Questioning suspicious numbers is appropriate and necessary, but also keep in mind that between mail-in balloting, the coronavirus, and Trump's unique style, it's not unbelievable to see a lot of ticket-splitting, or ballots that checked off Biden for president and nothing else.
For starters, mail-in ballot was a perfect weapon against Trump, even without any shenanigans. It looped in a huge number of people who wouldn't have bothered to vote otherwise, people with no strong opinion or position other than disliking Donald Trump.
The marginal effect of mail-in balloting could easily have been huge, given the coronavirus and its effect on everything else. It obliterated everything else that might have made indifferent voters think the incumbent did a decent enough job on bread-and-butter issues.
Along comes the mail-in ballot: an incredibly easy way to fill in a couple of circles to express displeasure with the guy in office during a world-shaking disaster. As easy as filling out a restaurant comment card to complain about slow table service.
Ticket splitters are also not unbelievable, although it might be hard for passionate supporters of President Trump and/or the GOP to imagine voters delivering an astounding Republican performance downballot while also ticking off Biden at the top of the ticket.
Trump can claim some amazing achievements in policy, diplomacy, and politics - we should hope other Republicans study them carefully, especially the inroads he made with so many demographics in the 2020 election. It's silly to pretend his style doesn't also alienate some people.
If the big issue in this election was the desire to return to normal, it's not unbelievable that some people who support the GOP on policy, or favor the particular GOP candidates running in their local and state races, felt exhausted with Trump.
Let's be blunt: some of them might have been hoping that if they just let Biden have the White House, the endless hysterical fearmongering would end because the media will clearly want to make Biden look good. Weary people capitulated. It happens all the time.
The Basement Biden strategy would have helped with voters like that. They hardly saw the guy at all. The media kept them from hearing a lot of stuff that hurt him. He was the generic alternative in an up-or-down referendum on an incumbent coming out of an epochally bad year.
I suspect some of the people who have a hard time believing anyone could vote that way don't fully appreciate what it's like to be a Republican voter living in a blue state or blue county, especially in this year of mob tactics and intimidation.
Personally, I think those voters were making a hideous mistake and dramatically underestimating what the radicals behind Biden are planning to do with power, but I can see where they're coming from. I think Trump missed some key chances to grab the Return to Normal vote.
And I've been marveling for my entire adult life how anyone can call themselves an "independent" while voting to give power-hungry statist Democrats more control over their lives. They keep voting make themselves less independent and then wondering how things got so bad.
I think Trump deserved re-election, Joe Biden is an idiot, and the forces behind him are downright terrifying. But I can understand how some folks might want Republican governance while rejecting Trump personally. He did it all his way... and some people just don't like his way.
Absolutely all the fishy vote hauls, undead voters, and dodgy mail-in ballots need to be investigated and disqualified if appropriate. "Count every vote" is a witless slogan unless you're ready to fight like a demon against legitimate ballots getting erased by fraud.
But people who just checked off the top of the ticket to vent a little ire against Donald Trump and then dumped their ballots in the mail, investing about as much total effort as writing a Tweet? That's not inherently implausible in states that treated Trump like the Devil. /end
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