Something Fishy In Milwaukee? (With PA Update)

There's a lot of excellent analysis "out there" today. One that focuses on Wisconsin's election is Evita Duffy's:

Biden’s Performance In Milwaukee County Raises Questions About Wisconsin Votes

It's thorough and well written, but the basic thrust can be gleaned from a relatively brief excerpt. After noting that "even Republican Party officials say they were prepared for 160,000 mail-in votes to be counted after the polls closed," Duffy continues:

Others have called into question disparities in Wisconsin’s high voter turnout when compared to other election cycles. This too can be explained by same-day voter registration in an election that saw record turnout nationwide.

However, voter anomalies in Milwaukee County, the largest county in the state, do raise some questions. Specifically, how did Biden outperform former President Barack Obama’s 2008 performance in the county, in an election that saw the highest voter turnout in 40 years?

In 2008, Barack Obama received 316,916 votes in Milwaukee County. In 2016, Hilary Clinton won only 288,822 votes there. But in 2020 Biden outperformed them both, receiving 317,251 votes countywide and besting Obama’s share of the vote by nearly two points.

What makes this suspicious is that the county is shrinking. The Census Bureau population estimates show that in the last 10 years, thousands of metro Milwaukee residents have left the area for other parts of the state and country. As the Milwaukee Sentinel put it, “We’re lagging in a key metric that often reflects the vitality and desirability of a metro area: population growth.” The City of Milwaukee, which makes up about 60 percent of the county’s population, saw the number of registered voter decline by more than 26,700 from 2008 to 2020.

While it’s true that Obama in 2008 won about 18,000 more votes than Biden in the City of Milwaukee itself, one would also expect the countywide vote total for Biden to be less than Obama.

The rest of the article is just as interesting. Trump is asking for a recount. Sounds like a good idea.

PA Update: Richard Baehr does a fine bit of analysis at Pennsylvania's mail ballot results don't look right. Here's the short version, although the article itself is short and to the point.

Basically, what Baehr shows is that, using Pennsylvania stats, we are to believe that Dems returned their requested mail ballots at an 84% rate, while GOPers and Indies did so at a 74% rate. Baehr expresses skepticism at such results.