Is conspiratorial thinking confined to the right wing? A sizeable portion of the country believes in a conspiracy theory where a sitting US president is somehow a Russian sleeper agent.
Trump is too egotistical to serve anyone but himself, and he's too wild and unpredictable to be a reliable agent to anyone. The allegation was that Trump accepted help offered by Russian agents, which is likely as I'm sure he would have accepted help offered by anyone.
I just thought Russia may have covertly backed him in an attempt to get an intensely repellent and divisive candidate into office and damage America's reputation. There's a good deal of evidence that Russia is still in the ring for Trump, such as Russian state TV running anti-Biden stuff all day right now. There is also evidence for Russian propaganda targeting the Democrats and the left too, like sock puppets infiltrating BLM chat rooms and pushing the most divisive messages possible. The ultimate goal is destabilization and damage to America's reputation, not the victory of any specific candidate.
That being said, I think the ultimate goal of this Russian propaganda may be more inward-facing than outward-facing. Putin needs to portray American democracy as a failure in order to hold onto power in Russia. Meddling in American and other democratic processes can be a way to do that.
There is, however, considerable circumstantial evidence that he may be compromised by the Russians. The fact that Trump has been less than wholly forthcoming regarding his connections with Russia has only deepened this concern.
Multiple people in the Trump orbit--including Trump himself--have had repeated communications with Putin, Russian oligarchs, or their proxies, and have gone to considerable lengths (such as by conducting meetings in private and confiscating the translator's notes) to hide the contents of these communications from official records and lawfully constituted legal investigations.
Given that Trump is believed to be deeply in debt (see the recent NYT series on Trump's tax records), has had business dealings inside Russia (e.g. Trump Tower Moscow), and has benefited from Russian state-sponsored criminal hacking[0], hidden communications between the Trump orbit and Russia are cause for grave concern over whether Trump has inappropriate ties to the Russian government.
Read the Mueller Report and pay particular attention to what could not be proven because the necessary evidence had been destroyed or was otherwise inaccessible.[1]
Unlike the current flavor of Republican conspiracy theorizing, the Trump-Russia story is not a bunch of lunatics deluding themselves into thinking that the Democratic party is keeping children captive in the basement of a pizza restaurant. It's something backed by actual evidence and has lead to multiple prosecutions.
[0] https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2019/05/15/what-happ...
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crossfire_Hurricane_(FBI_inves...
It's kind of irrelevant though since there's rules for that sort of stuff (registering as a foreign agent) and Russia shouldn't expect any slack in lights of their geopolitical ventures on their western border.
https://www.judiciary.senate.gov/press/rep/releases/judiciar...
IIRC parts of the dossier was compiled from Tumblr post. The "piss-gate" story has it roots in a 4chan/pol post. I can't find it now, but I've seen the original archive of 4chan users actively putting misinformation out there to troll the press.
> Results reveal that conservatives in the United States were not only more likely than liberals to endorse specific conspiracy theories, but they were also more likely to espouse conspiratorial worldviews in general (r = .27, 95% CI: .24, .30). Importantly, extreme conservatives were significantly more likely to engage in conspiratorial thinking than extreme liberals (Hedges' g = .77, SE = .07, p < .001).
Also that's a bit of a straw man representation. Compromised, sure, but full on sleeper agent is a fringe belief at best.
Not to mention, both topics, and especially the climate change, has a huge political connotation. So the answers of people would often be merely a reflection of their political beliefs.
Why not pick the real, obvious, non-political conspiracy theories? Like 9/11 didn't happen; people didn't land on the Moon; earth is flat; etc?
Isn't this begging the question? Climate change has a political connotation exactly because conservatives believe it's made-up, and the only way they can square this counterfactual with the huge number of independent confirmations is the assumption that they are all somehow in cahoots - i.e., a conspiracy.
While I agree that a less politicized choice of topic would be more enlightening, I can imagine that going out of your way to avoid "political" topics may just be an exercise in mitigating the very effect you're trying to measure.