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So last night, @mngop Chair @jkcarnah claimed "extreme abnormalities and statistical variations from Minnesota's historic voter trends” in the 2020 election. I delved into her specific claims, which turned out to be vague, off-base or simply wrong: https://www.mprnews.org/story/2020/11/20/mngop-chairs-election-claims-unsupported-by-facts
2/ For example, @jkcarnah wrote, "Democrats saw declining vote totals in two consecutive presidential elections in Wright County, including a 14.8% decline in 2016, then in 2020 there was a sudden surge twice as large for Biden with 52.1% growth.” But…
3/ This is a claim based on total votes for Democratic presidential candidates, and ignores the fact that 2020 saw a massive turnout spike and a collapse in support for 3rd party candidates. Biden got 8K more votes in Wright County — and so did Trump!
4/ In fact, by both percent of the vote or net victory margin, Trump did BETTER in Wright County than he did in 2016. The exact same is true for another county @jkcarnah cited as abnormal, Sherburne. https://www.mprnews.org/story/2020/11/20/mngop-chairs-election-claims-unsupported-by-facts
5/ Another of the counties cited, Carver, DID in fact shift to the left in 2020. But it’s not true that Carver County has been "shifting away from Democrats since 2008.” It’s actually been shifting LEFT. GOP vote share:
2004 62.8%, 2008 56.7%, 2012 58.9%, 2016 52.2%, 2020 51.2%
2004 62.8%, 2008 56.7%, 2012 58.9%, 2016 52.2%, 2020 51.2%
6/ Anoka County saw a huge swing away from Trump in 2020. But when you look at "historic voter trends,” it’s 2016 that’s “abnormal” in Anoka, not 2020. (& the 2016 spike in Trump’s margin was driven by Ds voting 3rd-party. Trump got fewer Anoka votes in 2016 than Romney.)
7/ St. Louis County has definitely move to the right in the Trump era. And Trump’s net margin got a bit worse there in 2020, as turnout rose and 3rd party voters went to Biden. But Trump's share of the vote in St. Louis went up, from 39.7% to 41%!
8/ The only county cited by Carnahan where Trump did worse in 2020 in a deviation from recent trends was Scott. But even here the magnitude was small: Trump got 53.2% in 2016 and 52.1% in 2020 — a 1.1-point shift in an election where Biden did 5.5 points better.
9/ And Scott County’s shift to the left wasn’t out of nowhere — it was in line with a shift against Trump in suburban counties seen elsewhere in Minnesota and around the nation. Every Twin Cities suburban county moved left in 2020; so did the suburban parts of Hennepin & Ramsey.
10/ Here you can see the net Republican vote margin for all six counties cited by @jkcarnah as "data abnormalities”:
11/ And on top of all of this, even if Carnahan’s claims were true about these six counties, it wouldnt have mattered much in an election where Biden netted more votes out of Hennepin County alone than Trump did in all 74 counties he won combined:
12/ For those curious about Biden’s expanded Hennepin County margin (itself the subject of unsubstantiated “data abnormality" claims I discussed here: https://www.mprnews.org/story/2020/11/06/high-voter-turnout-a-sign-of-fraud-not-really), it was driven mostly by the suburbs, not Minneapolis:
13/ None of this gets into the question, unaddressed by Carnahan, of the mechanism by which mass voter fraud was supposedly perpetrated in rock-red Republican counties like Wright and Sherburne.
14/ Anyway, check out my full article here diving into Carnahan’s claims of "extreme abnormalities and statistical variations from Minnesota's historic voter trends": https://www.mprnews.org/story/2020/11/20/mngop-chairs-election-claims-unsupported-by-facts
15/ If you want a narrative framing to understand the 2020 election in Minnesota, rather than “extreme abnormalities,” I’d recommend this framing: https://twitter.com/dhmontgomery/status/1324571612813778946
