On Fertile Ground: How Racial Resentment Primes White Americans To Believe Fraud Accusations

White Americans face a democratic dilemma: remain committed to electoral democracy (which has been historically beneficial for them), or abandon it as non-White groups gain political stature. We argue "fraud" narratives offer White Americans a solution: they can reject specific democratic outcomes, while remaining committed to democracy as an ideal. We thus expect — and demonstrate — that fraud beliefs have a specifically racial valence. In three studies, we show that Black cities were at the epicenter of fraud dialogue on Twitter; that electoral confidence deteriorated most for racially-resentful Whites post-election in 2020; and, in a survey experiment, that racially resentful White Americans are especially likely to believe accusations of fraud when these accusations are racialized. At a time when America's multiracial democracy appears fragile, groups poised to lose power draw on rote narratives linking race and criminality to legitimize their own denial of free and fair elections.