There are polls you never see. These are done on behalf of campaigns. Campaigns spend a WHOLE LOT of money on these polls. That doesn’t mean they don’t have issues because all modern polling has issues, but it does mean they should be far more accurate than the garbage aired on the news each night.

These polls are done early and often. They are used to guide the strategic planning of a campaign. That sounds worse than it is; polls can be a great way to find out what’s really important to your constituency right then. Knowing that lets a campaign tailor its messaging to address the public’s actual concerns.

It also lets a corrupt campaign tailor its message to get votes rather than telling the truth of what the candidate intends to do in office. There’s always a rotten apple somewhere.

Either way, polling is a standard part of modern campaigns.

You are no doubt aware of the highly credible allegations of voter suppression in Maricopa County, Arizona. At the very least, you must know that some seventy polling places, all within Republican districts, had malfunctions and problems with their equipment, resulting in many people being unable to see their votes tabulated and some likely unable to vote at all.

Seriously, you haven’t? You don’t get out much, do you? For pity’s sake, stop just watching CNN and FOX.

This one is already in the courts. At least one certification has been called into question as a Mohave County official voted ‘aye, under duress’ and stated IN THE FORMAL MEETING that he had been threatened with arrest if he voted against the certification. For the record, if that allegation is true, the certification is invalid.

The Arizona Attorney General has demanded Maricopa County explain itself, which the county has resisted. The Republican Gubernatorial candidate has begun lawsuits. The Democrat Gubernatorial candidate and presumed winner is also the official in charge of elections in Arizona, the Secretary of State, and she refused to recuse herself despite pretty obvious conflicts of interest here. And a Republican county is refusing to certify the election results.

Looks like a transparent and competent election to me. Oh, sorry about the sarcasm dripping on your shirt. Try a little bleach, it will come right out…

Yeppers, this mess is heading for the Federal courts. Trump put a LOT of Federal judges on the bench so it may not be a foregone conclusion. Regardless, it’s a disaster and the election should be rerun, with Hobbs forcibly recused by the state courts. That won’t happen but it should.

Now, let’s get back to the title of this piece. Why do Democrats cheat?

I am assuming for this hypothetical that Democrats do cheat and on a fairly large scale. I am not assuming Republicans are saints ’cause they aren’t but that their cheating is on a smaller scale at least for now. Look, there are over 20,000 governments within the United States – yeah, school boards count – so the idea that there is no cheating anywhere is just insane. We can and should minimize the opportunity to cheat as much as possible and punish offenders but even if we did that a lot better than we’re doing it presently, we’re never going bat 1.000.

So, with that out of the way, why all the cheating, Democrats? For most people, this probably isn’t all that obvious because we’ve been told that Democrats outnumber Republicans so we kind of expect them to win, right? When the Democrats were the party of the working man and the middle class, this was very likely true – certainly all the stats supported it. But that was forty years ago. The Democrats are the party of the oppressed and the ultra wealthy – neither of which are particularly large groups relative to working people and the middle class.

But urbanites are usually Democrats, right? That’s the story but with most polls increasingly unreliable and voter turnout anything but impressive most years, was it really true all this time? It certainly was once but look at where the Republicans had the most upsets this last election: its all in Democrat strongholds, California, Illinois and New York. Wait, what?

Remember that polls leading into the last election showed a Republican advantage, but not in the strongholds where most upsets were. Why?

Here’s what I think might be going on. If you’re Bob and work at Goofle in San Franfeces, odds are you don’t tell anyone that you are thinking about switching parties. If you were already a Republican, you sure as heck never told anyone about it. That includes the annoying pollsters. Especially annoying campaign pollsters – you don’t want your boss finding out. You tell the nice young lady on the phone that of course you’re voting D. Can’t be too careful – never know who might hear.

But in a voting booth, with no one looking, you check R and toss that thing in the tabulator as fast as humanly possible.

One or two Bobs won’t make a difference, but thousands add up pretty fast. Furthermore, if (HUGE IF – this is speculation on my part) as I suspect may be the case, Democrats have been on a frog boiling campaign since the 2000 election…

What? Oh, sure, I can explain – you really need to watch something other than MSNBC sometime. Anyway, frog boiling refers to the adage that the way to boil a frog is to turn up the heat so slowly that he doesn’t notice until it’s too late (of course, you could buy a pot with a lid, or better yet, stop being the kind of jackass that boils live frogs in the first place).

If Democrats are truly growing in membership then their small donations should also be growing but that doesn’t seem to be happening. Large donations, sure; little ones, occasionally, but the just right small ones? Not so much.

This is an indicator, not proof, that something ain’t quite right.

The problem with cheating sporadically is that you don’t get good at it and it sticks out like a sore thumb when you do it. The solution is cheat in safe districts to start. Yeah, sounds silly but there is a method in the madness. You get to practice and figure out where you are making mistakes with a much reduced risk of getting caught by people who will actually want you prosecuted. That’s more bonus that benefit however. The benefit is in the numbers.

As your ‘safe blue’ district becomes ‘good grief, that’s insanely blue’, the public doesn’t question the constant lopsided results. As they get used to that, you can start cheating in the ‘heavily leans blue’ adjacent districts because the public will not be surprised to see nearby districts become as solidly blue as yours. Over time, most districts that were blue become at least safe blue. Now the fun begins.

Purple districts are trickier. There are people there who won’t let your little adventure in political corruption just slide. But in a hotly contested race where there are nearby solid blue districts the public is unlikely to become alarmed when your underdog candidate happens to squeak by and win. You then play the victim when the red side starts complaining about ‘irregulates’ and, with your faithful media lapdog by your side, you walk away unscathed.

Until you don’t. Done a little and selectively, a party can get away with this, especially if the media isn’t doing its job, for quite some time. But Lincoln was right – you cannot fool all of the people all of the time*. Eventually, you overplay your hand.

That brings us back to motive. Why do all that if most people are identifying as Democrat?

What if they aren’t?

Political inertia is a powerful force but it’s not invincible. People do change parties. People change their minds. Most become more conservative as they age (hippie baby boomers not withstanding). Parties can drive away even their own base. Politics is just people making decisions in groups – it would be weird if political views were static.

Remember those polls I told you about at the start? What would happen in ‘solid blue’ areas? In the current political climate (this is observed in a lot of different circumstances) I’d guess they get solid blue results even if the results weren’t accurate and the pollsters were doing a good job. It is VERY hard to get scared people to even opt into a poll. People in very political environments, professional and social, are likely to duck pollsters unless they share those politics. The apolitical and the opposition are going to skip this. That skews the results.

If Bob does answer, he likely lies. This, too, is pretty commonly observed.

So if the polls that are well done and the elections (due to the cheating) are all pointing blue, how would a party spot a shift in that electorate? They wouldn’t. They find that out when they lose solid blue and safe blue seats. This is the pattern we observe in the midterms.

This is not proof but it is evidence for those still stuck on whether or not Democrats cheat.

But what about leaning seats? Wouldn’t the polls see a shift there? Yes, they would. But those are private, unreleased polls that only the campaigns have access to. In less monolithic districts you still run into trouble getting people to answer but fewer are just from being scared. More people with divergent political views are likely to answer. It may still get skewed but at least the indication is likely to be there. And the less monolithic, the more indicative.

I suspect the Democrats have been seeing this trend for decades. Mind, there are other ways to spot the trends – and yes, that includes polling – which are indicative of that same trend away from the Democrats. Analysis of some Democrat policy changes over the years seems to point in the same general direction. People are moving away from the Democrat Party and the Democrats know it.

Bill Gates can buy you a lot of media attention but he can only vote once. The near destitute are not reliable as a voter base – the school board isn’t their main concern when they need to get assistance or a job. Even if there were large numbers of people in these groups, they can never be large enough and Bill may be in the Bahamas that month.

The Democrats built a ‘big tent’ on the coattails of the Civil Rights movement. Suddenly every minority was aggrieved and needed white liberals to speak on their behalf. It worked for a very long time. Until Obama pulled the rug out from under it. Now all those utterly incompatible groups wanted their moment in the sun. Some parents might fall into the trap but most moms don’t want boys in their daughter’s bathroom. Once the soccer moms began to question, the end had begun.

Why do Democrats cheat? Because they have reached the point where they cannot win without it. This is what a party in collapse looks like as it desperately claws to remain in power.

And why Maricopa County is a national disgrace.

Seriously, printer ink? How desperately stupid can you be?

Oh, right – Democrat.

*Yeah, yeah, assuming he really said it. Given Lincoln’s incredible oratory, I don’t think this can be disproven and the late attribution doesn’t disturb me. I remember party lines – Lincoln was impressed to have the telegraph! You internet babies wouldn’t understand