More than a third of voters say Haitian immigrants eat cats or other pets, Daily Mail poll finds, as false claims disrupt election
According to an exclusive poll for DailyMail.com, more than a third of voters believe Haitian immigrants eat cats, geese and other pets in America.
The claims have since been largely debunked, but have taken on a life of their own, stoked by former President Donald Trump and his running mate J.D. Vance, who say they highlight the disruption caused by unchecked immigration, even if the details of the stories may not be true.
The White House has condemned the rumors as “dangerous” disinformation.
But a poll of 1,000 likely voters conducted by JL Partners shows how much the American public is swallowing these horrific stories.
About 17 percent of respondents said they “definitely” believed the stories were true, while another 19 percent said they were “probably” true.
JL Partners surveyed 1,000 likely voters to hear their opinions on false claims that Haitians eat pets. The results have a margin of error of 3 percent
However, the numbers decrease as the questions become more local.
Only 10 percent believed that Haitian immigrants “definitely” ate pets in their state.
And that number dropped to seven percent when voters were asked if it happened in their local area.
The dataset was too small to analyze state-by-state results across the country.
But in the states with sufficient respondents, in almost all but one state there was a majority saying that Haitian immigrants there did not eat pets.
One exception was Georgia, where 51 percent said they believed it happened there.
Republicans are more likely to believe the claims, with about 58 percent saying they believed the reports were true.
James Johnson, co-founder of JL Partners, said: “The fact that less than half of voters think the story is false speaks volumes: misinformation can sow doubt, especially when it comes from someone half of Americans trust, namely former President Trump.
“We can say the same about statements Harris makes, such as Trump supporting a federal ban on abortion.”
Donald Trump was prompted to make wild claims about immigrants during his debate with Kamala Harris last weekend, including that they eat pets
According to our poll results, Trump’s support among Hispanics plummeted after the debate
But he added that Trump’s shift from tackling the issue of immigration to attacking immigrants themselves could get in his way.
The overall voter intentions poll showed Harris overtaking him for the first time, driven in part by a 17 percentage point drop in Hispanic support.
“Trump attracted many Hispanic voters in 2020 who were turned off by his message in 2016, in which he seemed to criticize immigrants themselves rather than immigration,” he said.
“When we look at the decline in support for the Hispanic community in our poll, we have to ask ourselves whether those concerns will resurface in 2024.”
The idea that immigrants eat pets is not a new American urban legend.
But it seemed to explode back into focus with a Facebook post from a Springfield, Ohio resident. She posted about her neighbor’s missing cat and linked the disappearance to Haitian immigrants.
A photo of a man holding a goose in Columbus, Ohio, sparked even more interest.
According to police and local authorities, the rumors were untrue, but Vance, a senator from Ohio, took it a step further.
Springfield, Ohio, has been in the spotlight this past week after wild claims emerged
The man’s image has been used to support claims that migrants in the state are eating wild and domestic animals
Although the claims are unconfirmed, Ohio Senator and Vice Presidential candidate JD Vance has reiterated rumors that Haitian migrants are eating people’s pets
“Reports indicate that people’s pets have been kidnapped and eaten by people who don’t belong here,” he posted on X last week.
Trump subsequently repeated this claim on primetime television during his debate with Kamala Harris.
“In Springfield, they eat the dogs,” he said. “The people that came in. They eat the cats.”
Vance waved away the many fact checks and denials.
“The American media completely ignored this stuff until Donald Trump and I started talking about cat memes,” he told CNN on Sunday. “If I have to create stories so that the American media actually pays attention to the suffering of the American people, that’s what I’m going to do.”
Zeve Sanderson, director of the Center for Social Media and Politics at New York University, said the partisan divide over who believed the claims showed a classic pattern in the spread of false information.
Trump supporters have shared AI-generated memes of the former president
An AI-generated Trump hugs a duck and a cat
“There are both demand and supply dynamics in the spread of false claims,” he said.
‘Elites with high credibility within their party spread claims that are more likely to be believed by party members, in part because of their partisan identity. Elites are then incentivized to further spread these false stories, which generate positive signals.’
It’s happening on both sides of the political divide, he added, as evidenced by the number of Democrats who believe stories about Vance and a bank.
This time, there are real consequences. The spread of the rumors has stoked fear among Haitian-Americans who say it is the latest in a long history of insults.
State troopers were deployed on Tuesday to protect schools in Springfield, where allegations arose after a series of bomb threats.
“JD Vance’s deliberate creation of false and inflammatory claims has had serious and dangerous consequences for Haitian migrants, who now face hate speech and physical threats,” said Rep. Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick, the only Haitian-American in Congress.
“We refuse to ignore this: our country deserves better.”