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FACT BRIEF

Did the Arizona audit show that Donald Trump won the state?

By Dana Ford
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NO

A video on social media includes conservative pundit Dick Morris claiming, "The audit had very different conclusions and basically proved that Trump won the state."

In fact, the audit in Maricopa County, Arizona's most populous county, showed that Joe Biden beat Donald Trump there by nearly 45,000 votes. That edge contributed to Biden's victory in the state as a whole, where he won by close to 10,500 votes.

Nowhere in the report from Cyber Ninjas, the company hired to do the GOP-commissioned audit, does it say that Trump won the vote in Arizona.

As support for his claim, Morris argued that there's a difference between a recount and an audit. That's a specious argument. The full hand-recount of all 2.1 million ballots from the 2020 election in Maricopa County was part of the audit.

See a full discussion of this at Lead Stories
This fact brief is responsive to conversations such as this one.
Sources
Arizona Senate GOP Caucus Cyber Ninjas Report
Arizona Secretary of State Arizona Election Results
ABOUT THE CONTRIBUTOR
Lead Stories
Lead Stories is a fact checking and debunking website at the intersection of big data and journalism that launched in 2015. It scouts for trending stories, images, videos and posts that contain false information in order to fact check them as quickly as possible. It actively monitors the fake-news ecosystem and doesn’t wait for reader tips or reports before getting started on a story.
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About fact briefs published on Gigafact
Fact briefs are short, credibly sourced summaries that offer “yes/no” answers in response to claims found online. They rely on publicly available, often primary source data and documents. Fact briefs are created by contributors to Gigafact —a nonprofit project looking to expand participation in fact-checking and protect the democratic process. See all fact briefs here.