Debunking the GOP "Death Wave" Theory

Victory margins tell the tale

Some pundits - including Science Man Neil DeGrasse Tyson - have suggested that underwhelming GOP midterm election results were the result of tremendous numbers of Republican anti-vaxxers dying of COVID.

Neil deGrasse Tyson @neiltyson

Vaccine hesitancy, which was much higher among Republican voters than Democrats during COVID, led to disproportionate deaths among conservatives, and may have cost them the mid-term elections in close races. politicalwire.com/2022/11/14/cov…

Since I lack the tremendous intellect of Dr. Tyson, this idea had not occurred to me. Instead, I had previously suggested that red voters moving out of blue states was (in addition to widespread fraud) part of the reason for the disappointing lack of a “red wave.”

Based on the actual vote count (rather than the speculative math used by proponents of the “death wave” hypothesis), I’m pleased to report that I was right and they were wrong.

California and New York haven’t finished counting, so their tallies will likely change. This is accurate as of November 18, 2022.

Red-state victory margins were higher in 2022 than 2018

A note on methodology here: Since there’s no straightforward way to compare one election cycle to another, I manually entered all the data from the 2022 and 2018 governor’s races into a spreadsheet. I chose to focus on governor’s races, because they are the top-of-the-ticket item in midterm elections, and in my purely subjective opinion, they seems to more accurately reflect voter sentiment than Congressional races. Please note that California and New York have (as of November 18) not finished their vote counts, so the victory margins in those states are not final, and will likely reflect substantially more Democrat votes.

The key takeaway is this: during the 2022 midterms, Republican governors won virtually every red state by larger margins than they did in 2018. Yes, Massachusets and Maryland flipped blue, but this supports my theory that domestic migration has bolstered the conservative voting base in red states, while draining it from historically blue ones.

In other words, Republican voters didn’t die off, they just moved to majority-Republican states.

Granted, Arizona flipped blue as well (by a hair’s breadth), but frankly there’s such overwhelming evidence of malfeasance in that election that it’s impossible to discuss it intelligently.

In Texas, the only red state where a Republican governor’s victory margin shrank significantly from 2018, this discrepancy seems to be a result of lower voter turnout overall, as the number of Democrat votes was also lower in 2022 than 2018.

New York and California haven’t finished counting, so their tallies will likely change. This is accurate as of Nov. 18, 2022.

Speaking of turnout, despite substantially outspending Republican candidates, blue candidates in virtually every red state (and several blue states) received fewer votes than they did four years ago. These results are comforting, because there’s a common concern that people who flee liberal enclaves will then vote for the policies and candidates that ruined the places they came from. At least based on votes for governor, it appears that blue-state refugees are voting red not blue.

In other words, in contrast to the oft-repeated theory that Democrats attracted votes from abortion-concerned voters who otherwise would have voted Republican, Democrats all across America voted for their own candidates less than they did four years ago.

You can see this clearly if you look at the vote count excluding New York and California.

Outside of blue strongholds, people just aren’t buying what the Democrats are selling. So, sorry, Dr. Tyson, but even according to a vote count that we have every reason to believe is grossly inflated in favor of Democrats, Republican votes outnumbered Democrat votes nationwide.