Republican claim Biden's win was 'statistically impossible' torn to shreds in brutal fact-check

Arguments made in support of President Donald Trump's conspiracy theories about the 2020 presidential election continue to be dogged by major flaws in reasoning.

"Since President-elect Joe Biden won the 2020 presidential election, there's been a lot of analysis aimed at somehow proving that his election was the result of fraud or illegal voting. None of that analysis has actually offered credible proof of fraud, as dozens of judges in various courts and any number of independent observers have determined. But the goal is often less to prove the case than to suggest the case, to continue to present the well-settled issue as unsettled and thereby to present President Trump as having not-yet-lost his reelection bid instead of having clearly lost it a month ago," Philip Bump of The Washington Postwrote Monday.

"In service of this objective, Trump's supporters and the president himself have taken to declaring that a Biden win was not just unlikely but instead “statistically impossible,” a term they generally use to mean something like “not possible — to the extreme.” But Biden's win was possible, as made clear both through a detailed consideration of the claims of statistical impossibility and, more directly, by Biden's having won the 2020 presidential contest," Bump noted.

Bump noted Trump isn't very good at understanding the election.

"Speaking of swing states, Trump also marveled that Biden 'beat [Clinton] in the swing states, but she beat him everywhere else.' Biden outperformed Clinton in every state but six: Arkansas (where Clinton was once first lady), California, Florida (a swing state), Hawaii, Nevada (barely) and Utah (which voted heavily for a third-party candidate in 2016)," Bump noted. "In other words, this point is simply wrong. Or, to put it in terms Trump would appreciate: It is statistically impossible that Trump’s claim is correct."