More than a third of voters believe Haitian immigrants eat cats, geese and other pets in the United States, according to an exclusive DailyMail.com poll.
The claims have been widely debunked but have nonetheless taken on a life of their own, fanned by former President Donald Trump and his running mate J.D. Vance, who say they highlight the disruption caused by uncontrolled immigration, even if the details of the stories may not be true.
The White House has condemned the rumors as “dangerous” misinformation.
But a survey of 1,000 likely voters by JL Partners reveals just how much the American public has bought into these lurid tales.
About 17 percent of respondents said they “definitely” believed the stories were true, and another 19 percent said they thought they were “probably” true.
JL Partners surveyed 1,000 likely voters to find out their opinion on false claims that Haitians were eating their pets. The results have a margin of error of 3 percent.
However, the numbers decline as the questions become more local.
Overall, only 10 percent thought Haitian immigrants “definitely” ate pets in their state.
And that figure drops to seven percent when voters are asked if this is happening in their local area.
The dataset was too small to extract state-by-state results across the country.
But in those states with enough respondents, all but one had a plurality of people saying they did not believe Haitian immigrants would eat pets there.
The exception was Georgia, where 51 percent said they believed this was happening there.
Republicans are more likely to believe the claims, with 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 a voice trusted by half of Americans, former President Trump.
“We could say the same about Harris’s statements, for example when she said that Trump supports a federal ban on abortion.”
Donald Trump was goaded into making wild claims about immigrants during his debate with Kamala Harris last weekend, including that they were eating pets.
Hispanic support for Trump plummeted after the debate, according to our poll results
But he added that Trump’s shift from attacking the issue of immigration to seemingly attacking immigrants themselves could be hurting him.
The overall poll of voting intentions showed Harris overtaking him for the first time, driven in part by a 17-point drop in Hispanic support.
“Trump managed to attract many Hispanic voters in 2020 who were repelled by his 2016 message: which seemed to criticize immigrants themselves rather than immigration,” he said.
“As we look at the decline in Hispanic support 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 all seemed to come back to haunt her when a Springfield, Ohio, resident posted on Facebook about her neighbor’s missing cat and linked the disappearance to Haitian immigrants.
A photograph of a man holding a goose in Columbus, Ohio, sparked even more interest.
Police and local authorities said there was no truth to the rumors, but Vance, a U.S. senator from Ohio, took things to another level.
Springfield, Ohio, has been in the spotlight over the past week after wild claims surfaced
The man’s image has been used to fuel claims that migrants in the state have been eating wild animals and pets.
Although the claims are unconfirmed, Ohio Senator and vice presidential candidate JD Vance has repeated rumors that Haitian immigrants have been eating people’s pets.
“Reports show that some people have had their pets kidnapped and eaten by people who shouldn’t be in this country,” she posted on X last week.
Trump later repeated the claim on prime-time television during his debate with Kamala Harris.
“In Springfield, they’re eating the dogs,” he said. “People who have arrived are eating the cats.”
Vance ignored multiple fact checks and denials.
“The American media completely ignored this issue until Donald Trump and I started talking about cat memes,” she told CNN on Sunday. “If I have to create stories to get the American media to actually pay attention to the suffering of the American people, then that’s what I’m going to do.”
Zeve Sanderson, executive director of New York University’s Center on Social Media and Politics, 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
AI-generated Trump hugs a duck and a cat
“There are both supply and demand dynamics that occur with the dissemination of false claims,” he said.
‘Elites with strong credibility within their party spread claims that are believed to a greater extent by party members due, in part, to their party identity; elites are then incentivized to further spread those false narratives that generate positive signals.’
This is happening on both sides of the political divide, he added, as evidenced by the number of Democrats who believed stories about Vance and a couch.
This time, the rumors have had real effects on the world. The spread of the rumors has instilled fear among Haitian-Americans, who say it is the latest episode in a long history of insults.
On Tuesday, state troopers were deployed to protect Springfield schools where the complaints originated after a series of bomb threats.
“JD Vance’s deliberate creation of false and incendiary claims has had serious and dangerous consequences for Haitian immigrants, who now face hate speech and physical threats,” posted Rep. Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick, the only Haitian-American in Congress.
“We refuse to ignore this: our country deserves better.”