At least half of the Republican candidates who have won their Party’s nomination for statewide or federal office in this election cycle have explicitly denied the legitimacy of the outcome of the 2020 presidential election, a review by FiveThirtyEight discovered.
While no Republican has challenged the outcome of any race in which the GOP candidate won during the 2020 general election, even though they were conducted using the same machines, systems, technology and processes as the 2020 presidential election, many GOP candidates continue to pitch The Big Lie. In total, one-third of Republican candidates expressed support for Trump’s lie.
In 91 races in which at least one candidate expressed support for Trump’s attempt to undermine the election and at least one candidate accepted the certified results, pro-democracy candidates won in 54% of the contests. In many primaries, election deniers ran unopposed.
The races most likely to attract reality deniers were those for the US House of Representatives, where the Republican caucus in infested with people who sought presidential pardons to avoid prosecution for attempting to overthrow the Constitution.