Demographics of the 2020 Election: Does a Presidential Candidate Really Believe that Joe Biden Can’t Win the State Senate?
One of the big questions heading into the 2022 cycle had been how Republican candidates would or not reflect the GOP base when it came to views of the 2020 election. Poll after poll has shown that a clear majority of Republicans falsely believe that President Joe Biden did not legitimately win the 2020 election.
Perhaps it shouldn’t be a surprise, then, that a lot of Republicans running for office believe this as well. Will any of those candidates run states where elections are close? For the most part, the answer is no. Most election deniers running for governor have only a small chance of winning or are from states former President Donald Trump easily won.
In Arizona, in this election cycle, a Republican candidate should be able to win the open seat for governor in a cakewalk. Yet polls show Lake running neck and neck with a weak and floundering Democratic gubernatorial candidate, Arizona Secretary of State Katie Hobbs.
The point was illustrated by three polls out this past week that were close to the error margin. A CBS News/You Gov poll shows Lake and Hobbs in a statistical tie. The Fox poll put Lake at 42% and Hobbs at 44%. Lake was at 45% and the college had Hobbs at 45%.
The GOP nominee for US Senate, Lake, is running stronger than Masters. Masters trails his opponent by 5 points in the average of all polling.
2020 election denial was one of the main causes of losing gubernatorial campaigns in blue and swing states. Blue-state Republicans Dan Cox in Maryland and Geoff Diehl in Massachusetts are getting blown out by their opponents in the polls, even though the current and departing governors of their respective states are Republicans.
But Lake’s standing may have more to do with the fact that 2020 election denialism isn’t as much of an important factor to voters as we might think when it comes to voting in elections for state office. While just 18% of voters said in the CBS News poll that they wanted elected officials in Arizona to say Biden didn’t win in 2020, another 41% said it didn’t matter. This means the majority of Arizona voters (59%) don’t seem to mind or actually like it when someone running for office denies the reality of the 2020 election.
Additionally, the Marist poll showed that a mere 6% of voters are not at all confident that the 2022 election in Arizona will not be run fairly and accurately. The majority are confident that it will be.
Lake as a Rising Star : The 2020 Election in the U.S. and the Case for Arizona, Sen. Ron Johnson and Sen. Catherine Masto
Lake is seen as a rising star by other people, at least in the political universe of the Trump administration. There has been a string of such stories in the national media. Some are even speculating about her being a potential running mate on Trump’s 2024 ticket.
The GOP could win the secretary of state race in Arizona and the one in Nevada, based on the numbers. The Republicans running for both those posts have denied the results of the 2020 election as they aim to become the chief election officers in their given states.
It’s also the case that Wisconsin Sen. Ron Johnson voted against certifying the 2020 election and is a slight favorite to win another term against Democratic Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes. Adam Laxalt, the attorney general in Nevada, raised questions about the election and was involved in post- election legal attempts to reverse the victory of Biden. He is running against Democratic Sen. Catherine Masto.
That could be quite a big deal in two years’ time, if another close presidential election – like 2020’s between Biden and Trump – is on the line and Arizona is once again in the mix.
CNN Observations: CNN Detects Fraud in a Democratic Presidential Campaign: Dean Obeid Laden, Ph.D., Washington, June 18, 2020
Dean Obeid Laden is a former attorney and currently works as a columnist and host of a daily radio program. Follow him @DeanObeidallah. The opinions expressed in this commentary are his own. CNN has many opinions on it.
She declared that they were already detecting some stealing. A few hours before polls closed, she repeated the bogus claim of election fraud. After emerging victorious, Lake slightly modified her story, telling reporters: “We out-voted the fraud.”
On the campaign trail, Lake regularly claims that Biden’s 2020 election victory was “corrupt and stolen.” She thought that Biden took the lead inswing states after Trump had led earlier. (Obviously, results change as votes are tallied, as the longtime former television anchor likely is well aware.)
The polls show Lake and her Democratic opponent close to a tie, with three weeks remaining until Election Day.
The voters of Arizona have a clear choice between Hobbs, who fights for election integrity, and Lake, who will bludgeon democracy if given half a chance.
Editor’s Note: Robert Robb writes about politics and public policy at robertrobb.substack.com. He was an editorial columnist for The Arizona Republic for 23 years. He can be contacted via email at robtrobb@ gmail.com. The views expressed here are his own. Read more opinion at CNN.
For example, Kenneth Khachigian, chief speechwriter for former President Ronald Reagan, wrote a panegyric about her for The Wall Street Journal, which went so far as to compare her to the Gipper. As Reagan implored, Khachigian gushed, Lake is “raising a banner of bold colors, no pale pastels.”
Arizona Governor Doug Ducey: Is There More Than One Star? The Implications of Trump’s Failure to Lead a Conservative Public Interest
Arizona is a Republican state. In registration, Republicans outnumber Democrats by more than 160,000 voters, or about 4 percentage points. The GOP should have even better turnout in an off-presidential election.
This is a Republican-leaning election. Economic conditions and a general sense that President Joe Biden and his administration aren’t up to the job are this election season’s backdrop.
The performance of the current Republican governor, Doug Ducey, in his election for an open seat is a point of reference. In the race for governor, Ducey was re-elected by a margin of about half a percentage point. Running for reelection in 2018, Ducey increased his spread — 56% to 42%.
The comparison of the current status of the races reveals far more about the difference in candidate and campaign quality between Hobbs and Kelly than it does about that between Lake and Masters.
If that happens, then the hype and hyperbole about her being a rising star would have some substance to it. It seems that right now it’s not based on anything that she’s achieved politically.
There is a rich irony to the premature boomlet. The more she is touted as a rising star, the more her standing with Trump is likely to fade.
In Trump’s view of the political universe, there is only room for one star: Trump. He dislikes those in the MAGA movement who are independent of him.
Source: https://www.cnn.com/2022/10/31/opinions/kari-lake-arizona-governor-trump-hype-robb/index.html
The Lake boomlet and the De-Santis treatment: some thoughts on a possibility of a rerun of the scalar model
If the Lake boomlet continues, and particularly if it acquires some justification in what she actually achieves, she may be in for the DeSantis treatment.