Voters overwhelmingly reject election-denying GOP newcomers: analysis

Two days after the 2022 midterms, the results are showing that denying the results of the 2020 presidential election was not an effective campaign strategy for new GOP candidates, according to a new report.

"As our forecast predicted, the majority of candidates who denied the legitimacy of the 2020 election are projected to win their races. But the bulk of those wins are from incumbent Republicans, in particular members of Congress who voted not to certify some of the 2020 election results," Kaleigh Rogers wrote for FiveThirtyEight. "Of the 199 Republican candidates for the House, Senate, governor, secretary of state, and attorney general who deny the legitimacy of the 2020 election, so far 134 (67 percent) are projected to win their races, 52 are projected to lose, and 13 have yet to be called, as of Thursday, Nov. 10, at 4:30 p.m. Eastern."

The was a huge difference in performance based on incumbency.

"Election-denying newcomers running in open seats or against Democratic incumbents had a harder time on Tuesday — in the races that have been called, the majority of these candidates have lost," FiveThirtyEight reported. "Of the 80 non-incumbent Republican election deniers who ran for House, Senate, governor, secretary of state, and attorney general, just 22 are currently projected to win (28 percent), while 49 (61 percent) are projected to lose, and nine are in races that have yet to be called. Many of these losses were in races where the Democrat had an advantage but were far from guaranteed slam dunks."

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Only one election-denying secretary of state candidate, Chuck Gray in Wyoming, is projected to win.

"Election-denying newcomers running in open seats or against Democratic incumbents had a harder time on Tuesday — in the races that have been called, the majority of these candidates have lost," the report noted. "Of the 80 non-incumbent Republican election deniers who ran for House, Senate, governor, secretary of state, and attorney general, just 22 are currently projected to win (28 percent), while 49 (61 percent) are projected to lose, and nine are in races that have yet to be called. Many of these losses were in races where the Democrat had an advantage but were far from guaranteed slam dunks."

The outcome could inform how Republicans campaign on Trump's conspiracy theories in future elections.

"This isn’t to say that Republicans who won last night mostly accepted the results of the 2020 election: Nineteen candidates who are projected to win at least questioned the results and many more refused to take a stance. There are also many races yet to be called — including for some of the most high-profile election deniers, like [Mark] Finchem, [Jim] Marchant and Kari Lake, the Republican nominee for governor in Arizona who has made claims of fraud in the 2020 election central to her campaign," the report noted. "But for many Republicans on Tuesday, making election denialism central to their campaign wasn’t enough to carry them over the finish line. And many of the most ardent supporters failed to win, suggesting that denying the 2020 election wasn’t the campaign strength that many of these candidates may have hoped."