By Elizabeth Crisp - 09/17/24

More than half of voters who support former President Trump came away from last week’s debate believing that Haitian immigrants in Ohio are eating people’s pets — a false claim stoked by Trump and his running mate Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio).

A post-debate YouGov poll, released this week, found that 22 percent of Trump-backers say they think the debunked lies that have spread about migrants abducting dogs and cats to eat are “definitely true,” while 30 percent said that they are “probably true.” Another 24 percent said they aren’t sure.

During his first, and likely only, debate against Vice President Harris, Trump amplified the conspiracy theory during a moment that rapidly spread online.

“In Springfield, they’re eating the dogs, the people that came in, they’re eating the cats,” Trump said. “They’re eating … they’re eating the pets of the people that live there!”

Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine and other officials insist there is no evidence of immigrants abducting and eating pets in Springfield, Ohio.

The story spread through social media before gaining a national audience through the former president. More than 67 million people tuned in to the Trump-Harris showdown.

When ABC News anchor and debate moderator David Muir pushed back on Trump with a live fact check, the former president didn’t back down.

“The people on television say ‘My dog was taken and used for food,'” Trump replied. “We’ll see.”

Ohio’s Republican governor has defended the state’s immigrant population amid the rapid spread of the meritless allegations, which have prompted bomb threats to schools and other government buildings.

“Look, there’s a lot of garbage on the internet and, you know, this is a piece of garbage that was simply not true. There’s no evidence of this at all,” DeWine said Sunday on ABC’s “This Week.” “We need to focus on moving forward and not dogs and cats being eaten. It’s just ridiculous.”

Vance, who has represented Ohio in the Senate for nearly two years, said constituents had contacted his office with the claims.

“Everybody who has dealt with a large influx of migration knows that sometimes there are cultural practices that seem very far out there to a lot of Americans. Are we not allowed to talk about this in the United States of America?” Vance said Sunday on CBS’s “Face the Nation.”

“I’m going to talk about what my constituents are sending me,” he added.

The YouGov poll also found that 81 percent of respondents who plan to vote for Harris said the claims about Haitian immigrants eating dogs and cats were “definitely false,” while 7 percent said they were “probably false.” No Harris supporters said the claims were “definitely true,” but 4 percent said they “probably” were.

Voters 65 and older were most likely to believe the dog and pet conspiracy theories, the survey found. About 30 percent of voters in that age group said they were convinced the false claims were definitely or probably true, and 20 percent said they were not sure.

The YouGov poll was conducted between Sept. 11-12 among 1,120 adults over 18 in the U.S. The margin of error was plus or minus 3.8 percentage points.