Washington
CNN
—
Former President Donald Trump continues to lie about winning the 2020 election in Georgia. This weekend, he issued a new false claim to back up that old false claim.
As he prepares to turn himself in this week to face charges in Fulton County in connection with efforts to overturn his 2020 loss to Joe Biden, Trump’s frustration with what happened in Georgia has not gone away. On Saturday, he Published Despite winning Georgia in 2016, doing a “fantastic job” as president, earning millions more votes in 2020 than he did in 2016, and winning more votes than any sitting president ever had, he “shockingly, ‘lost.’ Georgia” — lost in quotation marks.
Trump then continued, “All this despite winning landslides in nearby Alabama and South Carolina.” He ended the post: “Does anyone really believe I lost Georgia? I don’t want to!”
Facts first: Trump lost Georgia fair and square in 2020 11,779 votes, and his claim that he beat South Carolina and Alabama in record landslides isn’t even close to the truth. Many previous candidates have won South Carolina and Alabama by larger margins than Trump did in 2020. Even Trump won every state by a larger margin in 2016 than he did in 2020 — contradicting his implied fact that he lost in 2020. Georgia contrasted with a better-than-ever performance elsewhere in the region.
The Decline Trump’s margin in Georgia between 2016 and 2020 (about 5.4 percentage points) was larger than in South Carolina (about 2.6 points) and Alabama (about 2.3 points), both of which he won big in both elections, but that doesn’t suggest anything bad happened in Georgia. States are simply different. Neighboring states often have social, economic and political differences that lead to variations in their voting habits.
Audrey Haynes, a University of Georgia political science professor, called Trump’s reasoning “simplistic and fallacious.” He said in an email on Sunday: “That report assumes that those states are the same, and that they would produce the same effect. But they are not the same. And they don’t produce the same results.
Between 2016 and 2020 there are different sets of neighboring states with different election results. For example, Trump Lost to Minnesota in 2020 by 7.1 points (5.6 points worse than 2016) beat neighboring North Dakota by about 33.4 points in 2020 (just 2.4 points worse than 2016). It’s not a sign that something bad has happened in Minnesota. Again, those two states are not the same.
We’ll outline some of the key differences between Georgia, South Carolina, and Alabama in a moment. First, we’ll completely refute the claim that Trump won South Carolina and Alabama in 2020 with “record-setting landslides.”
Trump won South Carolina in 2020 About 11.7 percentage points. That’s a drop of about 2.6 percentage points from his own margin in the state in 2016 (about 14.3 points).
Even if you don’t count 2016, his 11.7-point differential in 2020 is nowhere near the record.
Through this, Franklin D. South Carolina. Roosevelt won Around 96 percentage points in 1932, and then topped by a margin About 97 points in 1936. Before Roosevelt, Democratic candidates had won South Carolina by more than 82 points in all eight presidential elections from 1900 to 1928.
Looking at recent results, Trump’s 11.7-point margin in 2020 was smaller than the state winner’s margin in 7 of the 14 presidential elections from 1960 to 2012: George W. Bush in 2000 (ca 16 points) and again in 2004 (ca 17 points), George HW Bush in 1988 (ca 24 points), Ronald Reagan in 1984 (ca 28 points), Jimmy Carter in 1976 (ca 13 points), Richard Nixon in 1972 (ca 43 points) and Barry Goldwater in 1964 (ca 18 points)
Trump won Alabama in 2020 About 25.5 percentage points. That margin is a rounded decline of about 2.3 percentage points from his 2016 margin (about 27.7 points), so, again, clearly not a record.
And Trump’s 2020 margin was outstripped by Roosevelt, who earned approx. won by 74 points In 1936 the state and Alabama never had a margin Less than 63 points Between 1932 and 1944. Woodrow Wilson’s margins in the state exceeded 50 points in both. 1912 And 1916.
Most recently, Trump’s 25.5-point margin over George W. Bush’s Alabama margin in 2004 (approx 25.6 points) and was easily defeated by Nixon in 1972 (ca 47 points)
There is no evidence that Georgia or any other state committed enough fraud in 2020 to change the winner. After Trump promised last week to hold a news conference this Monday to reveal “irrefutable” evidence of 2020 fraud in Georgia, he later canceled the event. Published His lawyers instead wanted the so-called evidence put into legal filings.
Why, absent fraud, would Trump’s Georgia margin between 2016 and 2020 have a bigger decline than Trump’s South Carolina and Alabama margins between 2016 and 2020? Because they are different places experiencing different socio-political trends.
Georgia became Significantly more ethnic diversity In the decade leading up to the 2020 election, Atlanta and its suburbs experienced a small decline in its black, Latino, and Asian populations due to an influx of residents who identified as white. alone; The South Carolina and Alabama Experience Very little racial diversity During the same period. Nationwide, black, Latino and Asian voters tended to vote for Biden in 2020, while white voters tended to vote for Trump.
Georgia 2020 had a higher percentage of residents with at least a bachelor’s degree than either. South Carolina Or Alabama; Democrats made huge inroads with college graduates between 2016 and 2020. Georgia had a younger population in 2020 than South Carolina or Alabama; Democrats also made big gains with 18- to 29-year-old voters between 2016 and 2020.
There are many additional factors at play, too many to list here. For one, Georgia has been the focus of a radical Democratic voter registration and lobbying effort in the years leading up to the 2020 election that has not equaled South Carolina or Alabama.
