Why Do So Many Americans Think the Election Was Stolen?

[Deleted User 4520]

Opinion piece from the NY Times. It's quite lengthy but interesting.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/05/opin ... e=Homepage

[Bryce]

Well, here's one reason. Name the last time in a Presidential election that the incumbent received more votes than they did in the first election and lost.

[Rate This]

Well, here's one reason. Name the last time in a Presidential election that the incumbent received more votes than they did in the first election and lost.

Turnout was up and this year is unlike any other election year so such a comparison would be flawed. The same conditions don’t exist.

[MWmetalhead]

Name the last time in a Presidential election that the incumbent received more votes than they did in the first election and lost.

In modern history, we've had very few one-term Presidents.

Sample size is far too small on which to draw any conclusions.

[Bryce]

Name the last time in a Presidential election that the incumbent received more votes than they did in the first election and lost.

In modern history, we've had very few one-term Presidents.

Sample size is far too small on which to draw any conclusions.

Fair enough! I'll trot out some others ...

Richard Baris, the director of Big Data Poll, told the New York Post in mid-October that enthusiasm for Trump “is historically high,” while “Biden’s enthusiasm level is historically low.” 66% of Trump supporters say they support him strongly, while just 46% of Biden supporters say the same.

Down ballot Republican's did surprisingly well. This is called "coat tails". How could so many down ballot Republicans defy the polling numbers but not the top of the ticket? Reasonable conclusion? Fraudulent single vote ballots.

Donald Trump improved his national performance over 2016 by almost 20%, Obama went down by three and a half million votes between 2008 and 2012, but still won comfortably.

Donald Trump did very well, even better than four years earlier, with the white working class. He held his own with women and suburban voters against all of most of the polling expectations, did very well with Catholics, improved his vote among Jewish voters ,and had the best minority performance for a Republican since Richard Nixon in 1960, doing so well with African-Americans, and importantly with Hispanics.

He still, after the election, has over a 50% approval rating.

This is the biggy for me...

Rejection rates on absentee ballots, which in the primaries earlier this year were well into the double-digits and which historically have often been very, very high in these key swing states, or at least in the key swing counties, we're seeing rejection rates of less than 1%, often very close to to zero. Given the increase in absentee balloting and the lack of experience that most of the new voters and those doing the counting would have with those ballots, it is implausible, to put it politely, that that figure would be as low as it was.

[Rate This]

Name the last time in a Presidential election that the incumbent received more votes than they did in the first election and lost.

In modern history, we've had very few one-term Presidents.

Sample size is far too small on which to draw any conclusions.

Fair enough! I'll trot out some others ...

Richard Baris, the director of Big Data Poll, told the New York Post in mid-October that enthusiasm for Trump “is historically high,” while “Biden’s enthusiasm level is historically low.” 66% of Trump supporters say they support him strongly, while just 46% of Biden supporters say the same.

Down ballot Republican's did surprisingly well. This is called "coat tails". How could so many down ballot Republicans defy the polling numbers but not the top of the ticket? Reasonable conclusion? Fraudulent single vote ballots.

Donald Trump improved his national performance over 2016 by almost 20%, Obama went down by three and a half million votes between 2008 and 2012, but still won comfortably.

Donald Trump did very well, even better than four years earlier, with the white working class. He held his own with women and suburban voters against all of most of the polling expectations, did very well with Catholics, improved his vote among Jewish voters ,and had the best minority performance for a Republican since Richard Nixon in 1960, doing so well with African-Americans, and importantly with Hispanics.

He still, after the election, has over a 50% approval rating.

This is the biggy for me...

Rejection rates on absentee ballots, which in the primaries earlier this year were well into the double-digits and which historically have often been very, very high in these key swing states, or at least in the key swing counties, we're seeing rejection rates of less than 1%, often very close to to zero. Given the increase in absentee balloting and the lack of experience that most of the new voters and those doing the counting would have with those ballots, it is implausible, to put it politely, that that figure would be as low as it was.

He was that disliked in the places where lots of people are. The election was a referendum on Trump. A ham sandwich would have worked just as easily. That’s how downballot Republicans did ok. No grand conspiracy. His approval is not over 50 either. He has never cracked 50 and don’t even bother trotting out Rasmussen. I don’t care about oversampled right wing polls.

[MotorCityRadioFreak]

Well, here's one reason. Name the last time in a Presidential election that the incumbent received more votes than they did in the first election and lost.

Because there were less third party votes in swing states......

[Bryce]

He was that disliked in the places where lots of people are. The election was a referendum on Trump. A ham sandwich would have worked just as easily. That’s how downballot Republicans did ok. No grand conspiracy. His approval is not over 50 either. He has never cracked 50 and don’t even bother trotting out Rasmussen. I don’t care about oversampled right wing polls.

Nope, I don't buy it. It's just impossible to comprehend that a bumbling senior citizen who stayed in his basement for most of the campaign getting 15 million more votes than the lord and savior Barrack Hussein Obama. Given Trumps performance among blacks and Hispanics, impossible.

[Matt]

Name the last time in a Presidential election that the incumbent received more votes than they did in the first election and lost.

In modern history, we've had very few one-term Presidents.

Sample size is far too small on which to draw any conclusions.

Fair enough! I'll trot out some others ...

Richard Baris, the director of Big Data Poll, told the New York Post in mid-October that enthusiasm for Trump “is historically high,” while “Biden’s enthusiasm level is historically low.” 66% of Trump supporters say they support him strongly, while just 46% of Biden supporters say the same.

Down ballot Republican's did surprisingly well. This is called "coat tails". How could so many down ballot Republicans defy the polling numbers but not the top of the ticket? Reasonable conclusion? Fraudulent single vote ballots.

Donald Trump improved his national performance over 2016 by almost 20%, Obama went down by three and a half million votes between 2008 and 2012, but still won comfortably.

Donald Trump did very well, even better than four years earlier, with the white working class. He held his own with women and suburban voters against all of most of the polling expectations, did very well with Catholics, improved his vote among Jewish voters ,and had the best minority performance for a Republican since Richard Nixon in 1960, doing so well with African-Americans, and importantly with Hispanics.

He still, after the election, has over a 50% approval rating.

This is the biggy for me...

Rejection rates on absentee ballots, which in the primaries earlier this year were well into the double-digits and which historically have often been very, very high in these key swing states, or at least in the key swing counties, we're seeing rejection rates of less than 1%, often very close to to zero. Given the increase in absentee balloting and the lack of experience that most of the new voters and those doing the counting would have with those ballots, it is implausible, to put it politely, that that figure would be as low as it was.

He was that disliked in the places where lots of people are. The election was a referendum on Trump. A ham sandwich would have worked just as easily. That’s how downballot Republicans did ok. No grand conspiracy. His approval is not over 50 either. He has never cracked 50 and don’t even bother trotting out Rasmussen. I don’t care about oversampled right wing polls.

YOU are not allowed to comment on polls for at least six months...

[Rate This]

He was that disliked in the places where lots of people are. The election was a referendum on Trump. A ham sandwich would have worked just as easily. That’s how downballot Republicans did ok. No grand conspiracy. His approval is not over 50 either. He has never cracked 50 and don’t even bother trotting out Rasmussen. I don’t care about oversampled right wing polls.

Nope, I don't buy it. It's just impossible to comprehend that a bumbling senior citizen who stayed in his basement for most of the campaign getting 15 million more votes than the lord and savior Barrack Hussein Obama. Given Trumps performance among blacks and Hispanics, impossible.

It’s impossible to comprehend that a raving lunatic got 7 million more... but here we are. Trump is so polarizing that people were eager to vote one way or the other. Trump lost. It’s over. Nobody is going to arbitrarily award him the presidency by nullifying the election. No evidence of fraud exists. No judge is regardless of lean is allowing the cases to go anywhere, the states have certified the results, the electoral college votes next week and Republicans like those in Georgia who ran the election are saying it was legitimate and receiving death threats at for it. It’s over. Try your luck again in 2024. You will have another crack at getting Trump in.

[Turkeytop]

Isn't the goal, in a democracy, to have maximum participation in an election? When thet goal is achieved, how can that be seen as subversive?

[Rate This]

Isn't the goal, in a democracy, to have maximum participation in an election? When thet goal is achieved, how can that be seen as subversive?

Because they lost. If the roles were reversed there wouldn’t be a peep out of them.

[Turkeytop]

What mastermind could pull off such a massive fraud, and leave no evidence of the crime?

[Rate This]

What mastermind could pull off such a massive fraud, and leave no evidence of the crime?

An alien. Q perhaps?

[bmw]

Bryce - while you raise some interesting stats worth looking in to, here's my issue that overrides all of that: Are you suggesting that fraud was widespread so as to be rampant even in rural Trump counties across the various swing states? Or was it focused in certain urban districts? Because I find it hard to believe that there was a conspiracy so large and so wide-spread that it even infiltrated small rural areas.

So that said, I point to Michigan counties, in alphabetical order, that heavily went for Trump. I stopped halfway through the C's because I suspect this trend will hold statewide.

Alcona
68.0-28.0 (Trump vs Hillary 2016)
68.6-30.3 (Trump vs. Biden 2020)
Trump +0.6, Biden +2.3 (net change in 2020)

Alger
57.3-36.8
58.8-40.0
Trump +1.5, Biden +3.2

Allegan
61.3-32.5
61.7-36.4
Trump +0.4, Biden +3.9

Alpena
61.9-33.2
63.0-35.4
Trump +1.1, Biden +2.2

Antrim
62.4-32.8
61.1-37.4
Trump -1.3, Biden +4.6

Arenac
63.1-30.0
67.1-31.4
Trump +4.0, Biden +1.4

Baraga
61.9-33.2
62.2-36.6
Trump +0.3, Biden +3.4

Barry
63.4-30.1
65.4-32.9
Trump +2.0, Biden +2.8

Benzie
54.2-40.2
53.8-44.7
Trump -0.4, Biden +4.5

Berrien
53.8-41.0
52.8-45.4
Trump -1.0, Biden +4.4

Branch
66.9-28.7
68.5-30.0
Trump +1.6, Biden +1.3

Cass
61.2-31.2
63.7-34.8
Trump +2.5, Biden +3.6

Charlevoix
59.9-35.3
57.9-40.8
Trump -2.0, Biden +4.5

Average:
Trump +0.7
Biden +3.2


SO, while Trump made small gains percentage-wise in Michigan's rural counties in 2020, Biden made even bigger gains compared to Hillary. The reason for the 3.9% net cumulative gain? Third parties. They did much better in 2016 than 2020 suggesting to me that most 3rd party voters from 2016 broke for Biden this time around.

Bottom line is, for the type of fraud that is being alleged, I would expect to see margins in red counties consistent with 2016's numbers, and that just isn't the case. Biden made gains on Trump compared to Hillary in 11 of those 13 red counties, and at a margin of 2.5 percent (actually probably a little higher than that if I were to separately weight the numbers for population of each county). And that number isn't far off from the statewide difference in 2020 compared to 2016 (of 3.1 percent).