The president and Republicans have heavily focused their claims of election fraud on Philadelphia, Detroit and Milwaukee.

But those cities did not cost Trump the election. Voters *outside* of them did. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/16/upshot/election-fraud-trump-cities.html

Of course cities with large Black populations have long been stereotyped as corrupt — and unworthy of equal votes.

But this year the claims are particularly absurd. White communities turned away from Trump in the Northern battlegrounds, and he’s blaming Black voters for it.

In reality, these cities changed little from their 2016 turnout + margins in prelim results.

Milwaukee
2016: 188,657 votes for Clinton
2020: 194,661 votes Biden

Detroit
2016: 234,871 for Clinton
2020: 233,908 for Biden

Philly
2016: 584,025 Clinton
2020: 587,377 Biden (for now)

Trump actually picked up votes in all three of these cities relative to 2016:

+3,000 in Milwaukee
+5,000 in Detroit
+21,000 in Philadelphia

The Times map of Pennsylvania’s county-level change from 2016 makes the fixation on Philadelphia seem especially misplaced. It’s the one county in the eastern half of PA where Trump *improved* on his 2016 margins.

These fraud claims follow a long tradition of arguments that say urban voters shouldn’t count as much as rural voters.

Now there are lawsuits arguing explicitly that in GA, PA, MI and WI: Republicans there want to exclude voters in these urban centers from state vote totals.

All of this makes sense if the strategy is more about stoking familiar anti-urban stereotypes than overturning the election. But it seems equally possible that Democratic voters in Georgia will see what looks like a bid to discount Black votes and be motivated by it, too.