I have been pretty clear about my take on election fraud: it happens. How could it not? There is fraud in every aspect of human life, and we generally take precautions to minimize it. In elections? Not so much.

It also rarely makes much of a difference, because committing massive fraud is difficult, requires the cooperation of significant numbers of people to pull off, and when it matters a lot the lawyers get involved.

I think it happens a lot more than Democrats are willing to admit, but I also think it affects the outcomes of elections a lot fewer times than many Republicans suppose. It is a marginal phenomenon–sometimes it is the margin of victory, almost all the time it is the margin of error.

In other words: real, but usually insignificant.

In the 2022 elections, writ large? Not a factor. Even if a race turns out to have been decided by fraud–and I have zero reason to believe that one was–it tells us absolutely nothing about why Republicans got thumped last night. Nada. Zip. Bupkis.

Pointing to hinky results in some county doesn’t explain why Republicans lost where they should have won, because Republicans lost where they should have won all over the place. Even in places where Republicans had enormous generic ballot advantages, such as Colorado HD-3. This is Lauren Boebert’s seat.

Boebert is–by the latest numbers–losing her race in a solidly Republican district. All the votes aren’t counted and she may yet win, but there is no question that she is grossly underperforming in a race that should have been easy. There is no massive Democrat political machine to cheat her out of victory. A generic Republican would have won this seat in a Democrat wave election, almost certainly.

Yet she is losing.

The New York Times has a nice little feature on their elections website that shows both the direction and the scale of the vote shift from one party to the other. The arrows indicate the direction and the size of the arrow indicates the scale of the shift.

As you can see, all the arrows in the counties point left and are blue, meaning that the Democrats over performed compared to 2020. In a year that should have, by all rights, been a great one for Republicans, Boebert’s voters turned more Democrat.

If she loses, it will be because people voted against her. Her specifically.

How do we know this? If you zoom out and look at the election nationally you see an interesting pattern, There are plenty of places where non-MAGA Republicans were on the ballot next to MAGA Republicans. Georgia is the perfect example because the effect is clearest. Governor Kemp easily won reelection against the President of United Earth, Stacey Abrams. Abrams spent over $100 million to take (back!) her rightful place as Governor of Georgia, and got trounced.

A more normal Republican–one whom Donald Trump actively campaigned against and whom Trump hates–ran away with the election.

In the US Senate Race, on the other hand, Trump’s hand-picked candidate ran far behind Kemp. Walker is in a tight race against Warnock, and is running 4 points behind Kemp’s totals.

Now let’s assume, for the moment, that if Warnock’s victory is within the “margin of cheating” and that Walker should have won in a squeaker. No–I am NOT saying that this is true, only presenting a hypothetical–that still doesn’t explain the vote difference between Kemp and Walker. Even if Georgia has a significant voter fraud problem, it didn’t come close to preventing a Kemp victory.

In other words, Walker is going to potentially lose this race all on his own. It was a winnable race, and he isn’t winning it. That isn’t fraud, it’s something else. Candidate quality? MAGA regret? Something that isn’t fraud.

Voter fraud can effect very specific outcomes in very close races, but it simply is not large enough to explain the movement of large numbers of votes or the differences between how Republicans running in the same location perform dramatically differently. If the Dems were going to cheat massively, why not win both the Governor and the Senate?

The more traditional GOP leadership screwed the pooch, too, but what Geisha says is undeniable.

Future of GOP is state-level leaders who have got to challenge existing national leadership — starting right the hell now. https://t.co/NoCHJKvCf7

— Stephen Green (@VodkaPundit) November 9, 2022

Conclusion? Republicans lost this election–and no matter the final totals in the House and Senate, Republicans lost big–fair and square. Hats off to the Democrats. they were handed a crappy set of cards and won the pot.

The sooner Republicans drop the “I was robbed” excuse and figure out what caused this disaster, the better. Most of us know in our bones what the problem is, we just don’t know how to address it. The elephant in the room, as it were.

That’s why we are facing a Republican civil war. As Trump would say: sad.

FROM THE BOSS:

Now that the midterms are over, we must now prepare for the all-important 2024 presidential cycle — in fact, even more urgently than before. We need to make sure Democrats are one and done in the White House, and keep them locked out of control of Congress too. If you want real in-depth analysis and exclusive content and wish to support the long-term mission, join HotAir VIP today and use promo code VIPWEEK to receive 45% off your membership!