How badly election deniers cost the GOP, in 9 stats
By Donna November 14, 2022 12:17 pm Category: How-to (0.0 from 0 votes)
Rules of the Post
Back in May, we wrote a piece running down the biggest races in which a GOP election denier, if elected, could exercise significant control over the 2024 election.
It named nine candidates for governor and other statewide offices. As of today, it looks like each and every one of them has lost.
The latest additions are two secretary of state candidates in Arizona and Nevada. And vote counts released Sunday night in the Arizona governor’s race suggest the only one of the nine who hasn’t lost so far, Kari Lake, is unlikely to break the trend.
- The Washington Post’s tracker lists 46 competitive races featuring an election denier. The deniers have lost 31 of those races and won just seven, with eight races outstanding.
- Only two of those seven wins came in an electorate that voted for President Biden in 2020, and neither came in a district that was bluer than the country as a whole. That reinforces that the election-denier creed was a stone-cold loser in swing areas.
- The only election deniers to win governor’s races so far were incumbents. Election deniers appear to have lost all 12 races in which they were either challengers or running for an open seat, including in Michigan, Minnesota, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and potentially Arizona. If you include primaries in Georgia, Idaho and Nebraska, non-incumbent election deniers look like they will have gone 0 for 15. (Some have listed Nevada Gov.-elect Joe Lombardo as an election denier, but he was relatively noncommittal compared with others.)
- The most prominent election deniers running for secretary of state were nearly swept on Tuesday, and they lost in every swing state. They lost in Arizona, Michigan, Minnesota and Nevada (after also losing in Georgia in the primaries).
- The picture wasn’t much better for election deniers outside swing states. The America First Secretary of State Coalition, the most prominent group supporting election deniers to oversee state elections, lists 17 endorsements on its website. If Lake loses (the group also endorsed a couple of gubernatorial candidates), then 16 will have lost in the 2022 election cycle.
- Perhaps the most prominent election deniers in competitive Senate races were Arizona’s Blake Masters (who released an ad saying Donald Trump won the 2020 election), Nevada’s Adam Laxalt (who spearheaded Trump’s 2020 election challenges in his state) and New Hampshire’s Don Bolduc (who said the election was stolen before reversing course after the primary). Each not only lost, but also underperformed the other Republicans on the ticket. Republicans won the governor’s races in both Nevada and New Hampshire, for example. And in Arizona, Masters’s current 6.3-point deficit is six points worse than Trump’s performance in 2020 and worse than every other statewide Republican.
- Both Arizona and Michigan featured hard-line election deniers running for every statewide office. They either have already lost, or currently trail, in all seven statewide races in those states. (The one with the best shot to win: Arizona attorney general candidate Abraham Hamadeh, who currently trails by 0.4 percent.)
- The only two gubernatorial seats to go from red to blue so far came by virtue of hard-line election deniers: Geoff Diehl in Massachusetts and Dan Cox in Maryland. (Lake could soon be No. 3.) The fact that Republicans would lose these states isn’t altogether surprising. But in the primaries, these candidates effectively pushed aside a popular governor (in Massachusetts, Diehl’s candidacy made the race much less viable for Charlie Baker) and a popular governor’s preferred successor (defeating Kelly Schulz in Maryland, whom Larry Hogan endorsed). That handed these seats to Democrats on a platter.
- Some of the biggest underperformances in the House also came thanks to Trump-backed election deniers. Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.) leads narrowly in a district Trump carried by more than eight points in 2020. John Gibbs lost by 13 points in a Michigan district Trump lost by eight. Joe Kent lost by two points in a Washington district Trump carried by four. And perhaps the biggest loser, Ohio’s J.R. Majewski, trailed by 14 in a district Trump carried by three — a gap of 17 points. (These numbers may change slightly.)
The views and claims expressed by contributors are their own and do not necessarily reflect the views and beliefs of SelectSmart.com. Not every statement made here can be assumed to be a fact.
Comments on "How badly election deniers cost the GOP, in 9 stats":
