Did the midterms deliver a blow to GOP election denialism?

“The 360” shows you diverse perspectives on the day’s top stories and debates.

What’s happening

Last month’s midterms were the first national election since the emergence of the “Stop the Steal” movement within the Republican Party. With the GOP performing well below its own expectations in key races across the country, the future of election denial conspiracy theories within the party has come into question.

Over the past two years, former President Donald Trump’s refusal to accept the results of the 2020 election created something of a litmus test for a large share of the Republican base. As a result, hundreds of candidates who echoed Trump’s unfounded fraud claims were chosen to run on the midterm ballot — some of them pursuing offices like governor and secretary of state that would have given them direct power over how future elections are run in their states.

Although a large number of those election-denying candidates won in safe red districts, most those who built their candidacies around denying the validity of the election lost key Senate and other statewide races, notably secretary of state positions overseeing future elections.

But unlike in 2020, Republicans loyal to Trump have not mounted a sustained effort to overturn the results of any of the races they lost, and most have formally conceded. Kari Lake, who lost her bid to become Arizona Gov. to Democrat Katie Hobbs by less than 1%, is the only high-profile GOP candidate who has raised the kind of legal and rhetorical challenges that were at the heart of Trump’s post-election campaign in 2020.

Why there’s debate

In the eyes of many political commentators and some Trump critics within the GOP, the midterms could prove to be the beginning of the end for election denial within the Republican Party.

They argue that the widespread failures of Trump-endorsed candidates in critical races across the country show that the GOP has to move on from election denial unless it wants to keep losing winnable races. Some also believe that the lack of post-election fraud claims from losing candidates, with the exception of Lake, demonstrates how the base’s fervor for “Stop the Steal” may only apply to the 2020 presidential contest and not translate to other elections.

But others say it’s far too early to celebrate the end of election denial. They argue that the movement has always centered on Trump himself and will likely see new life as his 2024 presidential campaign ramps up. There’s also the fact that a majority of the GOP base still believes the 2020 election was stolen, which could mean the party will continue to elevate election-denying candidates if Republican leadership tries to select more politically viable alternatives.

What’s next

Arizona’s election was formally certified on Monday. Lake is expected to file legal challenges to the results, probably centered on technical issues with voting machines on Election Day in the state’s largest county. Officials have maintained that those problems did not lead to any voters being disenfranchised. Trump is also in the initial stages of his 2024 campaign, which he has so far focused on his debunked claims of fraud in the 2020 presidential election.

Perspectives

OPTIMISTS

Election deniers were blocked from being in a position to distort future elections

“Leaders who are grounded in reality will run the 2024 presidential elections in key swing states, making it harder for Mr. Trump or another candidate to meddle with the democratic process.” — Editorial, Washington Post

“Stop the Steal” will fizzle, because no one other than Trump truly believes it

“The cynicism of the election-denial movement is also a weakness, as this week has shown. When losing candidates don’t actually think elections are being stolen, they tend to go a little more quietly.” — Benjamin Wallace-Wells, New Yorker

Voters proved they will rally to defeat threats to democracy

“The people had their say, thumbed their nose at the purveyors of conventional wisdom and dealt a blow to Trump and extremists and election-denying Republicans. For all the legitimate concerns about our democracy, voters … across the nation remind us of how awe-inspiring it can be.” — David Axelrod, CNN

Nothing as politically toxic as election denial can survive for long

“Lake would have won, in other words, if she had run about as well as a generic Republican in Arizona. … In retrospect, Lake’s defeat may well have been baked in the cake from the start by going all in on the ‘stop the steal’ stuff. As we have now seen, that is poison in a general election in any competitive state in the union.” — Dan McLaughlin, National Review

‘Stop the Steal’ has no salience without Trump

“Without Trump, election denial has no future as a political strategy. Other prominent Republicans simply can’t conjure upon fake realities the way he can, as evidenced by the flop of Kari Lake’s one-woman election denial show.” — Gregory J. Wallance, The Hill

Election denial may ultimately cost Trump his place atop the Republican Party

“True believer conservative voters are done with Trump because he committed an unforgivable yet unoriginal sin: By not conceding an election he knows he lost, he rejected the Founders’ belief in the consent of the governed enshrined in the Declaration of Independence—a government of We the People rather than Me the Person.” — John Hart, The Dispatch

MAGA candidates mostly aren’t putting up a fight to challenge their losses

“The fear had been that election deniers would not take no for an answer, that this assemblage of the unhinged who claimed the 2020 election was ‘rigged’ would refuse to accept their own defeats, instead issuing baseless claims of cheating and conspiracy. … Instead there has been … silence. By and large, election deniers have not denied their own defeats.” — Leonard Pitts Jr., Miami Herald

PESSIMISTS

Skepticism about elections may be permanent among the GOP base

“Data from the past two years shows that trust in the electoral process has stayed consistently low among Republicans — suggesting that some of Trump’s supporters will remain open to those allegations. As long as that’s true, election denial could continue to play a role in American elections. “ — Zoha Qamar, FiveThirtyEight

Election denial is still dominant in deep-red parts of the country

“To be clear, the fever has not broken entirely. Dozens of legislative and congressional candidates who voiced lies about the 2020 election were elected. At one level, support for election deniers was still shockingly high. Much of that may be attributable to partisanship, though. Rarely does the public speak so clearly on such a precise issue: voters care enough about democracy to reject those who would undermine it.” — Michael Waldman, Brennan Center for Justice

As long as Trump is at the center of the GOP, election denial will continue

“The elections appear to have been worked this time, and the Democrats have kept the Senate. But what happened at the polls is a staving off, not a correction, of a danger that still feels imminent.” — Erin Aubry Kaplan, Politico

The U.S. electoral system creates far too much room for extreme candidates

“Yes, the midterms showed us that the American middle can still muster the power to reject extremism. That’s good news. But if we scratch the surface of this entire election year, what we see is that the final outcome papers over serious structural problems within our political system that are designed to reward appeals to the worst of our politics even as they undermine those who prefer compromise and comity to political war.” — Editorial, Dallas Morning News

Election denial will only die if Republicans are willing to face it head on

“If Republican politicians want to regain the respect and trust they've lost standing by a vitriolic, election-denying, democracy-endangering narcissistic moron — then they need to crawl out of the scary hole of darkness and disinformation that they dug themselves into starting even before Trump won the presidency in 2016. They can start by ditching Trump and everything he stands for.” — Carli Pierson, USA Today

The national movement is simmering, but ‘Stop the Steal’ lives on at local and state levels

“Even though prominent election deniers lost big in the November polls, in both Arizona and elsewhere, the election-denial movement is still alive, and even thriving, at the state and local level around the country. The ‘Stop the Steal’ blueprint that Donald Trump drew up is there for anyone to follow, in the next presidential cycle and quite possibly beyond.” — Elaine Godfrey, The Atlantic

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