{"id":1614568,"date":"2022-08-18T12:16:40","date_gmt":"2022-08-18T16:16:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1614568"},"modified":"2022-08-18T13:00:25","modified_gmt":"2022-08-18T17:00:25","slug":"analysis-if-not-for-democrat-voters-cheneys-loss-would-have-been-even-more-devastating","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/analysis-if-not-for-democrat-voters-cheneys-loss-would-have-been-even-more-devastating\/","title":{"rendered":"ANALYSIS: If Not For Democrat Voters, Cheney\u2019s Loss Would Have Been Even More Devastating"},"content":{"rendered":"<aside class=\"mashsb-container mashsb-main mashsb-stretched\"><div class=\"mashsb-box\"><div class=\"mashsb-count mash-medium\" style=\"&quot;\"><div class=\"counts mashsbcount\">28<\/div><span class=\"mashsb-sharetext\">SHARES<\/span><\/div><div class=\"mashsb-buttons\"><a class=\"mashicon-facebook mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.conservativenewsdaily.net%2Fbreaking-news%2Fanalysis-if-not-for-democrat-voters-cheneys-loss-would-have-been-even-more-devastating%2F\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Facebook<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-twitter mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?text=&amp;url=https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1614568&amp;via=ConservNewsDly\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Twitter<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-subscribe mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"#\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Subscribe<\/span><\/a><div class=\"onoffswitch2 mash-medium mashsb-noshadow\" style=\"display:none\"><\/div><\/div>\n            <\/div>\n                <div style=\"clear:both\"><\/div><\/aside>\n            <!-- Share buttons by mashshare.net - Version: 4.0.47--><p>Media and D.C. darling Liz Cheney lost her Wyoming Republican primary race by a staggering 37 points. But if you don\u2019t count the thousands of Democrats that pretended to be Republican for the sole reason of helping her battle against Wyoming Republican voters, her numbers were far worse.<\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s not a total surprise. Even the New York Times admitted that Cheney broke her promise to Republican voters that she wouldn\u2019t sabotage the state\u2019s party primary by soliciting Democrat votes when she sent mailers courting Wyoming Democrats. In June, the Times <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2022\/06\/23\/us\/politics\/liz-cheney-wyoming-democrats.html\">reported<\/a> that Cheney sent out instructions on how they could pretend to be Republican in order to help defeat the will of real Wyoming Republicans.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIn the last week, Wyoming Democrats have received mail from Ms. Cheney\u2019s campaign with specific instructions on how to change their party affiliation to vote for her,\u201d read the Times less than two months before the primary election. \u201cMs. Cheney\u2019s campaign website now has a link to a form for changing parties.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>In February, Cheney previously dismissed the idea that she would ask Democrats to change parties to interfere in the Republican contest, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2022\/06\/23\/us\/politics\/liz-cheney-wyoming-democrats.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">telling<\/a> the paper, \u201cThat is not something that I have contemplated, that I have organized or that I will organize.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>On Tuesday, Cheney lost the race by even wider margins than <a href=\"https:\/\/thefederalist.com\/2022\/08\/11\/new-wyoming-poll-liz-cheney-supported-by-15-percent-of-republicans-98-percent-of-democrats\/\">predicted<\/a> by a series of late-summer polls. A Federalist analysis of the voting data shows, however, that Cheney lost the Republican contest by even more, and the incumbent congresswoman\u2019s strategy to court Democrat voters worked to mask to scale of her triumphant defeat by Trump-endorsed attorney Harriet Hageman.<\/p>\n<p>Turnout among Democrats in their own closed-party primary plummeted from 2018 and 2020 to 2022 as Cheney\u2019s operatives actively sought to recruit Democrat voters for the Republican race. Nearly 26,000 Democrats voted in the Democrat primary two years ago, whereas just more than 8,000 did so on Tuesday. That\u2019s a drop of more than 17,000 voters in an election where Republicans saw a more than 61,000-person jump in turnout from 2020.<\/p>\n<p>Whatever share of those 17,000 Democrats opted to cast a ballot in the Republican contest almost certainly did so for Cheney, with the largest drops in Democrat turnout occurring in the state\u2019s bluest places including Teton County (84 percent drop), Fremont County (74 percent drop), and Laramie County (68 percent drop). Albany County, the only county besides Teton that voted for Joe Biden in 2020, saw a 65 percent drop in Democrat turnout this year compared to two years ago.<\/p>\n<p>At the same time, GOP turnout surged in those same counties. The number of Republican ballots jumped by more than 200 percent in Teton County, dubbed the \u201cCalifornia portion\u201d of the state by locals, and jumped more than 60 percent in Laramie. For every one Democrat vote cast in 2018, the last midterm cycle, six Republican ballots were counted. That number dropped to four in 2020, a presidential year where races are generally closer, but it skyrocketed to 21 on Tuesday.<\/p>\n<p>Cheney earned <a href=\"https:\/\/sos.wyo.gov\/Elections\/Docs\/2022\/Results\/Primary\/2022_Statewide_Candidates_Summary.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">less than 50,000<\/a> of the <a href=\"https:\/\/sos.wyo.gov\/Elections\/Docs\/2022\/Results\/Primary\/2022_Statewide_Total_Ballots_Cast_Summary.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">nearly 172,000 votes cast<\/a> in Tuesday\u2019s Republican primary, according to unofficial results from the Wyoming secretary of state\u2019s office. If the 17,000 Democrats representing the discrepancy from the last election switched over to vote for the at-large representative \u2014 and it\u2019s likely more, given the 61,000-person jump in turnout \u2014 <em>at least<\/em> a third of all Cheney\u2019s votes counted on Tuesday came from Democrats. Subtracting 17,000 votes from 50,000 means Cheney would have landed only 33,000 votes of actual Republicans, or less than 20 percent of the Republican vote.<\/p>\n<p>Even with inflated numbers by Democrats, Cheney still came nearly 30,000 votes short of her 2020 primary total, when <a href=\"https:\/\/sos.wyo.gov\/Elections\/Docs\/2020\/Results\/Primary\/2020_Statewide_Candidates_Summary.pdf\">78,870<\/a> ballots were cast in her favor.<\/p>\n<p>Cheney\u2019s get-out-the-vote operation raised eyebrows across the state after residents who did not order absentee ballots received unsolicited request forms for unsupervised mail-in ballots, which included the inscription \u201cPaid for by Liz Cheney for Wyoming,\u201d <a href=\"https:\/\/cowboystatedaily.com\/2022\/08\/05\/voters-alarmed-after-receiving-absentee-ballot-request-forms-from-cheney-campaign\/\">according<\/a> to Cowboy State Daily, a local Wyoming paper.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAbsentee ballot request forms were sent to homes in every Wyoming county this week on Cheney\u2019s behalf,\u201d the paper reported. \u201cThe mailers were marked with a return address to the county clerk of their respective counties on one side, along with the words, printed in all-capital letters, \u2018OFFICIAL ELECTION DOCUMENT ENCLOSED.&#8217;\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Days later, the Cheney campaign received a <a href=\"https:\/\/cowboystatedaily.com\/2022\/08\/08\/cheney-campaign-cautioned-by-secretary-of-state-after-mailing-out-ballot-request-forms\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">warning<\/a> from the Wyoming secretary of state\u2019s office against using \u201cofficial election\u201d language in literature.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe did have contact with (the Cheney campaign) last week just to let them know we were receiving calls and to caution them against using \u2018official election\u2019 language on the mailers,\u201d said Monique Meese, spokeswoman for Wyoming Secretary of State Ed Buchanan, in a statement to Cowboy State Daily. \u201cSome recipients thought that (the mailers) came from the Secretary of State or the County Clerk.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>While Cheney\u2019s re-election effort begged state Democrats to vote for her, Democrat groups poured in ad spending with targeted social media campaigns, including the group \u201cDefending Freedom and Democracy.\u201d The group published a series of campaign advertisements featuring Democrats who changed their party affiliation to support Cheney and spent more to promote the ads on Facebook than both Cheney and Hageman, according to the social media company\u2019s political ad tracker. Minnesota Democrat Rep. Dean Phillips also made a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.yahoo.com\/video\/rep-phillips-wants-wyoming-democrats-032300325.html\">video<\/a> for Twitter encouraging voters to support Cheney, and Occupy Democrats <a href=\"https:\/\/thefederalist.com\/2021\/09\/27\/occupy-democrats-endorses-liz-cheney\/\">backed<\/a> the congresswoman last fall with an online endorsement.<\/p>\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator\" \/>\n<p>Tristan Justice is the western correspondent for The Federalist. He has also written for The Washington Examiner and The Daily Signal. His work has also been featured in Real Clear Politics and Fox News. Tristan graduated from George Washington University where he majored in political science and minored in journalism. Follow him on Twitter at @JusticeTristan or contact him at Tristan@thefederalist.com.<\/p>\n<div class=\"article-comments mt-30 mt-sm-60\">\n<div class=\"article-comments-container d-flex flex-column align-items-center py-30\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"img-fluid mb-20\" src=\"https:\/\/thefederalist.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/12\/fdrlst-mark.svg\" alt=\"The Federalist logo eagle mark\" width=\"110\" height=\"106\" \/>Unlock commenting by joining the Federalist Community.<\/p>\n<p><a class=\"btn btn-on-white\" href=\"https:\/\/thefederalist.com\/plans\/pricing\/\">Subscribe<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Media and D.C. darling Liz Cheney lost her Wyoming Republican primary race by a staggering 37 points. But if you don\u2019t count the thousands of Democrats that pretended to be<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":494,"featured_media":1897938,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/cndimages.nyc3.digitaloceanspaces.com\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/01\/IMG_2758-scaled-1.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1614568","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/cndimages.nyc3.digitaloceanspaces.com\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/01\/IMG_2758-scaled-1.jpg","fifu_finder_url":"https:\/\/thefederalist.com\/2022\/08\/18\/analysis-if-not-for-democrat-voters-cheneys-loss-would-have-been-even-more-devastating\/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=analysis-if-not-for-democrat-voters-cheneys-loss-would-have-been-even-more-devastating","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1614568","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/494"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1614568"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1614568\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1897938"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1614568"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1614568"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1614568"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}