Numbers Never Lie

I wasn't going to go into this. Basing an editorial around numbers and math can get pretty dry and boring. However, there seems to be some explaining that needs to be done, so here we are.

If you dig around a bit on the conservative web, you will undoubtedly come across a post doubting the 80 million Biden votes. Not only is it a plausible number, but I hope to prove that it isn't just plausible, but likely.

According to monitoring done by Professor Michael McDonald of the University of Florida, there were just over 101 million absentee/early votes cast in the November election. That does not include the roughly 26 million ballots that were not returned. Twenty states require voters to register a party affiliation (or none) when they register to vote. In those twenty states, 44.8% of the votes cast were cast by registered Democrats. There also was just under 12 million votes cast in those states that voted with no party affiliation. Applying that same level of party affiliation (45% Democrats) to the independents and adding it to the hard Democrats, you get right about 55% of the early vote for Biden.

Now, in order to hit that 80 million number, Biden would need less than 25 million votes on election day. Election day turnout was roughly 54 million votes. All Biden would have needed on election day to hit the 80 million was 46% of election day turnout.

Before you all scream fraud, remember...there were states that made it laughably easy to vote in November. When the final post mortem comes in, you are likely to find a fair amount of first time voters and irregular voters who cast ballots.

I am not claiming zero fraud. That is preposterous. There is fraud in every election. The difference is between fraud and significant, election changing fraud.

Let's go back to the turnout percentages for a minute. I'm sure that some of you are doubting those numbers are possible. I have two reasons why those numbers are not only possible, but likely. First, those of us who are really into politics often make one critical error. We assume that everyone pays attention as much as we do. That is simply not the case. According to the most recent data from the US Census Bureau (2018), there were 153 million eligible/registered voters in the US. Viewership for the first presidential debate back in September was right around 73 million viewers. That means that, for one reason or another, 52.3% of voting age residents didn't watch the debate live. Now, I know that many caught it at a later time or got highlights from various sources, but that is still a pretty significant amount. People just don't care overly much about politics as we do.

Secondly, and I think more importantly, that same electorate has been bombarded day after day, year after year, for four years by a constant stream of stories about how evil Trump is. Now, when you couple that with the casual nature of their involvement in politics, you have a very, very large segment of the voting population who were convinced that Trump did not deserve a second term and voted accordingly.

I am not discounting the fraud. I think you are putting too much value into it. Look at the comments on any random political news story posted by any local news outlet. There is a huge amount of hatred for Trump, his voters, and everything they stand for. That is a powerful motivator. The why around the motivation is a philosophical discussion for another time. The fact that it is, and drove many to fill out that ballot that came in the mail, is of critical importance when analysing this election.

A loss is never easy to take. I know. I have two personal political losses under my belt with two others that I played a significant role in. It is even harder to take when you were convinced you were going to win. There comes a point though that you have to take the L and learn from it. That time might be now.