‘The results were almost totally predictable based on the political and demographic characteristics of those states…’
(Ben Sellers, Liberty Headlines) A newly released analysis from the University of Virginia‘s Center for Politics revealed that—contrary to what failed candidate Hillary Clinton and many others have claimed—any alleged Russian interference in the 2016 election did not have a significant impact.
The study’s author, Alan I. Abramowitz, a senior columnist for Larry Sabato’s Crystal Ball election prognosticator project, used a series of regression analyses to compare President Donald Trump’s support with that of GOP candidate Mitt Romney in the 2012 election.
Abramowitz found a close correlation in the two races based on factors including each state’s political tendencies, the number of rallies the candidates held, voter demographics and economic conditions.
“I find no evidence that Russian attempts to target voters in key swing states had any effect on the election results in those states. Instead, the results were almost totally predictable based on the political and demographic characteristics of those states,” said Abramowitz, who is also a political science professor at Emory University.
“Of course, that doesn’t mean that the Russians weren’t trying to influence the results or that they might not succeed in the future,” he added.
Regardless, the findings further erode one of the key precepts on which the two-year Mueller investigation, the FBI investigation that preceded it and the ongoing probes by partisan House Democrats were based.
Many on the Right have observed that, in fact, there appears to have been considerable collusion by the Obama administration’s intelligence apparatus, the Democratic National Committee and the Hillary Clinton campaign to use the canard of Russian election interference—first to spy on the Trump campaign, and later to erode confidence in the election and undermine Trump’s presidency.
Some have questioned whether special counsel Robert Mueller was aware of the lack of collusion prior to the 2018 midterm election in which Democrats used his investigation under false pretenses as a political bludgeon to retake the House of Representatives.
Still, other aspersions have arisen as to the scope and severity of Russian interference, which appears to have been based around using bots to spread misinformation on social media and hacking into some of the Democrats’ many unsecured email servers.
Not content to let the data speak for itself, Abramowitz—who, along with his wife, Ann, has given considerable amounts to Democratic candidates and causes over the years—found a way of spinning the lack of Russian influence on the election into a pitch for the far-left national popular vote movement.
“Indeed, the Electoral College system used to choose the president almost invites efforts to interfere in the election,” Abramowitz opined.
“Whereas trying to affect the national popular vote results would probably be prohibitively expensive, efforts to target a few key swing states could be much more cost-effective and harder to detect,” he added.
Abramowitz’s claim neglected to mention that the prime argument against such an effort is that it would enable heavily populated blue states like California, with lax election laws and enforcement procedures that leave the door wide open for potential fraud by non-citizens, to then sway the outcome of other states with tighter ballot-box security, forcibly disfranchising their voters.
Tipping his hand yet again to snipe at President Donald Trump, Abramowitz declared, this time with no supporting evidence, “[T]here is little doubt that these efforts will continue in 2020 and beyond, especially if we have a president who seems to be inviting them.”