Weird Voting in Arizona

Vincent J. Curtis

27 Dec 20

The State of Arizona shows the same weird voting patterns of other states thus far analyzed: a surge of vote for Donald Trump but an even larger surge of votes for Joe Biden; a surge outside any reasonable norm.  Of course, this gives rise to the question of voter fraud, separate from the shenanigans of the vote count which itself raised alarms of fraud.

Let’s look at the voting pattern in Arizona since 2008:

Arizona           2008       2012       2016       2020

Democrat 1,034707             930,664     1,161,167     1,672,199

Republican 1,230,111         1,143,051     1,252,401     1,661,686

In 2008 and 2012, the Democratic candidate was Barack Obama, then shiny, new, unknown, but charismatic, promising hope and change, and whose election offered the prospect of ridding America of the albatross of racism and slavery.  In 2012, Obama, scuffed up from four years in office, enthusiasm for him waning across the country; nevertheless, won in 2012 also, albeit with a reduced vote total.  That reduced total is reflected in 2012.

In 2008, Arizona’s senior Senator John McCain was the Republican flag bearer.  He was as well-known as any politician can be in his state.  Though a war hero, he was scuffed up from three decades in office and his health was questioned.  Nevertheless, Arizona was more skeptical of Obama than she was of her own Senator, and McCain carried the state by 200,000 votes.  In 2012, Mitt Romney carried the Republican banner, and was endorsed by his predecessor in the role, John McCain.  Reflecting the general lesser enthusiasm across the board for the presidential election, Romney carried Arizona with a lower vote total than McCain, but a slightly larger plurality, 210,000 votes, over Obama than McCain got in 2008.

In 2016, Hillary Clinton bested Barack Obama’s 2008 vote count by 130,000 votes.  She did better than Romney did in 2012.  Clinton, if elected would have been the first woman president in American history.  Like Obama, she was an extreme progressive.   She was everything the progressive Left could ask for.  However, Donald Trump, the Republican standard-bearer, did better than McCain did in 2008 by 20,000 votes, and carried the state over Clinton by 90,000 votes.

In 2016, Fox News called Arizona for Trump very late in the evening, and other networks didn’t call Arizona even by the next morning, so close was the race considered to be.  However, in 2020, Fox News called Arizona early, with only twelve percent of the vote in.  This was strange, as the final vote count 2020 was much, much closer than it was in 2016.

In 2020, Trump dramatically increased the Republican vote total, surpassing his 2016 height by 410,000 votes, or 33 percent.  But Joe Biden increased the Democrat vote total by 510,000 votes, eclipsing Hillary’s 2016 height by 44 percent.

The population of Arizona has been slowly increasing, which might explain the higher total count, but when one candidate increases his count by 33 percent, some of that increase usually comes at the expense of the opposing candidate.  In this case, it didn’t.  Joe Biden found a well of over half a million new Democrat voters, Democrat voters who were indifferent to Obama and Clinton.

Joe Biden didn’t campaign in Arizona.  He had not the charisma of Obama, or the glamor of Clinton.  He was the quintessential old, white, insider, establishment male who was put up because Bernie Sanders was too radical.  Meanwhile, Trump campaigned extensively in Arizona, and held a massive, 50,000 person rally in Bullhead City less than a week before the election.  Trump’s internal polling showed him carrying the state.  Yet, mysteriously, 510,000 new Democrat voters appeared out of nowhere to vote for Biden.  About 920,000 new voters cast their ballots for the first time in Arizona in 2020.

I get that Trump is polarizing; that he can create as much opposition as he does support, but the vote in Arizona is asking us to believe that he created even more opposition than additional support, and that greater enthusiasm in opposition caused him to lose the state to a cypher carrying the Democrat label.

Given Trump’s much larger total the second time around – in contrast to Obama’s drop the second time around – all Biden’s 510,000 additional votes were cast not for him but in opposition to Trump.  This does not give Biden any kind of mandate, given that he didn’t campaign and kept his platform ambiguous.

A weird vote in Arizona.

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