Election-denying Republicans were the big losers in 2022’s midterms

After former President Donald Trump’s fanciful claims about voter fraud sparked a riot on Capitol Hill, many observers felt there was no turning back: Fraud conspiracies would be commonplace now. among the candidates, and the possibility of danger would only increase.

Trump’s staunchest supporters “represent an extremism that threatens the very foundations of our republic,” President Joe Biden said. said in september. A few days before the midterm elections last month, he even related election conspiracy to the brutal attack on House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s husband.

And it was not limited to Trump: in a article titled “Trump Isn’t the Only Threat to Democracy,” wrote Darrell West of the Brookings Institute, “One of the worst things Trump has done is show many other wannabes how to engage in politics of power using unethical measures.”

But exactly the opposite happened: voters rejected the most intolerant candidates, who almost all chose to respect the results.

One of the biggest propellants of the 2020 election plots was Pennsylvania State Senator Doug Mastriano, who landed the Republican gubernatorial candidate with the help of a significant cash injection of his Democratic opponent, Josh Shapiro. Mastriano insisted the 2020 election results were fraudulent, even attending the Jan. 6 rally that preceded the Capitol breach, and he threatened not to certify a Democrat as the winner of Pennsylvania’s 2024 electoral votes.

And yet, just days after the general election as he trailed his double-digit challenger, Mastriano concededsaying that “Josh Shapiro will be our next governor, and I ask everyone to give him the opportunity to lead and pray that he will lead well.”

In reality, in all the countries, Republican candidates fared less well with Trump’s explicit endorsement than without. Holocaust deniers got away with it even worse. And like Mastriano, the majority defeat conceded rather than cry cheating.

One of the exceptions is Lake Kari, the brandon Republican who seemed poised to become Arizona’s next governor, but died after all the votes have been counted. She called the results “BS” and spun bizarre accusations of fraud, but his protests did not catch on. She filed a lawsuit last week alleging voting machines were tampered with, and on Thursday a federal judge fired the lawsuit and sanctioned Lake, citing his “false, misleading and unsubstantiated factual assertions” in the lawsuit.

Elsewhere in his state, the electoral conspiracy movement operates similarly, such as Republicans in the United Red County of Cochise refused to certify the results of their own election, in violation of Arizona law, on allegations of fraud that the state had already refuted. Thursday, the council finally certified after a court ruling forced his hand.

It’s possible voters were swayed by Biden’s doomsday rhetoric, but that’s unlikely given his overall persistent unpopularity. It’s more likely that average Republicans just couldn’t bear the thought of pulling the lever for candidates like Lake or Mastriano. A recent survey found that 52% of Republicans thought the midterm elections were “definitely” or “probably” “free and fair” – still a shamefully low percentage, but as Raisonis Eric Boehm Noted this week, it’s also “the highest percentage the group has found in recent polls of Registered Republicans’ opinions on elections.”

There is evidence that Republican voters are embittered by outright Holocaust deniers: in Georgia, for example, Herschel Walker ran 5 points behind Brian Kemp, the state’s Republican governor. Walker has regularly promoted conspiracies on the 2020 elections, while Kemp earned Trump’s ire for resisting the former president’s pleas to overturn his results.

While the election plot is unlikely to fade away anytime soon, among independents and large swaths of Republican voters, it is thankfully losing its luster.