The winner knew it all? Conspiracy beliefs and hindsight perspective after the 2016 US general election

The political campaigns preceding the 2016 U.S. Presidential Election received worldwide media attention that many people followed with great interest. Before the election, there were rumors of how the outcome of this election might be rigged, there was additional suspicion that individuals who were not eligible to vote were seen at voting booths, and other assumptions that might be connected to a conspiracy mentality. In this contribution, we report the results of one case study (N = 173) regarding inter-individual differences in conspiracy mentality, uncertainty, and hindsight perceptions of inevitability and foreseeability between voters of the major parties' candidates, namely, Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton. In line with previous research, we demonstrate that higher levels of conspiracy mentality can predict voting behavior for the more conservative party's candidate. Furthermore, and for the first time, we show that the hindsight perceptions of foreseeability of the election outcome are related to conspiracy mentality.