Politico reports, Arizona ballot audit shows signs of backfiring on GOP:
When Arizona Senate Republicans first pushed for a partisan audit of the 2020 presidential ballots cast in the Phoenix metropolitan area, they argued that they needed to know if any irregularities or fraud caused President Trump to lose this rapidly evolving swing state.
But the GQP sham “fraudit” itself could be damaging Republican prospects, according to a new Bendixen & Amandi International poll, which shows roughly half of Arizona voters oppose the recount effort.
[T]rump has cheered on the Maricopa County “fraudit” and continued to advance baseless conspiracy theories about election fraud as Republicans from other states he lost have made pilgrimages to Phoenix to review the idea of exporting the concept. But Arizona Republicans who pay close attention to the state’s changing demographics say the audit isn’t a political winner.
“It’s a failure. It’s a joke,” said Sean Noble, a top GOP operative in the state, advising Republicans elsewhere to “avoid it. The election is long over, time to look forward.”
Noble said public opinion surrounding the “fraudit” is just too baked in to change, even though the firm that conducted the effort, Cyber Ninjas, hasn’t finished its work. On Friday, Cyber Ninjas announced its team had finished photographing and recounting the 2.1 million Maricopa County ballots.
The final report is widely expected to make [baseless] claims about election fraud, reflecting the politics of Cyber Ninja’s founder — he appeared in a conspiracy theorist’s documentary film rife with falsehoods, according to Arizona press reports.
By 49-46 percent, Arizona voters are opposed to the “fraudit,” which puts the result within the poll’s margin of error. But the survey of 600 likely voters found that the intensity of opposition to the “fraudit” exceeded the intensity of support, with those strongly opposed to it outnumbering those strongly in favor by 5 percentage points. And while Democrats and Republicans broke along familiar partisan lines, independent voters upon whom the state pivots in close elections opposed the audit by 18 percentage points.
“As bloody red meat for the MAGA Republican base, the “fraudit” is manna from heaven, but the problem is that Arizona is not a red state any more. It’s a swing state,” said Fernand Amandi, who conducted the survey. “The ‘fraudit’ may be serving two interests: firing up the MAGA base but giving Democrats the opportunity to make the case to Arizona voters to stick with them.”
KEY: If a candidate supports the GQP sham “fraudit,” the poll shows, Arizona voters would be less likely to support that candidate by a margin of 9 percentage points.
Bendixen & Amandi International typically surveys for Democrats and accurately forecast Trump’s reelection troubles in Arizona more than a year before the 2020 vote.
Arizona opposition to the “fraudit” grew wider — with 51 percent against it and 44 percent in favor — when respondents were informed about the partisan nature of the effort: it’s being conducted by a firm with no experience in the field, and election experts, Democratic officials and Republican members of the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors oppose the recount. Those opponents have pointed out that the voting machines have already been checked by an accredited firm and that the election results were validated by a previous audit.
The new polling numbers are similar to a May poll from Arizona-based High Ground Inc., which tends to survey for Republicans, that found 55 percent opposed the “fraudit” and 41 percent supported it. That survey also found that, by an 11-point margin, Arizona voters would be less likely to support a candidate who backed the GQP sham “fraudit.”
The poll, which was conducted June 17 through June 23, has a margin of error of plus or minus 4 percentage points.
9-11 points “less likely to support a candidate who backed the audit” means that the GQP is in real danger of Arizona turning blue in 2022. Only the supposedly “Independent” Redistricting Commission (not with its current chair) can save them by creating “safe” GQP districts. You need to participate in the upcoming public redistricting hearings.
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Amanda Marcotte makes a disturbing observation, “Trump’s Arizona “audit” is unpopular — and that’s the point”, https://www.salon.com/2021/06/30/trumps-arizona-audit-is-unpopular–and-thats-the-point/
But while all of these [polling] statistics are true, what this kind of analysis fails to understand is that the folks behind the fake “audit” don’t care if it’s popular with voters. This whole exercise is not about winning anyone over. It’s not about persuading skeptics that Trump’s Big Lie is true. And it’s certainly not about persuading swing voters to choose Republicans in 2022 or 2024. After all, this whole “winning over voters” thing is a relic of the world that the Arizona “audit” team and the majority of Republicans are ready to leave behind.
This fake “audit” is about something else entirely. It is about pushing for a post-voting society, where the very idea that leaders are chosen through fair elections is cast aside in favor of a more authoritarian system. It’s about advocating for a system where voter choice doesn’t really matter, because they’re getting GOP leaders whether they like it or not.
Pretty sure the next time that the GQP allows reality to intrude on one of their favored conspiracy theories/persecution complexes will be the first time.