I've avoided this thread until now.
My opinion is that a lot of people got paid a lot of money to conduct an instigation. The results are exactly what you'd expect when someone has been subjected to focused instigation, and reacted with the full suspicion that it can not possibly be anything more than an instigation. What you are seeing is that this particular instigation was pre-planned as a course of action to take in the unanticipated case of the other party getting elected.
The use of the word 'instigation' as opposed to the word 'investigation' is entirely intentional.