Anthony Dimaggio, Salon

Dominion Voting Systems' lawsuit against Fox News is moving forward, despite the cable juggernaut's efforts to derail it. In mid-December of last year, the Delaware Superior Court ruled that the defamation case against Fox would not be dismissed, despite the channel's request. What's in question is Dominion's allegation that Fox News trafficked in propaganda on behalf of former President Trump, falsely alleging that the election was stolen and that Democratic voters engaged in massive voter fraud. Dominion has also targeted other right-wing media outlets on a similar basis, including Newsmax and One America News, claiming they indulged in a "barrage of lies" against the company by falsely implicating it in participating in voter fraud.

Predictably, Fox News responded to Dominion's allegations by denying any responsibility. The outlet claimed that "Fox News, along with every single news organization across the country, vigorously covered the breaking news surrounding the unprecedented 2020 election, providing full context of every story with in-depth reporting and clear-cut analysis. We remain committed to defending against this baseless lawsuit and its all-out assault on the First Amendment."

Despite the channel's categorical denial of wrongdoing, it's been clear for some time that Fox News engaged in all types of unfounded speculation about election fraud. I document the various ways the outlet did this in my new book, "Rising Fascism in America: It Can Happen Here." For example, in the aftermath of the 2020 election, Fox News host Mark Levin hosted Kenneth Starr, the former special prosecutor who spent years investigating Bill Clinton. Without presenting evidence, Starr accused Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf, a Democrat, of engaging in "illegal" and "unconstitutional" acts by counting supposedly fraudulent votes. Lou Dobbs called on Trump to take "drastic action" in relation to the former president's rhetoric about fraud. For Dobbs, that included the Supreme Court reversing the electoral college votes in swing states that cut toward Biden. (Needless to say, an issue well outside the court's, or the president's purview.) Tucker Carlson speculated about voter fraud by claiming that "dead people" voted "in large numbers." Numerous other Fox hosts, including Sean Hannity, Jeanine Pirro and Maria Bartiromo, linked Dominion to similar claims of fraud.

Judge Eric Davis recognized Fox's role in stoking Big Lie election propaganda in the Dominion judgment. Davis reflected in his legal decision that "Fox News and its news personnel continued to report Dominion's purported connection to the election fraud claims without also reporting on Dominion's emails" to the network in response to those claims, which presented compelling evidence to undermine the fraud narrative. Davis wrote: "Given that Fox apparently refused to report contrary evidence, including evidence from the Department of Justice, the Complaint's allegations support the reasonable inference that Fox intended to keep Dominion's side of the story out of the narrative."

Rather than admitting its role in stoking Trump's election propaganda, Fox News has doubled down on its deceptions. Reporting from January revealed that the channel is "seeking access" to a report from Georgia that was included in a separate lawsuit, from "election security expert" J. Alex Halderman, which the channel believes may vindicate its reporting on voter fraud. Halderman claims, after spending three months investigating Georgia voting machines, that "multiple severe security flaws" make them susceptible to third-party actors who might install malicious software. As with all of Fox's election propaganda, the report, if accurate, speaks to speculation about hypothetical voter fraud, with absolutely no evidence that it actually occurred. In other words, Fox is up to its same old tricks in stoking Big Lie propaganda, this time to extricate itself from the Dominion lawsuit.

Dominion is trying to repair its reputation, in order to protect its work in providing voting tabulation systems across more than two dozen states for both in-person and mail-in voting. But what evidence is there that Fox's election coverage had a significant impact on the channel's viewers? Is it realistic for Dominion to claim it has suffered serious reputational damage?

To answer this question, I examined national survey data from the Pew Research Center, which polled Americans on their media consumption habits and beliefs about election fraud in the period just before the November 2020 presidential election. The survey was conducted from Aug. 31 to Sept. 7 of that year, asking Americans about their news consumption habits and which venues they used as "a source of political and election news." The survey also queried respondents about their opinions of alleged voter fraud, asking them: "As far as you know, how big of a problem has voter fraud been when it comes to voting by mail in U.S. presidential elections?"

Using a statistical tool called regression analysis, I'm able to measure whether there is a significant relationship between Fox News consumption and opinions about voter fraud, after accounting for other factors, including respondents' political party identification (Republican, independent or Democratic), ideology (conservative, moderate or liberal), level of formal education, gender, income level, race and age, in addition to looking at other sources people relied on for their information about the 2020 election, including Trump's campaign, social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter, print newspapers and news magazines, broadcast news, National Public Radio and The New York Times.

My findings add ammunition to Dominion's claims about the significant role of Fox News in encouraging its viewers to embrace propaganda about voter fraud. Looking at specific media where people got their election information, Fox News viewing, reliance on Trump's campaign and use of social media (compared to print newspapers and magazines) were all significantly associated with a higher likelihood of accepting that voter fraud was a serious concern related to mail-in voting — controlling for all the other variables in my analysis. In contrast, consumption of the New York Times, National Public Radio and CNN were all significantly associated with being less likely to accept claims about mail-in voter fraud.

Diving more deeply into the data, 59 percent of those relying on Fox as a "major" source of news thought that mail-in voter fraud was a "major" problem, compared to 35 percent of those who relied on Fox as a "minor" source of news, and 11 percent of those who said Fox was not a source for their information. In total, 93 percent of Fox viewers believed that mail-in fraud was either a major or minor problem, compared to 74 percent of those relying on Fox as a minor source and only 37 percent of those who said Fox was not a source of information. To put it bluntly, these are really large differences in opinion that can be traced back to Fox consumption.

Since I statistically control for other factors in my analysis, it is not possible to attribute the relationship between Fox consumption and opinions of voter fraud to some other factor, such as partisanship or ideology. One might posit that Republicans and conservatives are disproportionately more likely to watch Fox, and that these individuals are already predisposed to believe Trump's fraud claims. But by taking these variables into account in my analysis, we can safely rule out these alternative scenarios. And since the relationship between Fox consumption and election opinions is statistically significant, it means there is less than a 0.1 percent chance the relationship is simply due to chance. Rather, the data here suggest that watching Fox News, in itself, as well as consuming social media and Trump campaign information, are each strong independent predictors of people's opinions of election fraud.

A sober analysis of this data reveals that Dominion has a serious case against Fox News. Efforts to destroy public trust in the electoral process are nothing to make light of, and Dominion's lawsuit could have serious consequences for Fox and other right-wing outlets. The voting company is suing the channel for $1.6 billion in damages to its professional reputation — a sum that amounts to almost three times the profits Fox makes in a year. The evidence here suggests that Dominion is validated in its response to Fox's propaganda. Based on the data reviewed here, Fox News has played a consistent and serious role in amplifying the Trump administration's propaganda, which threatens to poison the public well by undermining public trust in the state and local institutions of vote counting.

Those institutions have for decades succeeded in tabulating election results without any systemic evidence of voter fraud. If Trump and his media allies are empowered to promote their propaganda without consequence, there are likely to be serious concerns moving into the 2024 election. Republican state legislatures may seek to nullify state majorities that favor a Democratic candidate, citing unverified and baseless speculation about "mass voter fraud" against the Republican candidate. Barring unforeseen circumstances, that candidate is likely to be Donald Trump, considering his iron grip on the Republican Party. Another election involving Trump raises renewed concerns about potentially disastrous effects, as he endlessly beats the drums of paranoia and fear over unproven and improbable "voter fraud." The Dominion lawsuit has a chance to beat back much of this hysteria if Trump is at last deprived of the media partners that have previously enabled him in promoting his Big Lie.

IN OTHER NEWS: Jen Psaki refuses to bail out Ted Cruz on SCOTUS pick: 'I am blissfully not a spokesperson for Sen. Cruz'

Jen Psaki refuses to bail out Ted Cruz on SCOTUS pick: 'I am blissfully not a spokesperson for Sen.www.youtube.com

The dramatic rise of the omicron variant has renewed medical experts' warnings about the need for Americans to start taking the pandemic more seriously. Considering the generally low levels of vaccination in the U.S. relative to other wealthy countries, the CDC recommends that all Americans get vaccinated as the best means of protecting against severe illness from the variant, which has quickly overtaken delta as the dominant COVID strain in the U.S. Reporting from the first week and a half of December found that only 12 percent of new COVID-19 cases were from omicron; alarmingly, that had skyrocketed to 73 percent of new cases by the end of the third week of the month.

America is seriously divided on the vaccination question. And one doesn't have to go far to see headlines emphasizing the partisan nature of anti-vax sentiment. Stories placing partisanship at the center of the conflict are everywhere, with titles like: "Inside the Growing Alliance Between Anti-Vaccine Activists and Pro-Trump Republicans," "Republicans Seize on Federal Vaccine Mandates to Fire Up Their Base and Try to Court New Voters Worried About the Economy" and "The Biggest Divide on Vaccination Isn't Race or Income, But Party — and the Divide is Growing."

Despite the preoccupation with partisan conflict, available evidence suggests that the conflict over vaccination is not what we think it is. National polling in September found large divides on COVID vaccination on numerous demographic fronts, based on education, political party and age. Sixty percent of Republicans reported being vaccinated, compared to 86 percent of Democrats. Sixty-six percent of high school graduates said they were vaccinated, compared to 86 percent of those with graduate degrees. And 66 percent of 18-to-29-year-olds reported vaccination, compared to 86 percent of those 65 and older.

RELATED: "Don't, don't, don't": Trump lashes out after crowd boos him for getting COVID booster

These are all large divides between groups — of 20 percentage points or more. But without a careful analysis of the raw data from national surveys, it's not possible to tell how much each factor accounts for the enduring national divide over vaccination. To provide a clearer answer, I undertook an original statistical "regression" analysis of mid-2021 surveys, one a Marist poll, another from Axios — both completed in June — which asked Americans about their vaccination status, while collecting information on other demographic and personal behavioral factors.

For the Axios poll, Americans' political behavior was gauged in relation to their reliance on various media venues, including social media like Facebook and Twitter, the elite agenda-setting press (The New York Times), cable viewership (CNN, MSNBC and Fox News), and broadcast television (ABC, CBS, NBC News), in addition to various demographics, including political party identification, gender, race, education level and income. For the Marist poll, additional demographic factors included religious affiliation (for evangelical Christians) and region of the country.

By statistically "controlling" (in social science terms) for all these factors simultaneously within a regression analysis, I am able to measure the percent likelihood that each variable is associated with being vaccinated or unvaccinated, other factors considered. For example, I can estimate the percent likelihood that age predicts being unvaccinated, moving from the oldest group of Americans — those 60 and older — to younger adults in the 18-29 age group. Or the likelihood that one is not vaccinated based on party identification, Democrat or Republican. Or the likelihood that rising education — from those with a high school degree or less to those with graduate degrees — accounts for vaccine refusal.

The results of this research may surprise those who have been told that the battle over vaccinations is primarily a question of partisanship or, alternatively, is about where someone gets their news. The Biden administration has targeted a "disinformation dozen" of vaccine skeptics operating on social media, and CNN has emphasized that Fox News viewers are more likely to oppose vaccination. In fact, neither those who rely on social media nor those who watch Fox News as their "main source of news" are more likely to be unvaccinated, after controlling for other factors included in my analysis. On the other hand, consumption of various "liberal" media outlets, including CNN and The New York Times, is also unrelated to vaccination status.

In terms of news consumption, only MSNBC and broadcast television act as positive predictors that someone is vaccinated. And even in these two cases, the correlation is not particularly strong: Watching MSNBC and broadcast news is associated, respectively, with a 14 percent and 15 percent increased likelihood of vaccination, after controlling for other factors.

Want a daily wrap-up of all the news and commentary Salon has to offer? Subscribe to our morning newsletter, Crash Course.

For a fuller accounting of various demographic factors, we need to look to the June Marist poll. Importantly, despite claims that Black Americans are more likely to be vaccine holdouts, this group is not significantly more likely to be unvaccinated, after statistically accounting for other factors. This finding is reinforced by recent polling, such as the Pew Research Center's September poll that found minimal differences between the 70 percent of Black people, 72 percent of white people and 76 percent of Latinx people who report being vaccinated.

Similarly, income, gender and the region of the country where one lives are all not significant in predicting vaccination status. Despite high-profile reporting drawing attention to lower vaccination rates in the South, living below the Mason-Dixon line is simply not relevant in accounting for vaccine resistance. Southern states are disproportionately Republican in their politics, and partisanship appears to be the primary factor at work here. Reflecting this point, my analysis of the Marist poll finds that Republican party affiliation is associated with a 26 percent increased chance of being unvaccinated, controlling for other factors.

Despite academic and journalistic emphasis on vaccine resistance among white evangelicals, this group is only moderately more likely to be represented among vaccine holdouts. Being a white evangelical is associated with only a 10 percent increased probability of being unvaccinated in the Marist poll, compared to other Americans and after controlling for other demographic factors. Similarly, education is only moderately significant as a predictor of vaccination: The least educated Americans (those with a high school degree or less) are about 16 percent less likely to be vaccinated, compared to the most educated Americans (those with graduate degrees).

RELATED: False prophets: When preachers defy COVID — and then it kills them

But there is one factor that accounts, by far, for the largest variation in vaccination rates: age. Recent polling finds large differences between groups based on vaccination status and age, but the results are not what many people might expect. On the one hand, younger Americans are significantly less likely to be vaccinated than older Americans, with movement from the youngest Americans (18 to 29 years old) to the oldest (60+) associated with an astonishing 57 percent increased likelihood of being vaccinated. But this distinction is not because those in the youngest age cohort are disproportionately refusing vaccination, presumably because they feel they are healthy and are not concerned about contracting COVID-19.

My analysis clearly shows that adults under 30 are not significantly more likely, statistically speaking, to be unvaccinated compared to the rest of the public. The difference occurs at the other end, where it is older Americans — those 60 and older — who are far more likely to have sought out vaccination, compared to all other age groups. Taking a closer look at Pew's September polling, an overwhelming 86 percent of Americans 65 and older reported being vaccinated in mid-2021, only a few months after vaccines first became widely available, compared to 73 percent of those 50 to 64, 69 percent of those 30 to 49, and 66 percent of those 18 to 29.

To put this another way, the major story here is not that younger Americans are disproportionately holding out on vaccination, but rather that all age groups except people 60 and older have failed to get vaccinated at the high rates that were necessary (at least before omicron took hold) to achieve "herd immunity" against COVID-19.

It may be comforting or politically convenient to blame the failure to achieve mass vaccination on ideological factors such as partisanship, Fox News socialization or religion (specifically referring to white evangelicals). There's no doubt that Fox News has a history of flirting with anti-vaccine propaganda, while Republican state and local officials have militantly opposed vaccine and mask mandates and evangelical Christians have a long history of viewing evidence-based reasoning with suspicion, in favor of a faith-based worldview often associated with the rejection of science.

RELATED: With omicron variant arriving, Republicans are now bribing people to avoid vaccination

But none of those factors, it turns out, is the primary reason for vaccine opposition. White evangelicals represent 14.5 percent of the U.S. population in 2021, and with 40 percent of them being unvaccinated in late 2021, that amounts to just 5.8 percent of the adult population. Republicans were 26 percent of the adult population as of October 2021, and with 44 percent reportedly not vaccinated, this amounts to 11.4 percent of American adults. By contrast, the number of unvaccinated Americans younger than age 65 is much larger than either of these groups. Census data reveals that Americans under 65 were 79 percent of the adult population as of 2020, and based on Pew's data, the unvaccinated people within that group represented almost a quarter (24 percent) of adults.

It's clear that partisanship and religious faith fuel suspicion of vaccines, and both factors clearly play a role in vaccine refusal. But our nation's vaccination problem runs much deeper than that. The reality is that the U.S. has a widespread anti-vax problem, and lags well behind most wealthy countries in the percentage of adults who are fully vaccinated. If roughly one in four adult Americans under age 60 is unvaccinated, that comes to more than 60 million people, without even counting children younger than 18 who remain unvaccinated for various reasons.

RELATED: How deadly is the omicron variant? Here's what we know

Mass opposition to vaccination is rooted in larger cultural values, such as a tendency to embrace narcissistic ignorance and to discount the advice of medical experts. Tens of millions refuse to come to terms with the gravity of the threat, despite the U.S. closing in on a million people dead of COVID and the prospect that half of those who contract the virus may face "long COVID" symptoms that persist for six months or more — an especially alarming statistic, considering our lack of understanding of what the long-term consequences will be years from now.

The significance of age as the best predictor of vaccine refusal suggests that much of the population, disproportionately concentrated among those younger than 65, have discounted the dangers of COVID-19, viewing it as something that only threatens the elderly. This belief is grossly ignorant, considering that one-quarter of the 800,000 U.S. COVID deaths as of December, or 200,000 people, were people younger than 65. Despite the evident dangers faced by Americans of all ages, anti-vax sentiment persists in the face of the most devastating pandemic in a century — and the prospect that new variants will continue to reduce the efficacy of vaccines and guarantee prolonged viral spread well into the future.

IN OTHER NEWS: Trump 'more off the rails than usual' after Liz Cheney hinted at criminal charges: MSNBC analyst

Trump 'more off the rails than usual' after Liz Cheney hinted at criminal chargeswww.youtube.com