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“Foreign interference decided who won the election”

The most portable election narrative there is: a documented influence operation is treated as proof that it changed the result. The step it skips is the one that matters — reach is not persuasion, and persuasion is not a changed count. Every case in this database where interference was documented and the outcome was then examined found the same thing: the operation was real and the outcome held. Canada’s public inquiry said the Liberals would have formed government in 2019 and 2021 regardless; Macron won by 32 points on hand-counted paper after MacronLeaks; Google found almost no organic engagement with DragonBridge’s Taiwan campaign. The narrative is also useful to the interfering state, which gains more from being believed to be decisive than from being decisive.