Election denialism fails to yield results for Republicans in the US midterms

Some Republicans, including Trump, have relied on 2020 election tactics (i.e. voter fraud and rigged races) in justifying recent midterm losses. But unlike 2020, their party isn’t blindly following every accusation, and instead some of this language is now being blamed for not-so-favorable results.

Regardless, voter experts have been on the lookout in the days following for any extremist patterns related to election denialism that could lead to violence. ISD’s Head of Elections and Digital Integrity, Jiore Craig, spoke to Yahoo News about the surprising change in attitude, yet how it’s not the time to take off the pressure either.

“We were right to be vigilant, because our country has a violence problem and a political extremism problem, and that can sometimes, but not always, lead to political violence,” she said.

Jiore shared some of ISD’s observations pointing out that “voter intimidation laws were top of mind for many election conspiracy communities online,” while “others were mindful of how unpopular violence is and how bad it made their so-called ‘election integrity’ movement look.”

“Those engaging with political extremism had a lot of reasons to keep violence off the table,” she said.