WASHINGTON – As the Senate began debate Tuesday on a historic second impeachment of former President Donald Trump, a recent poll shows that more than half of Arizona Republicans believe Trump was the rightful winner of the November election
The poll, taken by OH Predictive Insights shortly before President Joe Biden’s Jan. 20 inauguration, found that 60% of all Arizona voters are confident Biden won, but 20% of independents and 54% of registered Republicans believe Trump is “the rightful winner” of the election.
“Honestly, I was quite surprised, like eyes-fell-out-of-my-head, to see it in Arizona, where I think we have a pretty advanced election system compared to most other states,” said Mike Noble, chief of research and a managing partner at OH Predictive Insights.
But 26% of registered Arizona voters believe Trump should still be president and another 14% were not sure who won, according to the OH Predictive Insights poll. The online survey of 1,022 registered Arizona voters was taken from Jan. 11-18 and has a margin of error of plus or minus 3%.
The results were sharply defined by party affiliation. While 93% of Democrats believe Biden won, the number dropped to 63% among independents and fell to just 27% for Republicans, with the rest either unsure or certain that Trump won. A full 54% of GOP voters declared Trump the rightful winner.
The same percentage of Republican voters agreed with the statement that evidence showed that “the election was stolen” from Trump, compared to 85% of Democrats in the poll who said there was “no credible evidence of voter fraud that was widespread enough to have changed the outcome of the election.” Among independents, 22% said the election was stolen, 59% said it was not and 19% were not sure.
It comes as the Senate started the second impeachment trial of Trump, who was impeached Jan. 13 by the House on a charge of incitement of insurrection for his part in the mob that stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6 as Congress was certifying Biden’s victory.
The rioters halted the election certification for hours as lawmakers were hurried to safe spaces and the mob roamed the Capitol. Five people were killed during the riot and scores of police were wounded, some seriously.
The Senate rejected arguments Tuesday by Trump’s lawyers that the impeachment is unconstitutional because only a sitting president can be impeached, and Trump is now a private citizen.
House Democrats prosecuting the case said that accepting that argument would be creating a “January exception” to impeachment that would allow any president to commit a crime then avoid prosecution by resigning the office.
The Senate voted 56-44 to let the impeachment trial proceed, with six Republicans joining all Democrats and two independents voting to move forward. Arizona Sens. Kyrsten Sinema and Mark Kelly, both Democrats, voted to proceed.
As many as four days of arguments are expected before senators vote on impeachment, which would need 60 votes to pass.
The hearing began Tuesday with Democrats showing a 13-minute video montage of the riot, with graphic footage of police officers being beaten and rioters smashing windows, pounding on doors and rifling through desks in the Senate chamber.
Trump’s lawyers charged that the impeachment was little more than “blood sport” driven by “pure, raw, misguided partisanship” of Democrats who have wanted to impeach Trump since he was elected and see a chance now to keep him from running again.
Even before the election, Trump complained about voter fraud, claims that he and others amplified after it became clear that Biden won.
Rallies were held around the country as votes were counted and numerous lawsuits – including a number in Arizona – were filed, all of which were rejected by courts. The Arizona Legislature is considering measures to tighten voting eligibility and the state Senate this week threatened, but failed, to find the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors in contempt for refusing to turn over its voting machines for an audit.
Despite the heated rhetoric, Noble said he was surprised to see the poll results in Arizona, a state that he said has “a pretty darn good record” when it comes to the voting system.
“There’s a lot of rhetoric, a lot of headlines on election fraud, issues, you know,” he said. “But the thing is, though, the rhetoric just doesn’t match reality, as we’ve seen from the numerous court cases that have gone and that have really stacked up.”
Nathan Gonzales, editor of Inside Elections, said Arizona is not yet Democratic enough that Kelly and Sinema can afford to ignore Republican voters as the impeachment goes forward. But they may not ever be able to court the GOP voters who believe the 2020 election was fraudulent, he said.
“There are large swaths of the Republican Party that believe that Biden’s victory was illegitimate,” Gonzales said. “I don’t think Sen. Mark Kelly and Sen. Sinema can disregard Republican voters, but they don’t need to persuade the Republicans who doubt the results of the election in order to win future elections.”
And one analyst said the Arizona Republican Party could hurt itself in the long run by continuing to press election fraud claims.
“You had a lot of Republican voters who thought, ‘Well, the election is stolen, you know, there’s all this election fraud, my vote’s not going to count anyway, so I’m just not going to vote,’” said J. Miles Coleman, associate editor of Sabato’s Crystal Ball at the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics.
He said that voter turn-off happened in Georgia, which last month unseated two Republican senators and sent two Democrats to Washington in their place, tipping the balance of the Senate to Democrats. The same thing could happen in Arizona, Coleman warned.
“If Republicans keep this up with this messaging that you can’t trust the elections, that could very well have an adverse impact on their electoral prospects in Arizona,” he said.
This article appears in Feb 4-10, 2021.
Maricopa County elections records could clear this up. I wish they weren’t hiding from an audit. The records were show the proof one way or another.
Words matter and when blatant lies, attacks on science and unfounded conspiracy theories have poured from the mouths of those supposedly in charge for the past four years — abetted by continuously being repeated by media of every kind — people begin to question what is real and what is not. Add to this the isolation and anxiety created by the global pandemic and it is a wonder that anyone can function without doubts.
However, that being said, regardless of how much certain factions of our society want to believe in the “global-cabal of Satan-worshipping pedophiles”, space aliens and UFOs at Area 51, or Santa Claus doesn’t make it true. Investigations and audits into what has been hailed as the most closely watched and monitored election in United States history will not solve a thing when those asking questions have already made up their minds.
By the way, the UFOs are not from outer space, but actually time machines from the distant future piloted by biomechanical drones that on occasion use the remote desert facilities of Area 51 as a secure and quarantined breakdown lane in the event of emergencies.
A hand recount in NH showed that Dominion machines removed 6% of votes from Republicans. More proof is mounting. Truth and facts Trump the lies produced by the main stream mafia.
If there is so much doubt about the integrity of the election, why would anyone want to block a thorough investigation? If it was all “above board,” why not prove it to the doubters through a truly transparent investigation?
60 lawsuits, dozens of judges (some of who were appointed by Tchump), and ZERO evidence of fraud.
This is mass psychosis, brought on by the writhing death throes of one of history’s greatest shysters. The fact that so many people still believe this nonsense, in the absence of any evidence–indeed, in the presence of mountains of countervailing evidence–is a testament to one of the more embarrassing aspects of human nature, but also to the profound danger that people like Tchump pose to a civilized society.
45’s goal was to undermine democracy. By playing to people’s ignorance and prejudices, he made quite a dent by making them question the cornerstone of a functioning democracy – the voting process. The people questioning the results – and still calling for “investigations” – have no idea the effort and security that is involved in modern elections. It’s sad.
“…unfounded conspiracy theories have poured from the mouths of those supposedly in charge for the past four years — abetted by continuously being repeated by media of every kind — people begin to question what is real and what is not…”
How do you know? We audit a $500,000 charter school but not a $22 trillion election?
These are the questions that an audit would answer.
1. Did one of the political parties flood the poll worker system with political operatives for the purpose of stuffing the ballot box? How many polls were completely manned by one party?
2. Did one of the parties put together a massive forgery operation for mail-in ballot requests? How many of the mail-in ballot requests were forged?
3. Did one of the parties put together a massive forgery operation for voter registrations? And, then combined that forged voter registration with a forged mail-in ballot request? And, then follow up that with a forged ballot?
4. Did one of the parties penetrate the county computer security system and gain access to the signature file, either by hiring or contracting with employees with access to that file?
5. Did one of the parties hire one of the initiative companies with their massive signature files and then use those signatures to submit ballots for all those voters who had moved from their prior address.
6. How many dead people voted?
7. How many duplicates voted, both at their new address and their old address.
We don’t know the answer to these questions because the audit hasn’t been done yet.
But, it will be done.
And, we also need to go back and audit 2016.
If the corruption existed, it didn’t start in 2020.
Do you honestly think that your so-called audits will be done in the clear light of the day by honest brokers for the good of the people?
Have recent events not shown that there are many people in positions of power with no moral courage or the ability to police themselves or hold the criminals within their midst responsible for their criminal acts.
The audits you believe will happen might happen, but they will be at the point of a gun by people like those in Myanmar if we do nothing to rid our government of people that are more afraid of losing an election than losing this country.
“Maricopa County elections records could clear this up. I wish they weren’t hiding from an audit. The records were show the proof one way or another.”
Depends on how you define an audit. Audits are performed by a combination of pulling a random sample of transactions and inspecting systems.
There is no chance that the election fraud, if it happened, took place systematically in voting machines. We already audit machine counts by pulling a sample of districts and candidates then performing a hand count. That audit showed no problems.
In 2016, Democrats had a mass psychosis whereby 2/3 of them believed that Russians hacked our voting machines and added Trump votes. Now, we Republicans are suffering a mass psychosis whereby many of us believe Dominion hacked their own machines or preprogrammed them to subtract Trump and add Biden votes.
But, if this election was stolen, it wasn’t stolen through that device. They would certainly have been caught. How many hand counts have already taken place? Georgia, Wisconsin and Arizona. If any one of them had been off, there would be a forest fire demand for hand counts. But, not one of the three showed a discrepancy. If this election was stolen, it was stolen by an extremely smart thief and such a thief would not mess with machines.
So, is the Senate panel even asking for an audit? They don’t seem to be asking for the right data.
One in four, are you serious? Forty percent do not believe Biden won. Thirty percent more know he is incapable of holding office.
Our recently destroyed immigration process will multiply problems from human trafficking, cartel violence, drug running and assaults, thefts, and murders.
Marxists on parade. Go steal somebody else’s country.
For those that believe the election was fair and honest, watch this video and use the information to educate others.
https://lindelltv.com/mike-lindell-tv-releases-irrefutable-election-theft-proof/