ALMOST A THIRD of voters believe in a number of different conspiracy theories, such as the Great Replacement theory and secret medical trials on citizens, a new survey has found.

A Red C opinion poll conducted on behalf of the Electoral Commission found that around 30% of voters believe that “a small secret group of people is responsible for making all major decisions in world politics”, while a similar percentage (31%) believe that there are ongoing efforts to marginalise certain groups of people through political policies.

Over a fifth of voters (22%)  told the survey that they believed the establishment is replacing white people with non-white immigrants and that elected officials want more immigration to bring in “obedient voters”.

This conspiracy theory is more commonly known as the Great Replacement theory, a white nationalist, far-right conspiracy which claims white citizens are being replaced by non-white populations.

The same percentage of voters believe that experiments involving new drugs are “routinely carried out on the public without their knowledge or consent”.

A similar proportion of voters (28%) believe that scientists manipulate, fabricate or suppress evidence to deceive the public while slightly less (21%) said they believed that viruses and/or diseases have been deliberately used to target and infect certain populations.

Just over 3,000 voters were polled as part of the survey between 8 and 15 June, taking place around the time of the local and European elections.

The survey found that voters for Independent Ireland, Aontú and Sinn Féin were more likely to believe in most of the conspiracy theories that were asked about compared with voters for other parties.

However, the belief that the government keeps important secrets from the public drew broad agreement from voters of all the major parties.

Immigration

The poll also asked voters’ opinions on a number of political topics, with the vast majority (72%) saying that the government has lost control of immigration.

The same percentage said that there should be “very strict limits” on the number of immigrants coming to live in Ireland, while a slightly smaller percentage (68%) said that ethnic minorities should adapt to Ireland’s way of life.

Despite this, a majority of voters (54%) still believe that the cultural diversity immigrants bring to Ireland enriches Irish society and that immigrants are good for the Irish economy (52%).

Housing and homelessness was chosen by voters in the local elections as the most important issue, while inflation and cost of living were the highest-ranked among European election voters, with both appearing in almost half of voters’ top three issues.

Just 10% of local election voters ranked migration and asylum as their highest priority issue, behind housing, cost of living and delivering for local communities.

However, this figure rose to 20% for European election voters, where it was the highest ranked for voters.