really means any news that does not originate with them) is very likely overblown at best. Below is their summary of the key findings:

We present new evidence on the role of false stories circulated on social media prior to the 2016 US presidential election. Drawing on audience data, archives of fact-checking websites, and results from a new online survey, we find: (i) social media was an important but not dominant source of news in the run-up to the election, with 14 percent of Americans calling social media their “most important” source of election news; (ii) of the known false news stories that appeared in the three months before the election, those favoring Trump were shared a total of 30 million times on Facebook, while those favoring Clinton were shared eight million times; (iii) the average American saw and remembered 0.92 pro-Trump fake news stories and 0.23 pro-Clinton fake news stories, with just over half of those who recalled seeing fake news stories believing them; (iv) for fake news to have changed the outcome of the election, a single fake article would need to have had the same persuasive effect as 36 television campaign ads.

A writeup of the report in the Economist highlights one of the key problems the researchers ran into: "Americans' fickle memories."

Respondents to their survey were just as likely to say they had seen a "placebo" collection of fake news stories invented by the authors as ones that had actually been circulated (see chart below). After accounting for this tendency for false recall, which would tend to overstate exposure to fake news, as well as a few other simplifying assumptions, Messrs Allcott and Gentzkow calculated that in order for fake news to have swung the election, the articles would need to be 36 times as persuasive as a televised campaign ad.

Allcott and Gentzkow's analysis also confirmed previous studies concerning confirmation bias. Republicans were far more likely to believe pro-Trump fake news (300-700% more than Democrats), while Democrats were more likely to believe pro-Clinton fake news (50-100%).

While blaming Trump's win on fake news has tapered off somewhat, the establishment media's campaign to clamp down on rival media sources continues unabated. One major victory for the establishment's anti-diverse voices campaign is the public shaming of Facebook, which has already begun to implement its "fake news" policing efforts in Germany and plans to use left-leaning "fact-checkers" to suppress what they deem to be "fake" (damaging to the left's narrative) news on the hugely influential platform.

Top image (Getty Images): Wax replica of U.S. President Donald Trump is displayed and currently stands next to Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto's replica at the Wax Museum's entrance on February 02, 2017 in Mexico City, Mexico.