I can't prove a negative, of course, but if the argument for significant Russian influence in 2016 is that the Presidential election was stolen from its rightful winner in a way that distinguishes that year from other elections (and from the ordinary degree of non-democracy we tolerate in both the electoral college itself and gerrymandered districts), that claim would have been a lot more convincing if the Republicans did not also win most of the Congressional elections happening simultaneously.
First of all, in regard to "significant" we're talking about small percentages, not massive numbers. Secondly, how? Again, the Russian "immersion" tactic started two-to-three years prior and consisted primarily of efforts to stop Democrats from voting (aka, voter suppression), while at the same time inciting alt-right "strong-tie" whites
and their secondary social connections to get out and vote.
Suppress Democrat voters; increase Republican voters.
Why would that not also have an effect on House races?
You could claim that these Republican wins were driven in part by a more general propaganda campaign, but that account of events is so dilute as to be meaningless.
No, it isnt in fact. Precisely the opposite as the actual studies prove. To get into that, you'd need to actually read the studies and understand the immersive "media mirage" tactics that the IRA used. Here, again, is the
Senate Intel Committee commissioned report that goes into detail about the numerous different tactics employed.
They note the following:
This data set does not include enough information to make a strong assessment about the extent to which the IRA operation had a significant influence on the election. However, the organic content does offer insights into the extent to which the IRA’s memes and messages resonated with its target audiences, and the ways in which they evolved their political messages in some ways and remained remarkably consistent in others. As stated earlier, the Internet Research Agency’s operation was not focused entirely on the political, but the election of 2016 did figure significantly in the content. There were approximately 6.5 million posts not related to the election, and approximately 686,000 posts that focused on it. In engagement terms, there were 246 million non-election-related engagements, and 82 million election-related. Put another way, 11% of the total content was related to the election and 33% of the engagement was related to the election. This indicates that overall the IRA did receive higher engagement on election related content. However, this effect was dominated by the volume of Twitter posts; Facebook and Instagram had similar engagement rates between election and non-election-related posts. Overall, Instagram’s engagement rates were higher after the election because of the increase in activity in 2017.
...
First, it is our assessment that aside from a handful of early-2015 posts expressing support for a Rand Paul candidacy, the Right-targeted IRA pages aligned to display a clear and consistent preference for then-candidate Donald Trump from July 2015 onward. They actively disparaged Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio, and Jeb Bush on Facebook and Instagram
...
Saying that the IRA expressed strong and consistent support for then-candidate Trump does not imply that there were no negative posts about President Trump; there were negative posts among the Left-targeting and occasionally Black-targeting Facebook groups. It also makes no claim about whether the campaign was in communication with the IRA in any way, as any determination about that topic is outside of the scope of this data set. However, the IRA consistently supported his candidacy throughout the primary in Right-leaning groups, keeping their memes and content positive with the exception of a few posts expressing strong disapproval and disappointment that then-candidate Trump was in favor of a hard line on Edward Snowden. Kremlin-aligned narratives appeared in a handful of posts, including this one from Dec. 18, 2015 that expressed the conviction that Trump was going to have a very sensible Russia policy.
...
Second, it is our assessment that the IRA was similarly strong and consistent in their efforts to undermine the candidacy of then-candidate Hillary Clinton throughout all of their pages – Black, Left, and Right-targeting. The one purportedly positive Clinton post was an event (and ad) promoting a Muslim community march to support Sec. Clinton (above right). It is likely that the IRA saw a high-profile march by Muslims as a way to create social tension, and as a negative for Sec. Clinton’s candidacy. The remainder of the United Muslims of America page content actively opposed Sec. Clinton, primarily promoting further-left candidates but at one point going so far as to broach the idea that Muslims might vote for then-candidate Trump. In the days leading up to the election, the IRA began to deploy voter suppression tactics on the Black-community targeted accounts, while simultaneously fearmongering on Right-targeted accounts about voter fraud and delivering ominous warnings that the election would be stolen and violence might be necessary. The suppression narratives were targeted almost exclusively at the Black community on Instagram and Facebook; there appeared to be a concerted effort to keep the conversation on other topics, such as alienation and violence, and away from politics.
And of particular note is the fact that even they were not given all of the data from the various platforms:
There remains much to be done. With regard to the Internet Research Agency specifically, further investigation of subscription and engagement pathways is needed; and only the platforms currently have that data. Understanding the reactions of targeted Americans, and attempting to gauge the impact that the repeated exposure to this propaganda had, is also a key area for ongoing investigation; only the platforms have the comment data. We hope that platforms will provide more data that can speak to the impact and uptake among targeted communities.
It's a long report, but not too long and it goes into significant detail about the complexity of the immersive tactic employed (and notes that it is still in operation, which means it has grown exponentially in the last two years and will only keep growing).
The importance of Russian meddling in US politics would have been a slam-dunk case
And if not a "slam-dunk case," but just a run-of-the-mill or even barely-got-by case?
if a Clinton landslide were transformed into a Trump win
That's arguably exactly what happened when you factor that what hurt her primarily were the decrease in black voter turnout and the unusually high percentage of late-voter undecideds. The whole thrust of the influencing campaign was to attack Clinton and praise Trump, in a nut, but it was also more immersive than that and it was coordinated perfectly with the leaks of the DNC/Podesta emails and her "missing" emails and pushing the lie that the primaries were rigged and so on, which would in turn all easily account for so many unprecedented late-voting undecideds.
Regardless, she still won by almost three million counted votes, but there were also another
37 percent of registered voters who expressed that their preference would have been Clinton had they actually voted, with another 30% saying the same about Trump, which nets out to be an additional 7% pro-Clinton, or approximately 7 million more votes for Clinton over Trump, which would have put her total vote differential at around 10 million. A clear landslide.
Again, this tells us the
preference of the voters who for various
non-partisan reasons--such as not bothering to get out and vote or couldn't find their voting place or were mislead into thinking their vote wouldn't count for some reason...--
wanted Hillary Clinton, specifically, to win.
This is NOT reflective of the "anyone but Trump" vote; but expressly the preference
for Hillary. For some reason that needs to be made painfully clear for some people not to confuse it with any other anti-Hillary sentiment typically brought up.
So, the fact that the Congressional elections were so victorious for Republicans
You and I have a very different definition of what would constitute "so victorious." Again, they only managed to flip two "blue" states and the overall voting margin in their favor was only 1.2%, almost exactly the same small percentage that put Trump in the WH in spite of Hillary's clearly more massive voter preference numbers.
