Is Democracy All Good Now?
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And I feel like this is the kind of conversation that will make his ears burn. But do you have plans to watch the U.S. play the Netherlands on Saturday? I can't say out loud what I'm thinking, which is that I kind of hate the World Cup. That's like verboten at 538. That's violence. And kind of in this country. Not liking soccer, though, Kaylee is very American. But Americans get into it.

Every however many years the World Cup comes around and suddenly everyone's like- It's because we love America, but not because we love soccer. Hello and welcome to the FiveThirtyEight Politics Podcast. I'm Galen Druk.

Throughout the primaries and in the run-up to the 2020 election, you frequently heard us talk about how Republican candidates addressed the 2020 election and election integrity in general in their campaigns. In fact, we tracked what every single Republican nominee for House, Senate, Governor, Secretary of State, and Attorney General said about the legitimacy of the 2020 election.

About 35% rejected the outcome fully, and another 10% or so were skeptical. We didn't do this because we wanted to make ourselves crazy. We did it because elections are a big part of what we cover here at FiveThirtyEight. And if folks are willing to reject the last election, they might reject the next. And if we can't agree to accept the outcomes of elections, win or lose, then frankly, none of what we cover here at FiveThirtyEight really matters.

So this was a big deal. And now that the votes are in and the election is behind us, I want to take some time to talk about how candidates who rejected the outcome of the 2020 election did and how we should think about the future threat of election denialism. And here with me to do that is politics and tech reporter Kaylee Rogers. She spent a lot of time tracking all of this during the election. Welcome to the podcast. Thanks, Galen. How's it going?

It's going pretty well. You know, I'm excited for that USA Netherlands match Saturday morning. But in the meantime, ready to talk about democracy. So you recently wrote an article for the site titled When Democracy Was on the Ballot in 2022, Voters Usually Chose It. What does that mean? How did you come to that conclusion?

Going into the election, we had this whole list of candidates who denied the outcome of the 2020 election. And many of those individuals did go on to win their races, which we reported out. But I think there was a certain certain kinds of races that were.

were really interesting to me, especially when compared to other statewide races. So we're looking at positions like secretary of state, governor, attorney general. Those state-level positions have much more impact on how elections are run, in particular secretaries of state because they are like the chief election official. It's like the biggest part of their job is running elections, making sure ballots are counted, everything is done properly. And so if somebody is in that role in particular position,

And they've spent the whole campaign denying that the last election was legitimate. It brings up questions about what they're going to do with elections going forward. Will they accept the legitimate results or not? What kind of turmoil could they raise?

So basically, it sounds like there were a bunch of folks who maybe denied the legitimacy of the 2020 election, particularly in the House, maybe voted not to certify the electors, ended up winning. But that in some of the cases where like the election itself was actually the person's job or they might be in a position to certify a future election result, that voters made a distinction there and punished candidates accordingly? Yeah.

Yeah, they were more likely to reject candidates in that position. And I don't want to downplay the role that Congress has. Obviously, certifying the election results is a big part of that process. And those members of Congress have that responsibility. But there is a bit of a distinction there between having sort of direct oversight over how elections are run versus Congress's position. Also, a lot of those candidates, as you mentioned, were incumbents who voted not to certify some of the results in 2020, but maybe didn't.

kind of stopped talking about it after that and didn't make it a big part of their campaign, whereas these other candidates were running on the idea that 2020 was stolen. And so I'll give you an example. So in Arizona, for example, the Secretary of State candidate Mark Fincham, he was a big election denier. He made this a big part of his campaign. Prior to, he was like part of the Stop the Steal movement. He lost by a margin of 4.8

Compare that to Carrie Lake, also a big election denier, but as the governor, running for governor, you know, a little less of a direct impact compared to that secretary of state position. That was a much closer race, but she also lost. But, you know, it was less than one percentage point there. And then if you compare that to the treasurer, another statewide position, in that case, the Republican won.

by quite a large margin, was incumbent. She won by 11.4 percentage points. And, you know, this is a position where there's not really much oversight around the elections. It doesn't really have to do with it. And the Republican won handily. So I think what that shows you is a difference, you know, voters making a distinction between different roles and responsibilities and what they had to say, and not that just like Republicans did poorly in Arizona, for example. Yeah.

So that's a specific example from Arizona. But of course, there were a lot of states where candidates who rejected the legitimacy of the 2020 election were running. What does the broader picture look like?

Like in Arizona, we saw a lot of those swing states, we saw a similar pattern where Republicans running statewide overall who weren't election deniers or who weren't in a position to really influence the election did better, even if they lost. Sometimes they won. In Pennsylvania, we saw this as well. Doug Mastriano lost the governor's race by more than 14 percentage points. Again, he was one of

the biggest election deniers. He attended the January 6th rally that preceded the attack on the Capitol. Comparatively, Dr. Oz lost by less than five points. He had kind of like questioned the results of the election in 2020, but it really wasn't a big part of his campaign. And obviously running for Senate wouldn't have had as much of a direct impact on elections in that state. And so we can see again, like these candidates that

make election denialism a big part of their campaign, really fixate on it, they were rejected by a larger margin than some of these other candidates. As far as secretaries of state in particular, there were seven that we tracked who completely denied the legitimacy of the 2020 election. Only one of them ended up winning his race, Chuck Gray in Wyoming. All the rest of them lost.

You mentioned Doug Mastriano, which sort of brings up the question of how do we disentangle a sort of electoral penalty for being an election denier versus an electoral penalty for being a somewhat extreme candidate in general? I think looking at plenty of political science research,

We find that on both sides of the aisle, being more ideologically extreme makes you generally perform worse in elections. That ultimately, as much as some of the narratives have challenged that over the past handful of years,

that appealing to the median voter is, in a general election, ultimately the sort of best way to win. So, you know, when we talk about Doug Mastriano, sure, he rejected the 2020 election results, but he was also extreme in other ways in terms of aligning himself with people with bigoted views. So how do we sort of disentangle the democracy piece from everything else going on? And maybe it's not possible. I mean, it's tricky. You know, there's one

One thing is that those views signal to voters how extreme the candidate is, especially when they continue to beat that drum over and over again throughout the campaign, that they continue to believe this kind of extreme conspiracy theory about the previous election. I think also, though, the fact that these were these specific positions in some of these crucial states, you know, there were extreme candidates, including election hires who did win races, including some newcomers. They weren't all these incumbents.

Anna Paulina Luna in Florida was a big election denier, pretty extreme candidate. She won her race handily. She's going to be a member of Congress now. So I think the difference partly is in those positions where they would have a direct impact on the actual elections. Seems like at least partially voters took that seriously and weren't willing to take that kind of risk. Whereas if it was somebody running for Congress, they were maybe, you know,

willing to accept it, maybe in spite of these views, maybe because of it, but with less risk of them having a direct impact on how elections are run in their state. Yeah, one polling tidbit that I've seen cited in this conversation about what role did democracy or extremism play in this election is

is that Democrats actually won voters who somewhat disapproved of Joe Biden's performance as president by a 49-45 margin, so by four points. And that's from exit polls, which come with caveats, as we've already discussed on this podcast, but essentially that people who don't actually approve of how the president is performing, but maybe those voters just find Republicans to be more extreme, particularly the ones who...

on the ballot in 2022. And so I think your point about like, maybe you can't disentangle it, but also being an election denier itself is a form of extremism that the median voter theory would suggest would make you perform, you know, worse.

Yeah, exactly. And I think, you know, a lot of Republicans, I think most of the polling still shows a majority of Republicans don't trust the results of the 2020 election, but that doesn't necessarily translate into wanting to still talk about it or voting for a candidate who supports that idea. I think January 6th for a lot of Republicans was kind of a turning point where they saw how far this rhetoric could get them and were turned off by that.

And what we're seeing now is kind of a...

recentering where they might still have questions about the 2020 election, but that's not the most important thing to them right now. And they don't necessarily want to fixate on it anymore. Even, you know, like some of the more extreme groups that I follow online, I'm seeing a lot more chatter about like Elon Musk and Twitter than I am about the 2022 election. When there were some hiccups in Arizona, they had some problems with some of the machines and some delays were caused because of that. Trump went on True Social and was like telling people to go out and protest and

And they didn't. You know, this is a big difference from 2020, where when he told people to go out and protest, they did. They showed up in droves and that kind of was starting the snowball of this Stop the Steal movement. So we've really kind of seen a shift among even those voters who may still have, you know, questions or concerns about 2020.

And to be sure, independent voters play a role in this as well. I was looking at some data this morning that showed this was the first midterm in quite some time where the party in power won independents.

So, you know, it would seem that this is also another piece of data pointing towards Republican candidates just being perceived as too extreme. And look, like, there's a lot of things that go into an electoral outcome. And so I don't think we're going to pretend here on this podcast like democracy issues were the only or even the driving force. There are other things at play, like the Dobbs decision and abortion that go into this as well, undoubtedly. But

for these purposes, we'll focus on democracy. I want to take us back to some polling that the New York Times did in the run-up to the election. It showed that 71% of voters said democracy was at risk in America, but only 7% said that it was the most important problem facing the country. And that polling result was written up with the headline, voters see democracy in peril, but saving it isn't a priority.

Should we amend like, you know, looking back on this election, was that a good or bad use of polling?

I mean, I think it's tricky because that question, is democracy at risk, could be interpreted kind of different ways. If you believe that the 2020 election was stolen, that Democrats committed this widespread fraud, you would think democracy is at risk, but based on inaccurate claims and falsehoods that you've been fed, not based on the reality. Whereas on the flip side, you might think people believing in that is what's putting democracy at risk. And so...

I don't know what exactly side of that or if it's capturing both of it. I think if you care about democracy, it is heartening to see these examples where when really concerning candidates were running for offices, where they would have a lot of power over elections,

That could have caused a lot of chaos, quite honestly. I don't know that it would have meant that election results would have been thrown out per se, but it could have caused a lot of turmoil and further so distrust in elections if some of these individuals had won their races and they weren't. Voters rejected them, even in places where they were happy to vote other Republicans into office. And I think that that's a pretty clear signal. Again, as you said, there's a lot of reasons why people vote for one candidate or another, but this signals that maybe was at least part of it.

Yeah. I mean, I think the spread in New Hampshire, we haven't mentioned this yet, between Chris Sununu, the gubernatorial candidate who was a Republican, and Don Bolduc, the Republican candidate for Senate, was 25. The gap was 25 points. Of course, Sununu won and Bolduc lost. So a pretty dramatic gap there between

your sort of establishment type Republican and more Friar brand Republican who, while Don Baldick walked it back in the general, sort of ran his primary campaign on election denialism in part and joined a letter saying that the 2020 election was fraudulent. Exactly. Yeah. He did kind of try to soften that after he won the primary. But in contrast, Sununu has been like against this

line of thinking from day one. Like he rejected it wholesale from the moment that Trump first opened his mouth and said the election was stolen, which not all Republicans did do. Many of them were kind of pushy-washy or quiet on it or eventually said something. But Sununu was one of the ones that was like, no, the election was legitimate. Okay, so we have some picture here of how voters reacted to election denialism in 2022. When it comes to the candidates themselves who were denying the results of the 2020 election,

When they lost, did they concede? A lot of them have. It's been fairly quiet. You know, there's a couple standouts. Carrie Lake, notably, has been claiming that there were inconsistencies in question her loss. She's refused to concede. But by and large, a lot of them kind of went quietly into the night. Even if they didn't concede, it was sort of, there wasn't a lot of hubbub after the fact. The main thing I've seen is

pointed at or talked about were those small technological problems that they had in Arizona and Maricopa County. Even that, you know, they're sort of grasping at straws there a little bit. I mean, any election, there's going to be some

technical difficulties or slowdowns or things that happen. And in this case, it was pretty minor and was resolved pretty quickly. And there were backups and things in place to make sure that everybody could still vote and that their votes were counted. So they didn't even have this sort of mountain of fictitious evidence that they had in 2020 to point to, to try to build a case of some kind of widespread fraud. I think also the fact that

Republicans

did well in some places, you know, in Florida and some other places, Republicans had a great night. It's different than a presidential election where so much focus is on the top of the ticket and then that sort of that one single result where Republican voters who, you know, could look at a few different areas where they did well, maybe in their local area or their local representative was reelected. You know, they're less likely to then think that there was something wrong with their own election if the candidate that they wanted won.

Yeah. I mean, obviously, candidates shouldn't be cheered for conceding elections they lost. Those are just the rules of the game for anybody. But given the context, I think it's worth asking, do we have a sense of why? Like, why candidates who question the legitimacy of the 2020 election when they themselves weren't even running accepted the results of the elections that they lost and themselves conceded?

I mean, I can't get into their heads. I would wonder if perhaps they weren't completely genuine in their assertion that there was election fraud and were using that as a strategy to try to win. And then when they lost, there's no need to keep campaigning. I think voters turned out for democracy in this election in a measurable way that is heartening. What's disheartening is seeing how many politicians were so happy to adopt a

This belief that there was fraud in the 2020 election that's been disproven that we know is not accurate and use that to try to to gain political advantage, whether or not they even believed it. You know, that's a little disheartening from a democracy standpoint. Right.

Yeah. Now that this is behind us, and it seems like for the most part, candidates who lost themselves aren't trying to rile up voters and believe that there was fraud. Do Americans trust the results of the 2022 election? So we've got a little bit of early polling on that. And

For the most part, yes, including among Republicans. There was some morning consult polling that showed that 52% of GOP voters said that the 2022 election was free and fair. I think it dipped a little bit the next week when they asked the question again, but it was around half of Republican voters said so. Similarly, a poll from Marquette University found that

The majority of Americans and the majority of voters believe that they're or said that they had confidence in the 2022 election. Again, about 50 percent of Republicans said that as well. And that's compared to about 40 percent who said currently that they think they have confidence in the 2020 election. And so we're seeing like some of that confidence come back, which is a good thing. I think also those polls are.

You know, there's a difference between saying, I don't know if I don't know about that election. I don't know if I trust 2020 and having no faith in our electoral systems overall. There are still there was a great political piece. I don't know if it was last year or the year before about Democrats who still believe that 2004 was.

was fraudulent and like will not let go of that belief. It doesn't mean they don't vote or that, you know, they've lost all faith in democracy, but they're still fixated on that one election. So there's always going to be like some segment that has like this fixation or belief or they're not totally sure or they don't trust an election because of some other thing that's been injected into it, like a Trump who's raising money.

these allegations. But again, I think the fact that we're seeing more trust in this most recent election is a good thing and shows that even if they're still unsure about 2020, maybe they're starting to move on from it and sort of regain some of that trust in our elections.

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All told, most of the candidates who denied the legitimacy of the 2020 election who were running to fill positions that could have some effect on future elections lost. In general, extreme candidates seem to not do particularly well overall, even, I think, to some degree on the Democratic side.

Two, once those election deniers lost, they generally conceded. I know Kerry Lake is an exception, but all told, though, there's not now a stop the steal movement, for example, similar to 2020. And on top of that, voters, by and large, although understanding it's a much larger percentage of independents and Democrats who trust the result of this election, a majority of Republicans do trust the result of this election.

Is the threat to democracy that we have been discussing since January 6th now receded? Is it gone? It's scary to make predictions like that, but I think we're definitely entering a new era of it. I would say it's at least in remission and hopefully will not come back with full force. I do think that that January 6th was a turning point for a lot of Americans and

And I think that this election showed the Republican Party that this is not a winning narrative any longer. And so those things combined is hopefully starting to change the tides a bit. I think how close we came to some kind of scary scenarios is...

is still a concern and there are things that can be done to try to bolster our electoral system. And voters' distrust in our election systems is a problem regardless of what created that distrust. It's still something that needs to be addressed by lawmakers and the government to try to build that trust back up.

It does feel very much like a different moment than it was a year and a half ago. So close following the 2020 election, that kind of ferocity has cooled. And like I said, I think it's in remission. We'll see if it comes back. Even Trump, when he had his announcement that he was running again yesterday,

made very little mention of election fraud. I think, you know, there was maybe one small aside, but it wasn't a speech about how 2022 was stolen and we need to fix it and reverse the results. Even he seems to have moved on to some degree.

I think the most immediate concern after January 6th and the events that led up to it was that 2022 could bring election deniers into key offices where they might reject the outcome of the 2024 election, causing something of a constitutional crisis, general chaos, and who knows whatever else.

You said in general the threat is in remission, but do you think that specific threat no longer really applies? That going into 2024, that's not something that sort of we in the media are going to be covering aggressively and is just frankly not really a threat? It's changed, you know. I think it's still something to be on the radar. I do wonder if there could be a...

sort of repeat of 2020 to a certain extent, if Trump, you know, becomes the nominee and then were to lose the race, you know, if he would kind of rile people up again. But if even if that situation happened, Trump would not be in the White House, um,

commanding that sort of army of supporters the way he was previously. And so there's many things that are different going into 2024. And the worst case scenario, which would be, you know, all these governors, all these secretaries of state, all these attorneys general being people who flat out deny that the 2020 election was legitimate, don't believe that our electoral systems are safe and secure, refuse to accept the democratic

result of an election, if all of them were in office heading into 2024, that's kind of the worst case scenario. And that didn't happen. And so that doesn't mean there's no risk at all. And we don't even have to think about it. But I think we're in a very different position than we were coming out of 2020. Wrapping up here, I know something else that you've looked at is the general risk of political violence, apart from maybe how

people in office treat the outcomes of elections or how candidates treat the outcomes of elections. And polling, in particular, on whether or not Americans think political violence is ever acceptable has gotten more attention in recent years. And I'm curious what it looks like now. So when we look at not the politicians, but the people themselves and sort of how they feel about accepting political results peacefully, what do we see?

Yeah, I wrote about this. When you look at individual polls, there are some kind of scary statistics where like one in five Americans say that use of force or violence is justified to advance an important political objective. This was a survey from UC Davis in May and June of this year. You can find those little like one in five, 20% around that who are saying that they think violence for political means is OK there.

There's at least some research that suggests that people responding in those surveys are either not paying close enough attention or they're kind of speaking metaphorically or not, you know, not literally thinking about violence because they're

Research shows when you confront them with actual incidents of political violence, they're against it. They're like, that person should be charged. That should be illegal. There should be consequences for these actions. So people, when faced with the realities of political violence, are much less likely to endorse it. So I think, you know, like with all polling, you kind of have to look at the context and consider other factors.

other aspects of what people might be responding to. And then another thing is if you look at whether or not people say they're concerned about political violence, that's usually a lot lower, which I think suggests that people maybe don't actually think that it's that big of a risk. When asked about whether they think there's going to be violence at polling places or during Election Day or after Election Day in response to the results, a fair amount of people said that they thought there was, but then if they were asked if they were worried about it, they said no, which

you know, kind of undercuts what exactly maybe they're expressing. So, you know, obviously threats of political violence and actual political violence is a problem. Whether or not Americans really genuinely think it's okay to any large degree, I think has maybe been overblown a bit. Just to add, I think that this is kind of hard to capture. And a lot of it is sort of a sense that I'm getting from things like focus groups and like reading about

what people are saying in online forums and

People that I know that live in very right-wing areas. So it's not, it's anecdata. It's not precise. But it does seem like that there was a segment of people who were upset about 2020, didn't believe it was legitimate, but didn't like what they saw on January 6th and felt that that was a bridge too far. And that schism, I really think, changed the course of people's views on this issue in many ways.

Well, I think in general, the takeaways from the 2022 election were that with the usual caveats, folks don't like extremism and don't like anti-democratic shenanigans. I mean...

You know, I think there was some debate leading up to the 2022 election about like how much voters care about this stuff. And when you actually look at some political science research that drills down, if a candidate whose policies you otherwise agree with breaks democratic norms, will you vote against them?

The stats that I had seen were somewhere in the range of like 3% are willing to break with their party and vote against someone just because they've violated a norm. That, you know, the team and the policy priorities come before small d democracy. And while I think that may be in some ways true, it's more complicated than that because, right,

it's been ingrained in us as Americans that democracy is a good thing, right? The entire sort of founding principle of America is rejecting autocracy in order to let the people with caveats govern themselves. And so it gets at something maybe more core than like,

how I think about actual election administration and on a nuts and bolts level. And it also gets at something more core about how I view someone. Like if I, if somebody says that, you know, they don't trust American democracy or they appear to be challenging it, then they seem extreme. So like, I think it is all complicated. Abortion played a role in this election, the economy and other things played a role in this election. Um,

But I think we've seen some... We have reason to be optimistic about all of this. I would say that, obviously, it's way too simplistic to say something like, Mark Fincham was an election denier, and that's why he didn't win. Obviously, that is way too simple. However...

I don't think that anyone could say that being an election denier was a winning strategy in this election, that that was what put anyone over the edge or helped them win. So, yeah, I would be seriously wondering if I want to include that as part of my campaign if I was gearing up to run in 2024. All right. Well, we'll see what happens. What are you going to be covering now, now that this is a little bit behind us?

Now the democracy is saved. I don't have to worry about writing about it anymore. I mean, you know, we're just getting ready. It's like already 2024 season in many ways. So looking ahead at that right now, I'm really looking forward to writing about the Georgia runoff. So we'll have a nice live blog next week with that. Good. Good to remind us. We will once again have an election night live blog next Tuesday, but let's leave it there for now. Thank you so much, Kaylee.

Thanks. My name is Galen Druk. Tony Chow is in the control room and Chadwick Matlin is our editorial director. You can get in touch by emailing us at podcasts at 538.com. You can also, of course, tweet at us with any questions or comments. If you're a fan of the show, leave us a rating or review in the Apple podcast store or tell someone about us. Thanks for listening and we'll see you soon. Bye.