The numbers do not lie. The 2020 presidential election was reliable
- Jay Gulledge is a small-business proprietor with a Ph.D. in environmental science and greater than 30 years of expertise in knowledge and coverage evaluation.
Within the aftermath of former President Donald Trump’s impeachment trial for inciting the Jan. 6 rebellion in opposition to Congress, one-third of People nonetheless imagine that he misplaced the 2020 election solely due to large fraud in a handful of states that he received in 2016 however misplaced in 2020. If not for this fraud, they imagine, Trump would have received the election a landslide.
Trump’s detractors be aware that 81 million individuals voted for Trump’s opponent. However we all know from the 2016 election that Trump didn’t have to garner the most well-liked votes to win the election. Certainly, the obvious margin of victory within the 5 states that flipped the Electoral Faculty to Joe Biden — Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin — was lower than 280,000 votes. These are the ballots which can be in query for tens of tens of millions of People who doubt the legitimacy of the election.
The place’s the proof?
Aside from mere assertions, what proof speaks to the legitimacy of the election? A method of recognizing fraud is to search for unexplained departures from a bigger sample. For instance, if Arizona’s election was corrupt, then the change in assist for Trump in that state from 2016 to 2020 ought to look completely different from the identical change in, say, Missouri or West Virginia, the place Trump received each elections and no fraud is alleged.
Hear extra Tennessee voices:Get the weekly opinion e-newsletter for insightful and thought-provoking columns.
The chart beneath reveals the state--state change within the polling margins between the highest two candidates from the 2016 election to the 2020 election. Optimistic numbers present the place Trump gained assist between 2016 and 2020, and adverse numbers present the place he misplaced assist. Pink bars signify states Trump received in each elections and blue bars signify states he misplaced each instances. Yellow bars signify states that flipped from Trump in 2016 to Biden in 2020, that are those the place Trump alleges fraud.
Poll knowledge present that Trump misplaced voter assist from 2016 to 2020 in at the very least 42 states, together with 22 of the 25 states he received in each elections. On common, he misplaced the identical quantity of assist (3.1 factors) throughout the 5 states that flipped as he misplaced throughout all 50 states. In 9 of the states the place he received each elections, assist for Trump eroded greater than it did within the historically Democratic-leaning states of Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania, which flipped to Biden.
Trump misplaced assist in Tennessee, regardless of profitable the state
In his State of the State tackle this 12 months, Gov. Invoice Lee expressed concern concerning the public’s religion in our federal elections and held our state up as a mannequin: “If each state ran their election course of like Tennessee, we’d haven’t any delays and no scandal.” It’s notable, then, that Trump misplaced extra assist in Tennessee than in Wisconsin or Pennsylvania, and practically as a lot as in Michigan. Trump additionally misplaced extra assist within the deep-red states of Alabama and Wyoming than in Wisconsin or Pennsylvania.
Among the many flipped states, Arizona and Georgia confirmed the best decreases in assist for Trump. This is perhaps stunning for states which have lengthy supported Republicans for president, besides that Kansas and Nebraska exhibited even bigger shifts away from Trump. And his assist slipped practically as a lot in Missouri, Oklahoma, Texas and Kentucky. And it’s price noting that even when Trump had held Arizona and Georgia, he nonetheless would have misplaced the Electoral Faculty 20 votes.
Voting knowledge present that Trump misplaced assist throughout a big majority of states of all political stripes, and the 5 states that flipped have been in the course of the pack. To simply accept Trump’s fraud claims, one should imagine that he misplaced 1.four factors of assist in Wisconsin due to large fraud, but he misplaced double that quantity of assist in Tennessee with no whiff of electoral corruption. Until one cares to argue that large fraud was perpetrated in opposition to Trump in nearly each Republican-controlled state, right here isn’t any purpose to doubt the legitimacy of the election ends in the 5 states that flipped from Trump to Biden, nor the Electoral Faculty vote that insurrectionists did not thwart on Jan. 6.
Jay Gulledge is a small-business proprietor with a Ph.D. in environmental science and greater than 30 years of expertise in knowledge and coverage evaluation.
