We can't win arguments with Republicans because we make the mistake of trying to present facts to them.
Political scientists Brendan Nyhan and Jason Reifler provided two groups of volunteers with the Bush administration's prewar claims that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. One group was given a refutation: the comprehensive 2004 Duelfer report that concluded that Iraq did not have weapons of mass destruction before the United States invaded in 2003. Thirty-four percent of conservatives told only about the Bush administration's claims thought Iraq had hidden or destroyed its weapons before the U.S. invasion, but 64 percent of conservatives who heard both claim and refutation thought that Iraq really did have the weapons. The refutation, in other words, made the misinformation worse.
This article makes a similar claim about Democrats, but it isn't very well written as it is not apples to apples. The actual study may have better data, but the article isn't clear.
The point of article is that both Dems and Repugs are basically predisposed to a certain point of view and they take anything they hear and run it through that prejudiced filter.
Taken with this article about "independent voters" that says
Their decisions arise less from careful deliberation of the facts than from deep-seated attitudes that they have little awareness of, the study found.
It seems that there really are very few truly undecided voters out there. Feeding facts to the other side to try to get them to change their vote is likely to only reinforce their view.
If that is all true, it seems that motivating the base, getting out your voters, and staying on offense are keys to winning.
I'm not sure if my conclusion is right, but I found both articles into voter insight and decision making to be interesting and wanted to share. Also wanted to see if people have ideas on why presenting a voter with a fact that proves something to be false makes them more likely to believe the false claim.