9. Limitations

Four limitations need to be stated.

First: this is a single case study via qualitative process tracing, not a statistical analysis of causation. The test of the three hypotheses in section 7 is an argued reconstruction of which explanation best fits the available evidence, not proof that the Trump-UFC alliance caused, in isolation, the outcome of the 2024 election.

Second: the electoral realignment data (section 6) use age cutoffs that differ between 2020 and 2024 in the publicly available sources, which limits the precision of any direct comparison. This piece chose to state the limitation rather than force an artificial equivalence between the two cycles.

Third: a considerable share of the figures popularly circulating about this case proved imprecise or unverifiable under this fact-check (the proportion of conservatives among UFC fans according to the supposed "Nielsen" source, the exact percentage of the swing among young men, the existence of a specific study on youth digital political engagement in 2018). Where correction was possible, the figure was replaced with the most reliable source found; where it was not, the claim was removed or flagged as unverifiable. This means that this piece is more conservative, but more defensible, than much of the popular coverage of the same case.

Fourth: the process studied is recent (the election took place in November 2024) and its long-term effects, both for the young electoral realignment and for the UFC's reputation as an organization, cannot yet be assessed with the historical distance that other sportswashing cases (Berlin 1936, Sochi 2014) already allow.