By Bob Williams, Stevensville
You also might have noticed that about 28% of Republicans now think that some form of violence may be needed to save the USA. And noticed that a higher percentage of Americans now believe in QAnon core tenets (15%), than identified with the Tea Party in 2013 (10%).
Some people in this valley variously bought into media broadcasts of the former presidents’ ten months of fabricated stories about a stolen election.
Was it stolen?
Here’s some food for thoughts.
Seven times, from 1952 through 1988, a Republican won the popular vote for US President. With one exception, from 1992 through 2020, a Democrat won the popular vote for President. In 2004, George W. Bush won the Presidency with 50.7% of the popular vote. In 2016, Hillary Clinton won 48.2%, while Donald Trump won, 46.1%, of the popular vote.
Incumbent President Trump received 46.9% of the popular vote in 2020.
Take a good look at where the voters in the 2016 Federal Election lived, according to one, independent person:
https://www.arcgis.com/apps/webappviewer/index.html?id=8732c91ba7a14d818cd26b776250d2c3
Expand that ArcGIS map, noticing that red dots, also blue dots, indicate numbers of voters. Dot size is proportional to voter numbers.
Right away, you may notice concentrations of blue dots, near the West Coast, also near the East Coast. After a while you may notice that the blue dots are mostly in urban-suburban areas. And that the red dots are very often in rural areas.
Now give more thought than usual to this news.
In the most recent Gallup political preference poll, 40% of the people identified as Independents. 31% identified themselves as Democrats. 26% identified themselves as Republican.
There are about 200 million Americans of voter age or older.
Now go figure how Donald Trump won the 2020 Presidential election.
Then figure out how Republicans can win the 2024 Presidential election, without reaching suburban and urban voters.
Disenfranchising suburban and urban voters is not longterm good for the Republican party. Not good for the nation.
Time for the Republican party to reach out to voters that Trump has not reached.