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The left still hasn’t come to the grips with the fact that Hillary Clinton lost to Donald Trump in a stunning upset, so they’re attempting to conjure up scapegoats. Their latest one: they’re adopting Trump’s old line that the election was rigged.
Alleged economist and former Enron adviser Paul Krugman tweeted out the following insanity:
#FakeNews has duped another 63-year-old angry white male on social media. pic.twitter.com/8uGyB1hjpS
— Jimmy (@JimmyPrinceton) November 23, 2016
Krugman eventually tweeted this:
Truly last word: conspiracies do happen. You’re only a “conspiracy theorist” if — like voting fraud types — u won’t take no for an answer.
— Paul Krugman (@paulkrugman) November 23, 2016
Here are six reasons why the election wasn’t rigged.
1. There is no evidence that voting machines were hacked. The left has been circulating this piece from New York Mag in which “computer scientists and election lawyers” are pushing Clinton to challenge the results in Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania. Their evidence: “Clinton received 7 percent fewer votes in counties that relied on electronic-voting machines compared with counties that used optical scanners and paper ballots.” And yet, the group has admitted they haven’t found any evidence “of hacking or manipulation; they are arguing to the campaign that the suspicious pattern merits an independent review — especially in light of the fact that the Obama White House has accused the Russian government of hacking the Democratic National Committee,” per New York Mag.
Challenging the results based on speculation doesn’t seem like a wise move.
2. Clinton doesn’t really have an advantage in paper ballots. Nate Silver proved this in a quick tweet storm:
Run a regression on Wisc. counties with >=50K people, and you find that Clinton improved more in counties with only paper ballots. HOWEVER: pic.twitter.com/4swuU70NaY
— Nate Silver (@NateSilver538) November 23, 2016
…the effect COMPLETELY DISAPPEARS once you control for race and education levels, the key factors in predicting vote shifts this year. pic.twitter.com/NYOINx9lEz
— Nate Silver (@NateSilver538) November 23, 2016
Maybe a more complicated analysis would reveal something, but usually bad news when a finding can’t survive a basic sanity check like this.
— Nate Silver (@NateSilver538) November 23, 2016
And Michigan has paper ballots everywhere, so not even sure what claim is being made there. pic.twitter.com/4YKrZEhTJl
— Nate Silver (@NateSilver538) November 23, 2016
The New York Times‘ Nate Cohn came to the same conclusion:
Effect of paper ballots in Wisconsin goes from 7 pts, like NY article, to 0 if you control for race education, density (true w&w/o weights,) pic.twitter.com/3ZVfDa44Zn
— Nate Cohn (@Nate_Cohn) November 23, 2016
In other words, Silver and Cohn’s point is that Clinton’s paper ballot advantage is actually due to demographics, not to some sort of conspiracy of voting machines being hacked. The fact that Michigan completely relies on paper ballots further proves this point. This makes sense given…
3. The same pattern occurs in other states that aren’t in question.
Two states that use paper ballots: Iowa and Minnesota, where the results look exactly like those in Wisconsin
— Nate Cohn (@Nate_Cohn) November 23, 2016
There is a very simple reason for this.
4. Clinton won urban areas, Trump won rural areas.
Furthermore, the WI voting pattern looks quite easily explained by the fact that rural counties use machines and urban ones use paper.
— Josh Barro (@jbarro) November 23, 2016
That’s not exactly a new phenomenon–Democrats have held an advantage in urban areas for many years now. And Trump was able to win in the rural areas because…
5. Clinton was an awful, terrible candidate. Between Clinton’s awkward, robotic delivery, her myriad of scandals and corruption and elitist snobbery, she was unable to bring in the same legion of voters that President Barack Obama was. Furthermore, Trump was able to reach out to former Obama voters by making it cleared he cared about them–something Clinton was unable to do. That’s why she lost, not because of a hacking conspiracy.
6. Not too long ago, leftists were mocking the idea of a rigged election. The Federalist‘s Sean Davis highlighted some examples on Twitter:
Old and busted: “Rigged” talk is reckless and cowardly.
New hotness: The election was totally rigged, but we’re not conspiracy theorists. pic.twitter.com/T8ozWUaMjz— Sean Davis (@seanmdav) November 23, 2016
My @UpshotNYT on the threat of Trump contesting an election loss and the damage it could inflict on our democracy https://t.co/pxv3hKjdsl pic.twitter.com/ctWuTY20Cn
— Brendan Nyhan (@BrendanNyhan) October 20, 2016
This is a real threat to our democracy. No joke. No hyperbole. Calling an election rigged tears at the fabric of our entire system. https://t.co/qRAYiZcvuH
— Brian Koppelman (@briankoppelman) October 15, 2016
Donald Trump refused to say that he’d respect the results of this election.
That’s a direct threat to our democracy.
— Hillary Clinton (@HillaryClinton) October 24, 2016
Given their pre-election rhetoric, it sure is weird how neither Hillary nor Obama has publicly denounced any of this harmful “rigged” talk.
— Sean Davis (@seanmdav) November 23, 2016
The left also screamed rigged when they lost the 2000 and 2004 elections as well, so being gracious losers is not their strong suit. They would be wise to abandon the “rigged” rhetoric, just as they had denounced Trump for it not too long ago.
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