Political figures who took leading roles in trying to overturn the 2020 presidential election appear on track to win the Republican Party’s nomination for governor in several of the country’s biggest battleground states, including Arizona, Pennsylvaniaand Wisconsin.
Their prominence shows how President Donald Trump’s baseless claims that the election was stolen have become an article of faith within the Republican Party, more than five years after he lost to Joe Biden. And it means victories in this year’s midterm elections would give Trump supporters who were central to his efforts to overturn the election key oversight roles in the 2028 presidential election, for which states hold main authority.
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Democracy advocates and Democratic Party leaders say they are alarmed by the denialism but say the issue is likely to take a back seat to other voter concerns such as affordability. Democrats are making a concerted effort to connect denial of the 2020 outcome to broader themes such as corruption, economic anxiety and insider dealing.
“This is an important issue. But it’s not the only issue, and it shouldn’t necessarily be the lead thing,” said Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear, chair of the Democratic Governors Association, a group preparing to make Republicans’ history of election denialism a key issue in 2026. “Almost everyone in this economy is struggling because of [Trump] and these folks that are running, these election deniers, were willing to do anything for this president. So, their past attempts to steal an election were to steal it for a guy that’s made life tougher. They’re certainly not going to stand up to him to try to make life easier.”
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An NBC News poll conducted in March found that inflation and the cost of living were the top issues on voters’ minds in 2026, with threats to democracy coming in second.
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Elections focused on arguments about protecting democracy can present Democrats with a quagmire, as well. In 2024, Democrats sought to counter Trump’s rise by focusing on his role in undermining the election and the need to protect democratic norms. Those arguments largely proved unpersuasive with voters far more focused on issues like prices, leading Trump to win a second term with unified power in Congress.
Brian Lemek, president of Defend The Vote, a group focused on expanding access to voting, said Democrats can focus on both the economy and democracy, but not in a way that sounds out of touch with voters’ basic economic needs, as they did in 2024.
“Democrats learned a really valuable lesson that you need to be out there seeing and hearing from the voters what they want and what they need at a very human level,” Lemek said. “Democracy protection is a huge priority for us, and this election denialism is a real problem. … But rather than focusing on institutional democracy, we need to connect corruption and democracy to the lives of voters and kitchen table issues to win this thing for Democrats.”
Read the full piece in the Washington Post