Guardian report for Dane County in 2020:
Biden: 260,121 (75.7%)
Trump: 78,794 (22.9%)
JoJo: 3,655 (1.2%)
TOTAL: 342,580
2016 Guardian report for Dane County:
Hillary: 217,506 (71.4%)
Trump: 71,270 (23.4%)
Third Parties: 14,858 (4.9%)
So if we took the same PERCENT distribution of votes from 2016, and extrapolated it to the large 2020 voter turnout (combining both third parties into one here), then we have:
Biden: 244,602
Trump: 80,164
JoJo: 16,786
This total is >99.7% of the first total, so there's probably just tiny insignificant rounding errors and whatnot. That is the anticipated 2020 turnout based on the 2016 results assuming NOTHING changed except increased voter turnout.
So Biden ACTUALLY had 6.3% more votes than the do-nothing model would have him receiving, while Trump ACTUALLY received 1.7% LESS votes than the do-nothing model expects. In "hard numbers" this is 15,519 more votes for Biden than "anticipated," and 1,370 less than "anticipated" for Trump. Again, assuming nothing changed except the more people voted with the same exact distribution as in 2016.
But in reality, we now have the benefit of hindsight to see that a lot of third party voters either decided to not vote, or to vote for a major party (those are the two most likely options).
In fact, third-party candidate(s) received 13,121 less votes than "anticipated." So my assumption (which is admittedly over-simplified) gives those votes ALL to Biden, then Biden only ends up with 2,398 more votes than "anticipated," while Trump still stays at 1,370 less votes than "anticipated. So if there was a "swing" of 3,768 votes, out of 342,580, or 1.1%.
The proposed methodology of seeing percent growth relative to 2016 without referencing overall voter turnout seems disingenuous. Yes, Biden had 19.6% more votes in Dane County than Clinton in 2016, but Trump also had 10.6% more votes in the same county than in 2016. While there were over 4 TIMES as many third party votes in 2016 as in 2020. That's right, third party voters were cut in half, and then in half again in 2020. Either they all felt like staying home, which would mean the increased voter turnout had to be even greater for Democrats and Republicans, or they decided not to "waste" their vote and picked Biden or Trump.
In summary, if we assume the overall voter distribution in 2020 was the same as in 2016, but with more people, and that all the people who would have voted third party but didn't compared to the percent in 2016 voted for Biden instead, we have a ~1% discrepancy, which seems totally reasonable given that it's a different election 4 years later, and one candidate is a different person.
Now, what was my original claim? That if the difference between 2016 third party (4.9%) and 2020 actual third party (1.2%), or 3.7% was given to what Biden had in 2016 (71.4%), he would have been predicted (with the power of hindsight calculations) 75.1%. He actually got 75.7%, so 0.6% more than "expected" here, while Trump got 0.5% less than expected.
Add 0.6% and 0.5% and what do you get? 1.1%. Just like I found above.
In summary, a ~1% discrepancy between what ACTUALLY HAPPENED and what would happen if all that changed was total voter output and a shift in anticipated third party voters who dropped to Biden.
So seeing that the shorthand methodology arrives at the same result, if we assume "only" 2/3 of these "dropped" third party voters switched to Biden, and 1/3 switched to Trump:
Biden received 1.8% more votes than anticipated, while Trump receives 1.7% less votes than anticipated, or a 3.5% swing.
Again, considering that this was a different election, with a different candidate, and a different political and social climate, this hardly seems to be CLEAR conspiracy or foul play.
Now, that other Georgia county that had a MUCH BIGGER difference than anticipated, why not look into that instead of this?