A striking election claim is spreading across social media after Pennsylvania’s 2026 midterms.
The numbers behind it are real.
But the most explosive conclusion being attached to those numbers has not been established by the evidence made public so far.
An independent researcher posting under the name “Truth Is Freedom” compared the 2026 Pennsylvania governor’s race with the 2022 contest.
The researcher noted that Republican Stacy Garrity’s current statewide vote total is about 85.5% of the number Republican Doug Mastriano received four years earlier.
That ratio checks out as a piece of arithmetic.
Fox News’ Pennsylvania results page showed Garrity with 1,913,406 votes and Democratic Gov. Josh Shapiro with 3,035,249 as of Saturday. The outlet marked Shapiro as the winner while identifying its underlying results as sourced from the Associated Press.
Libertarian Ken Krawchuk had 64,914 votes, putting the reported statewide total just above five million ballots with 99% reporting. That leaves the remaining unreported share far too small to erase a seven-figure statewide lead.
Those figures give Shapiro approximately 60.5%, Garrity 38.2% and Krawchuk 1.3%.
The page also displayed county-by-county results and voter-survey breakouts, making clear that this was not a narrow contest decided by a small number of ballots in one jurisdiction.
Shapiro’s reported advantage exceeded 1.1 million votes statewide.
The important limitation is timing: Pennsylvania had not yet certified the 2026 results when this article was prepared. The totals are therefore a current snapshot, not a final certified record.
The official 2022 returns, recorded by the Pennsylvania General Assembly, show Mastriano received 2,238,477 votes while Shapiro received 3,031,137. Those totals were formally presented to state lawmakers after certification rather than drawn from an election-night estimate.
Three minor-party candidates and scattered write-ins brought the certified 2022 gubernatorial total to more than 5.36 million votes. The difference between that total and the current 2026 count is itself a reminder that raw-vote comparisons can reflect overall turnout as well as party performance.
Shapiro won that race with 56.5%, while Mastriano finished at 41.7%.
The four-year comparison therefore contains two changes at once: the total number of gubernatorial votes declined, and Shapiro’s share increased by roughly four percentage points while the Republican share fell by roughly three and a half points.
That is broader than a single 15% subtraction. It describes a different turnout pool and a substantial shift in candidate preference.
Divide Garrity’s current total by Mastriano’s 2022 total and the result is approximately 0.855.
Shapiro, meanwhile, is sitting only a few thousand votes above his 2022 total.
That is the factual pattern generating attention: Republican raw votes fell by roughly 325,000 from one gubernatorial election to the next while the Democratic incumbent’s total remained almost flat.
Conservatives are right to look closely at a shift that large.
They are also right to demand transparent county data, completed audits and a public explanation of any genuine irregularity uncovered during the canvass.
But a ratio by itself does not prove that 15% of Republican votes were diverted, transferred or removed.
That conclusion would require evidence connecting actual ballots or vote records to a specific improper mechanism. No such evidence has been presented in the public material reviewed for this article.
The comparison also involves two different Republican nominees, two different campaigns and two different electorates.
Mastriano ran in 2022. Garrity ran in 2026 against a well-funded incumbent who had been leading by wide margins for months.
A late polling roundup showed Shapiro leading Garrity by margins ranging from 18 to 29 points in the final weeks. The listed surveys included both likely-voter and registered-voter samples from several independent organizations.
The final five-poll average listed Shapiro at 59% and Garrity at 34.6%. One November 1 survey put the race at 63% to 36%, while an October 22 Franklin & Marshall result showed 59% to 36%, reinforcing the same broad expectation close to Election Day.
Individual surveys from Research Co., Franklin & Marshall, ActiVote, Bravo Group, Z to A Research and Susquehanna Polling all showed Shapiro ahead by double digits.
The surveys differed on the exact size of the lead, but none depicted the race as close.
Polling can miss, and it cannot validate a vote count. In this case, however, the broad public expectation before Election Day was a decisive Shapiro victory.
The reported election margin of roughly 22 points falls inside that broad pre-election range.
That does not settle every question about turnout or county-level movement.
It does mean the statewide result was not an outcome that suddenly appeared without any public warning.
The researcher also published the raw statewide comparison used to produce the 0.855 figure:
The Pennsylvania Department of State says the current returns remain unofficial until counties finish the canvass and certification process.
That distinction matters because totals can still move as eligible mail, military, overseas and provisional ballots are processed.
The state has now begun a risk-limiting audit of the governor’s race.
According to the department’s audit announcement, county officials will hand-tally randomly selected batches of paper ballots and compare those totals with the original voting-system counts. Pennsylvania describes this as a “batch comparison” risk-limiting audit.
The state says the test is designed to determine whether a full hand count would produce the same reported winner. Secretary of the Commonwealth Al Schmidt called risk-limiting audits a statistically sound method for confirming the accuracy of a reported outcome.
Officials generated the random seed for selecting ballot batches by having ten department employees roll ten-sided dice, producing a 20-digit number in a public process.
Counties must complete that audit by November 19 and certify their results to the state by November 23.
Every county must also conduct the separate audit required by state law, using a random sample of at least 2% of ballots cast or 2,000 ballots, whichever is fewer.
The governor’s race was selected because it was Pennsylvania’s only contested statewide race on the November ballot.
That makes the audit evidence more important than an internet formula.
If the hand-tallied batches disagree materially with machine tabulations, that would be a concrete finding requiring immediate investigation.
If the audit confirms the reported outcome, then the 85.5% ratio remains a political and turnout question—not proof of a vote-transfer scheme.
The Department of State reported that Election Day itself was generally smooth, while acknowledging isolated scanner issues and several local disruptions.
Its Election Night statement said affected ballots were secured for later scanning and that the reported problems did not prevent voters from casting ballots. The account credited roughly 45,000 poll workers staffing more than 9,000 polling places statewide.
The department reported minor issues in a handful of counties, including delayed openings at several polling places and a brief evacuation after a possible fire report.
One Cambria County precinct needed a replacement pollbook, while isolated scanner problems required workers to secure ballots until the equipment was repaired or the ballots could be tabulated elsewhere.
Officials also said more than 1.3 million mail ballots had been issued and 86.6% had been returned by 8 p.m. on Election Day.
The department warned that totals would continue changing as counties processed eligible mail, military, overseas and provisional ballots during the canvass.
That is the state’s account, not the final word on every concern.
Election officials should publish complete audit results, county-level discrepancies and any corrective action in a form ordinary voters can inspect.
Likewise, anyone alleging a hidden algorithm should release the full methodology, all races tested, the selection criteria, the expected false-positive rate and evidence capable of distinguishing manipulation from ordinary turnout and candidate effects.
A repeated pattern can justify questions.
It cannot substitute for proof.
For now, Pennsylvania’s numbers show a dramatic Republican drop, a Democratic incumbent holding his prior raw-vote total and an outcome broadly consistent with pre-election polling.
The state’s hand-count audit is the next meaningful test.
This is a Guest Post from our friends over at WLTReport. View the original article here.
The post Pennsylvania’s 2026 Numbers Fuel a Viral Election Claim — Here’s What the Data Actually Shows appeared first on 100PercentFedUp.com.
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[H/T 100PercentFedUp]
