Well, now we know why the voter rolls were hacked.

[PDittie]

44. This is a fair point, because

there's plenty of science that predicts negativity in elections suppresses turnout. My particular POV holds that most all of that is already baked in to a marginally interested, mostly non-voting-anyway subset of .... let's call them 'potential' voters. Not sure what the pollsters might classify them as.

The most pervasive, negative 'campaigning', for lack of a better word, that I saw on social media and television -- that is, when the corporate media wasn't giving us every utterance, press conference, political rally, etc. of Trump's; the most free media of any campaign ever -- was fear-mongering; "Trump is so awful that ..." and "Hillary is so terrible", blahblahblah. 'Lesser of two evils' arguments don't do anything to persuade me, but I'm not the typical low-information voter.

Lacking sufficient empirical data, I'd be inclined that specific and intentional Republican efforts to suppress the vote was of more influence in the 2016 outcome. There was striking evidence of that in Wisconsin. We know also that GOP election administrators like to send old voting machines that are more likely to break down to minority precincts; something that's more than anecdotal.

Frankly I would believe that bad weather on Election Day depressed voter turnout to a greater degree than did any quantity of social media blathering over any length of time.