{"id":5268,"date":"2017-06-29T12:42:21","date_gmt":"2017-06-29T10:42:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.polyas.de\/blog\/?p=5268"},"modified":"2017-06-29T15:35:47","modified_gmt":"2017-06-29T13:35:47","slug":"alleged-russian-interference-how-did-they-do-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.polyas.de\/blog\/en\/electoral-research\/alleged-russian-interference-how-did-they-do-it","title":{"rendered":"Alleged Russian Interference &#8211; How did they do it and did it work?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">Meddling in foreign elections is a major topic as investigations continue into potential Russian interference in the 2016 US election and collusion with the Trump campaign. In this edition of our blog series on foreign election interference, we look at the allegations made against Russia.<\/span><!--more--><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">In December 2016, outgoing President Barack Obama told the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the National Security Agency (NSA) to publish a report into a series of cyber attacks targeting the Democratic Party during the election campaign. Obama heavily suspected Russia of being behind the attacks and <a href=\"http:\/\/www.independent.co.uk\/news\/world\/americas\/russia-election-hacking-us-investigations-everything-we-know-interference-donald-trump-hillary-a7742426.html\" target=\"_blank\">ordered<\/a> the report to be released before he left office.<\/span><\/p>\n<h4 class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">Key Judgements in the Intelligence Report into Russian Interference<\/span><\/h4>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">On 6 January 2017, the intelligence community published its <a href=\"https:\/\/www.dni.gov\/files\/documents\/ICA_2017_01.pdf\" target=\"_blank\">declassified version<\/a> which concluded that Russian was indeed to blame. The report found that Russia deliberately set out to influence the US Presidential election with the following goals:<\/span><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">to undermine faith in the US democratic process<\/span><\/li>\n<li class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">denigrate Secretary Clinton and harm her electability and potential presidency<\/span><\/li>\n<li class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">to help Trump\u2019s election chances<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">But how did the Russians seek to achieve these goals alleged by the US intelligence agencies? The report states that the influence efforts \u201cfollowed a longstanding Russian messaging strategy that blends covert intelligence operations &#8211; such as cyber activity &#8211; with overt efforts by Russian Government agencies, state-funded media, third-party intermediaries, and paid social media users or &#8216;trolls'&#8221;. <\/span><\/p>\n<h4 class=\"p1\">Putin Denies Involvement<\/h4>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">Intelligence agencies laid the blame for cyber attacks squarely at the feet of the Russian Government. This includes attacks on the Democratic National Committee and the publication of hacked personal emails from Clinton\u2019s campaign manager.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">President Vladimir Putin has repeatedly denied any state-backed Russian interference in the 2016 US election. However, in early June he <a href=\"http:\/\/edition.cnn.com\/2017\/06\/01\/politics\/russia-putin-hackers-election\/index.html\" target=\"_blank\">suggested<\/a> that \u201cpatriotically minded\u201d Russian hackers working independently may have been behind the cyber attacks. Putin remarked \u201cartists may act on behalf of their country, they wake up in good mood and paint things\u201d. He said the same is true of hackers, \u201cif they are patriotic, they contribute in a way they think is right to fight against those who say bad things about Russia\u201d.<\/span><\/p>\n<h4 class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">Did it work?<\/span><\/h4>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">If the allegations are indeed true, was Russian interference in favour of Trump the deciding factor in the election? The intelligence report doesn\u2019t make an assessment on this matter. However, as discussed in an earlier blog, political scientist Don H. Levin\u2019s research suggests election interference generally works. Moreover, using data on US and Russian interference from 1946 to 2000, he found that interventions increase the share of the vote for the favoured candidate by, on average, 3 percent.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">Theoretically, assuming Trump\u2019s share of the vote was 3 percent higher than it otherwise would have been, would this difference have affected the outcome of the election? The tentative answer is it might have done. In key battleground states <a href=\"http:\/\/www.bbc.com\/news\/election\/us2016\/results\" target=\"_blank\">won by Trump<\/a>, Florida, Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin, the highest victory margin was just 1.3 percent. Assuming the alleged interference boosted Trump\u2019s vote share by 3 percent uniformly, then without the interference Hillary Clinton would have won these states, and the White House, with a majority of 307 electoral college seats.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\">Next week we turn to the topic of intervention through electronic voting. Is it possible? Stay tuned and find out!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Meddling in foreign elections is a major topic as investigations continue into potential Russian interference in the 2016 US election and collusion with the Trump campaign. In this edition of our blog series on foreign election interference, we look at the allegations made against Russia.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":274,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_eb_attr":"","ub_ctt_via":"","spay_email":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true},"categories":[893],"tags":[940,1575,1573,1577],"featured_image_src":null,"author_info":{"display_name":"Charles Harding","author_link":"https:\/\/www.polyas.de\/blog\/author\/c-harding"},"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v19.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Alleged Russian Interference - How did they do it and did it work?<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Allegations of Russian interference in the 2016 US Presidential election have led to a series of investigations into collusion with the Trump campaign.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.polyas.de\/blog\/en\/electoral-research\/alleged-russian-interference-how-did-they-do-it\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"de_DE\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Alleged Russian Interference - How did they do it and did it work?\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Allegations of Russian interference in the 2016 US Presidential election have led to a series of investigations into collusion with the Trump campaign.\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.polyas.de\/blog\/en\/electoral-research\/alleged-russian-interference-how-did-they-do-it\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"POLYAS\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2017-06-29T10:42:21+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2017-06-29T13:35:47+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Charles Harding\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Verfasst von\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Charles Harding\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Gesch\u00e4tzte Lesezeit\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"3 Minuten\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.polyas.de\/blog\/en\/electoral-research\/alleged-russian-interference-how-did-they-do-it\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.polyas.de\/blog\/en\/electoral-research\/alleged-russian-interference-how-did-they-do-it\",\"name\":\"Alleged Russian Interference - How did they do it and did it work?\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.polyas.de\/blog\/#website\"},\"datePublished\":\"2017-06-29T10:42:21+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2017-06-29T13:35:47+00:00\",\"author\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.polyas.de\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/3b9240fa164074e2fc773e7fcd238148\"},\"description\":\"Allegations of Russian interference in the 2016 US Presidential election have led to a series of investigations into collusion with the Trump campaign.\",\"breadcrumb\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.polyas.de\/blog\/en\/electoral-research\/alleged-russian-interference-how-did-they-do-it#breadcrumb\"},\"inLanguage\":\"de-DE\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"ReadAction\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/www.polyas.de\/blog\/en\/electoral-research\/alleged-russian-interference-how-did-they-do-it\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"BreadcrumbList\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.polyas.de\/blog\/en\/electoral-research\/alleged-russian-interference-how-did-they-do-it#breadcrumb\",\"itemListElement\":[{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":1,\"name\":\"Startseite\",\"item\":\"https:\/\/www.polyas.de\/blog\/de\"},{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":2,\"name\":\"Alleged Russian Interference &#8211; 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