Thursday, pollster Rich Baris testified in the election challenge trial of Arizona gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake that voter suppression on Election Day in Maricopa County last month was sufficient to deprive Lake the victory.
Baris told the court that his company, Big Data Poll, did exit polling on Election Day, November 8, and discovered a 20 percent gap between the response rates of those who voted by mail and those who voted in person.
The head of the polling business claimed that prior to voting, all survey respondents had agreed to do so.
“The bottom line here is that those who said they would cast their vote by mail or drop their ballot off by mail completed their questionnaire at a 93 percent rate,” Baris added. He added that a decline in participation was to be anticipated, therefore the fact that 7 percent did not complete the survey was not unexpected.
“The rate for Election Day voters was only 72 percent,” Baris said. “I can tell you that has never happened to me before, ever.”
“There’s no explanation for why these voters simply did not come back. They didn’t cast their ballot. There’s always going to be a difference, but the difference here is … roughly 20 percentage points,” the pollster said.
“These people didn’t complete this questionnaire because they didn’t vote. They didn’t get to vote,” Baris concluded.
Rich Baris testifies that early voters completed their exit poll at a rate of 93% vs only 72% of Election Day voters.
“I can tell you that has never happened to me before, ever…these people didn’t complete this questionnaire because they didn’t vote. They didn’t get to vote.” pic.twitter.com/DPStMHMgp1
— Charlie Kirk (@charliekirk11) December 22, 2022
Garrett Archer, a political analyst for KNXV-TV, said that Baris’s survey had around 160 Election Day respondents in Maricopa County.
Baris is asked about respondents to his poll that were reaction day voters. He says subsample in Maricopa was about 160.
— The AZ – abc15 – Data Guru (@Garrett_Archer) December 22, 2022
As an explanation for why some Arizonans did not vote, Baris cited the lengthy queues at Maricopa polling stations on Election Day, which were at least partially caused by widespread ballot printer and ballot tabulation issues.
In its case, Lake’s legal team alleged that 59 percent of polling stations (132 locations) had malfunctioning devices, whereas the county claims that 70 sites, or around one-third of the total, were affected.
People in line to vote in Anthem, north of Phoenix, reported to The Western Journal at noon that they had waited nearly two hours. The wait time remained constant about 6:00 p.m.
Here is the problem w/ what happened in Maricopa County on Election Day. This is Anthem, north of Phoenix at about 1:15 pm. Ruby red district of about 30K people. Only one polling location. Ballot tabulators not working in the morning. 2 hr wait to vote midday and still at 6 pm. pic.twitter.com/CY35yQWwq5
— Randy DeSoto (@RandyDeSoto) November 14, 2022
Since Republicans outvoted Democrats three to one on Election Day, Lake contends that her supporters were subjected to widespread voting suppression.
Archer’s data indicated that the figure was correct.
2022 Maricopa voters by party and ballot type:
Total: 1.56M
By Mail
REP: 482k – 38%
DEM: 450k – 36%
OTH: 332k – 26%Polling Place
REP: 129k – 51%
DEM: 43.6k – 17%
OTH: 78.6k – 31%Early In Person
REP: 21.7k – 49%
DEM: 9.5k – 21%
OTH: 13.6k – 30%— The AZ – abc15 – Data Guru (@Garrett_Archer) December 7, 2022
Lake was able to narrow Katie Hobbs’ lead from double digits (about 183,000 votes) based on Hobbs’ early voting advantage to less than one percent (approximately 12,000 votes) on the Wednesday after the election, thanks to Election Day votes.
Hobbs won the election by around 17,000 votes when all the mail-in ballots and election day ballots were tabulated.
Baris estimated that between 25,000 and 40,000 people who wanted to vote on Election Day did not do so. The 20 percent figure suggested by Baris’ exit polling corresponds to 50,000 voters, which Baris said is an “admittedly very large” number.
He stated that had it not been for the turmoil on Election Day, Lake would have beaten Hobbs.
“In my professional opinion, the amount of Election Day voters that we’re talking about here, with the margin, would have changed the outcome of the race, and the number is substantial enough to have changed who the overall winner was in this race,” Baris said.
More powerful testimony in the @KariLake trial against Arizona election fraud from Rich Baris, @Peoples_Pundit.@RealAmVoice @Saorsa1776 pic.twitter.com/261bXQM98M
— Ben Bergquam – Real America’s Voice (RAV-TV) News (@BenBergquam) December 22, 2022
He continued, “I have no doubt” that Lake would have won if not for the confusion on election day.
Baris informed the court that he has been the director of Big Data Poll for over six years and previously worked for People’s Pundit Daily in election predicting. Since 2014, he has started conducting exit polls, he claimed.