Posted on 11/25/2020 7:04:08 AM PST by Kaslin
Big questions remain about what exactly happened in the 2020 election.
I've been looking over history, compiled on the Statista website, of total votes cast in presidential elections compared with the number of eligible voters. 2020 seems very, very odd.
The number of votes reported in 2020 exceeded the total number of votes cast in 2016 by 22 million. This is larger than the population of Florida, the nation's third-most-populous state, and almost as large as the population of Texas, the second-most-populous state.
According to Statista, votes of 66.5% of eligible voters were recorded in 2020. In 2016, 59.2 percent of eligible voters voted. In 2012, 58 percent voted. And in 2008, the election with America's first black presidential candidate nominated by a major party, 61.6 percent voted.
What accounts for the highly unusual surge in votes recorded in 2020?
Gallup polled voter enthusiasm just prior to the election, asking, "Compared to previous elections, are you more enthusiastic than usual about voting, or less enthusiastic?"
This year, 69 percent said they were "more enthusiastic." But in 2008, 68 percent said they were "more enthusiastic."
Gallup also asked voters whether they think "the stakes in this presidential election are higher than in previous years."
In 2020, 77 percent said yes. But in 2008, 76 percent said yes.
Voter enthusiasm in 2020 and 2008 was hardly different. Yet, in 2020, 22 million more votes were recorded compared with the 2016 election, and in 2008, there were 9 million more votes compared with the previous election. In 2020, voter turnout was 7.2 percentage points higher than in the previous election, compared with a 1.5 percentage point increase from 2004 to 2008.
Regardless of where things go in court challenges to what happened in the 2020 election, the tens of millions of votes that seem to have emerged out of nowhere need explanation.
The American people should demand an audit of the 2020 election and not settle until there are clear answers.
Meanwhile, taking the results of the election as a given, another big question remains for Republicans.
Why was it so close?
In September, Gallup asked voters whether they and their families were "better off now" than they were four years ago. Fifty-five percent said yes.
When the same question was asked in 1984, when then-President Ronald Reagan was running for reelection, 44 percent said yes. Yet Reagan went on to win by a landslide, winning 49 of 50 states.
One reason President Donald Trump did not run away with the election as Reagan did is what I have been writing about for years: the changing demographics of the country.
In the 1984 election, 84 percent of voters were white. In this election, 67 percent of voters were white.
What would the results have been if every racial/ethnic group had voted as they did in 2020 but 84 percent of the voters were white, like in 1984, rather than 67 percent?
President Trump would have won 52 percent of the popular vote and would have been victorious by a margin of 9.7 million votes.
The fact that Trump made gains among blacks and Hispanics in 2020 is meaningful. It shows that these groups can change their voting behavior. Voting liberal and Democratic is not genetic.
But Republicans are going to have to continue to make strong gains among non-white Americans, or they will be overwhelmed by the ethnic changes of the country. The white percentage of the American electorate that delivers most Republican votes will continue to shrink.
There should be zero tolerance of voting irregularities. But Republicans will be vulnerable to them as long as elections remain on a razor's edge.
Republicans must continue the hard work of convincing non-white Americans that a strong economy -- only possible with low taxes; low regulation; parental choice in education; private ownership, rather than government programs; and strong traditional moral principles -- is where their future lies.
I think a more urgent problem is overcoming government school brainwashing of the next generation. The Republican brand has become attractive to new voters, not just to bitter middle-aged victims of government overreach.
I'll go along a little with weak minded, Women for Trump, Latinos for Trump, Blacks for Trump, Union Workers for Trump, Law Enforcement for Trump ... this group and that group for Trump. However, it divides Americans into identity groups. My identity is Old White Religious Conservative Heterosexual Educated American Small Businessman. That doesn't fit on a sign, but I'll settle simply for American.
I contend that all people desire essentially the same things - life, freedom, liberty and prosperity. Make the connection between policy, laws and regulations (lack thereof) and those four things and you have a winning combination. Effectively contrast between with what others propose or have done and you have victory.
The problems with Republicans are they don't make the argument and they often agree with Democrats.
She’s correct - to offset the increasing number of “woke whites.”
More than doable, as the trends in the last election indicate. The efforts must be redoubled, since we know they are effective. I can see in the future you have crowds of woke whites shouting at a crowd of minorities that they are anti-minority racists with the way things are going now.
“Demographics is destiny”, yes, but the demographic is not one of skin color or ethnicity but one of ignorance.
No, we need to defeat and destroy the narrative of identity politics by proving it isn’t true. But pretending the reality that the narrative does exist isn’t an issue won’t get us anywhere. We have the fight on the turf of reality.
Where does that phrase you are responding to imply such a thing...at all?
We’re not voting our way out if Trump fails in the courts. There will be 30 million new citizens made out of illegals. A 700% promised surge in refugees, people who will not even have the education to speak their own language correctly (as my Spanish mother notes of illegals—she calls them “a people with no language,” since they speak in expletives and gutter Spanish) from all around the world.
The first amendment will be trashed. Even Parler could at some point be shut down. Gab has no funding abilities. PayPal, Visa, shut even the families of Gab owners off. That latter point I only heard recently in an owner newsletter from Gab. Individuals, not just the business entity, are barred from using credit and debit cards.. The entire website is funded just by Bitcoin, which few people know how to use.
Parler, and any other free speech alternative, will soon suffer the same fate. No advertising. No payment processors. No mainstream CDNs, having to use the most expensive providers because Cloudfare will ban you. American registrars will ban you, putting you at the mercy of foreign ones.
It’s really quite amazing that Free Republic hasn’t suffered at all yet.
But the bottom line is that we’re not going to win any further elections at this point. It’s done.
I live in California and ‘get it’. I’ve warned people for years but they still stick their head in the sands and repeat stupid mantras like.....they’re church goers, they’re natural conservatives, ad nauseum.
Trump voters will not vote GOP...blacks,ex democrats and Latinos
Where does that phrase you are responding to imply such a thing...at all?
Right there, in the title. The Republican Party must even further become Democrat Party LITE by similarly divvying up the American population into all these little groups and constituencies. Why play the Democrat Party's destructive game of identity politics? And to where has identity politics led the United States? I would hope conservatives would reject identity politics out of hand.
No, it depends on forcing the states to FOLLOW THE LAWS about voting in their states and free and fair elections. If the Rats are allowed to steal this race, the republic is doomed.
It depends on a new political party and stopping future vote fraud.
Absent this, it depends on our ability to wage a REAL war to put down the Left’s coup.
Yes we need more non white voters, because white voters are becoming more stupid by the day.
Suburban whites have let public schools and colleges poison their minds.
It depends on less ballot harvesting and more ID requirements.
“Republican Party Future Depends on More Black, Brown Voters”
The GOP had plenty enough this time...if they had the balls to figure out where they fraudulently went.
I love this. Our vote was stolen, defrauded, changed, subtracted etc... And we’re being lectured about how to get more voters to win elections.
But of course it does them good - lots and lots of good, in fact.
That is great.
Baloney. The phrase does not say that.
Sure it does; read it again. It's all about making the Republican Party engage in the same identity politics as the Democrat Party, thus turning it into Democrat Party LITE. Why would anyone want a watered-down Democrat Party LITE when they can have the original Democrat Party?
The Republican Party must avoid identity politics like the plague.
Ridiculous nonsense.
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