MESA, Ariz. — Sandi Marley and her older sister Debbie Kocour turned out for former President Donald Trump’s rally sporting T-shirts that read: “Joe, You Know I Won” and “We the People are Pissed Off.”
The sisters, both in their late 60s, are among the legions of voters across the country who still believe — almost 21 months after President Biden put his hand on the Bible and took the oath of office — that dark forces ripped the election away from Mr. Trump.
“Too much proves that this election was stolen,” said Ms. Kocour, a commercial real estate agent.
“You know, it’s not, it’s not about Trump,” she said. “It’s about our voices need to be heard. That’s what the Constitution is all about, and why are we not being heard? And why are conservatives being suppressed? That’s like sickening.”
Mr. Trump has made unfounded claims of widespread tampering with ballot boxes, bogus voting and other shenanigans. For Ms. Marley, however, it’s a matter of math.
“I only know three or four people who didn’t vote for Trump,” said the retired restaurant owner, scanning the massive crowd gathered in the dusty heat to see the former president. “I mean, if all these people voted for Trump, and I mean look at this, how come he didn’t win?”
The sentiment runs so deep that it has transformed the national political landscape, forcing candidates to pick sides in a debate in which the heft of evidence leans one way and the voice of a former president pushes the other way.
“I ran twice, I won twice, and I did much better the second time than I did the first,” Mr. Trump said at his rally.
The 2022 midterms will be the first true test of the electoral fallout.
The Washington Post calculates that 299 of 569 contests for the House, Senate and other statewide offices have Republican candidates who have questioned or outright denied Mr. Biden’s 2020 victory.
Nowhere is the trend more visible than in Arizona, where Mr. Biden bested Mr. Trump by more than 10,000 votes, making him the first Democrat since 1996 to carry the state in a presidential election.
The state Senate launched a taxpayer-funded investigation of voting tabulations in Maricopa County. It tapped Cyber Ninjas, a company with no experience in such an endeavor, to conduct the audit.
The review confirmed Mr. Biden’s win.
Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich launched his own investigation, which produced scattered charges but no evidence of significant fraud.
Despite those Republican-led reviews, Trump supporters are suspicious.
“None of it was reported in the news,” said Lori Anonsen, who recently retired from teaching at a community college. “There was so much fraud.”
She is not certain that the fraud was significant enough to swing the election, but she is certain about “major fraud issues.”
“It needs to be cleaned up,” she said.
Fraud-minded Republican voters in Arizona this year selected a slate of Trump-endorsed candidates — including Senate nominee Blake Masters, gubernatorial nominee Kari Lake and secretary of state nominee Mark Finchem — who won primaries after going all-in on claims of a rigged election.
Few outside the Republican Party are buying the pitch, forcing the candidates to pivot to other issues that might win voters in a general election.
Mike Noble, the pollster of record in Arizona with OH Predictive Insights, said the repercussions of the stolen election claims run deep and threaten to undermine Republicans when they should be in the driver’s seat.
Arizona has a long history of early voting, and it has usually worked to Republicans’ advantage with a large number of supporters turning out ahead of time. This year, though, surveys show Democrats have the early-voting advantage.
That means they will have a good idea of which votes they have on Election Day and can focus on turning out those who haven’t cast ballots. Republicans, meanwhile, will have to orchestrate a massive Election Day turnout to win.
“Republicans, in the last four years, have been their own worst enemy here,” Mr. Noble said.
Still, Mr. Trump and a number of the speakers at the rally Sunday in Mesa stuck with their message.
“You have to go out and ideally vote, ideally vote, on Nov. 8,” Mr. Trump said. “You know, the mail-in ballots, or sometimes I will say things like the fake mail-in ballots, but I don’t want to say that because that’s so controversial, but the mail-in ballots are just not as good as being out there on Nov. 8.”
As for Democrats, he said, “They cheat.”
The message has resonated.
Mr. Noble’s latest survey found that 82% of Democrats — compared with 53% of independents and 47% of Republicans — plan to cast their votes by mail before Election Day.
On the other hand, 4% of Democrats, 20% of independents and 27% of Republicans plan to vote in person on Election Day.
The same survey found that threats to democracy are tied with immigration as the third most pressing issue to voters — ranking behind the economy and abortion.
The election claims also have been caught up in Republican frustrations over COVID-19 lockdowns, inflation, gas prices and immigration, as well as a general sense of American decline.
Bob, who declined to give his last name after describing himself as an Army veteran pushing 80, said he started digging into matters after the 2020 election and concluded that there is a group of well-connected, “brilliant people” powerful enough to change history books and “get Christ out of schools.”
Asked whether he is convinced those same forces tilted the 2020 presidential election, he said, “Yes.”
“But I don’t know why,” he said.
Correction: Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich’s name was misspelled in a previous version of this article.
• Seth McLaughlin can be reached at smclaughlin@washingtontimes.com.
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