Even most ”normal” people (= people who dont care for partisan hackery) have lost trust, interest and willigness to consume modern agenda journalism. Where can you turn to for information in that case?
The only surprise here is that ONLY half of republicans actually believe these accounts.
Use to be geographical isolation was the biggest facilitator of cultural differentiation, but now it's isolation from original, accreddited information sources, the vines of information mediation are so thick and coiling, all competing for the sun of attention spans, the internet has become a jungle where every 100 feet its a brand new culture/language.
That's 12.5% of the population, which is well below the usual 25% who hold the crazy belief in polls, so this seems fine.