Did Trump's attempt to limit vote-by-mail backfire?

[brucejoel99]

To an extent, sure. Whether it was indeed enough to cost him the mere 43K votes in GA, AZ, & WI that he was away from winning by is another matter. Even the answer on that front, though, definitely seems to be more-likely-than-not as well.

For one, you have Trump supporters who believe each & every single word that comes out of his mouth, & if his rhetoric led to the vast majority of them refusing to vote-by-mail, as all of the relevant polling on this matter would seem to indicate that it did, then that could very well have served to put his candidacy in a hole wherein he was forced to moreso rely on early-voting & Election Day turn-out to secure a win for him than he would've otherwise needed to in the absence of his rhetoric on the matter. For all we know, there were 43K people in GA, AZ, & WI who but for the influence of his rhetoric would've voted-by-mail for him, & then - for whatever reason - weren't ultimately able to turn-out in-person, be it via early-voting or on Election Day itself. We'll never know, but it certainly doesn't seem like that much of an implausibility.

For another, his rhetoric as well as Postmaster General DeJoy's actions undoubtedly led a multitude of Democratic-leaning voters to fear that they were trying to take their ability to vote away from them. Of course, this only served to embolden them & strengthen their conviction - let alone their likelihood - to vote him out-of-office for having done so. Such a phenomenon wasn't limited to just him & just the presidential election either, as the backfiring of similar Republican efforts in last year's WI Supreme Court election showed. In any event, we'll obviously never know for certain, but the majority of the admittedly circumstantial evidence which is available would seem to indicate that his effort to attack people's ability to vote did indeed serve to backfire on him, & perhaps spectacularly so to the extent that he potentially both disenfranchised his own voter-base & simultaneously fired his opposition's desire to vote his ass out-of-office up was concerned, yes.