“A new CNN poll found that 78% of Republicans do not believe that Biden won last November and is therefore not the legitimate president.”
– CNN Poll conducted by SSRS August 3 through September 7, 2021 (margin of sampling error of plus or minus 2.8 percentage points)
"The real problem is we have one of the two legacy parties that is completely bought into this and doesn't want to hear anything else but a confirmation of that untruth that has been told and that, I think, is the most dangerous thing facing our democracy," sayd Matthew Dowd, a former strategist for ex-President George W. Bush.
Among Republicans, 78% say that Biden did not win and 54% believe there is solid evidence of that, despite the fact that no such evidence exists. That view is also deeply connected to support for Trump. Among Republicans who say Trump should be the leader of the party, 88% believe Biden lost – including 64% who say there is solid evidence that he did not win – while among those Republicans who do not want Trump to lead the Party, 57% say Biden won legitimately.
(Jennifer Agiesta and Ariel Edwards-Levy. “CNN Poll: Most Americans feel democracy is under attack in the US.” CNN. September 15, 2021.)
What Does This GOP Disbelief Mean?
A Monmouth University poll conducted February 25- March 1, 2021, found 29 percent of Republicans say they will never accept Biden as president. And, of course, that belief was also echoed by rioters who breached the Capitol on January 6 in the effort to stop the election results from being certified.
Future Election Uncertainty
The lack of trust in the election system has led to Republicans being more skeptical about the election results. Looking to future elections, the CNN poll reported that 51% of all Americans say it's at least somewhat likely that an election in the next few years will be overturned by elected officials because their party lost, while 49% say that is unlikely.
Democracy Is Under Attack
Views on this prospect are more closely tied to perceptions of the threat facing American democracy than to partisanship. Those who say that democracy in America is under attack are most apt to believe it's likely that an election will be overturned for partisan reasons (58%), while most who do not see democracy as under attack say that's unlikely (58%). Among Republicans, 57% say an overturned election is very or somewhat likely, while 48% of independents and 49% of Democrats feel the same way.
Return of Trump As Candidate
The lie that the last election was a fix is already shaping the terrain in which candidates, especially Republicans, are running in midterm elections in 2022. And the widespread belief that Trump was cheated out of power is building the former President a 2024 platform to mount a GOP presidential primary bid if he wishes
Future Insurrections
Longer term, the fact that tens of millions of Americans were seduced by Trump's lies about election fraud poses grave questions about the future of America's democratic political architecture itself. Ultimately, if a large minority of the population no longer has faith in rule by the people for the people, how long can that system survive?
And if the will of millions of people is no longer expressed through voting, what other outlets are there? Already, the January 6 insurrection has shown what happens when aggrieved groups – in this case incited by a massive lie – take matters into their own hands.
The Frightening Possibility
The Republican acceptance of Trump's big lie makes for an uncertain future. The truth is, the less you care about what voters want, the closer you move to authoritarianism. The Republicans strategy is the hope to “game” elections, and Trump has taken the next logical step: Try to disenfranchise voters not only before but after elections.
The incredible part of the equation is that an American President was able to reinvent the truth in plain sight, and get away with it … at least in one political party's eyes. Now, Trump is poised to reap the fruits of his own anti-democratic campaign. His lock on the party grassroots appears to give him a prohibitive advantage in the next presidential primary campaign if he decides to run.
The “Big Lie” allegations are getting a second wind. Republicans are expected to believe the falsehoods, pretend they do or, at bare minimum, not let it be known that they don’t. Allegiance to a lie has become a test of loyalty to Donald Trump and a means of self-preservation for Republicans.
Do you want a historical analogy? Former Obama administration Attorney General Eric Holder offers one. Holder says …
"I think about ... those democracies that were lost in the middle part, the early part of the 20th century where democracy was not adequately defended and authoritarian regimes rose. And it wasn't because democracy was unpopular. You know, democracy was strong. But the reality is the defense of democracy was weak, and we cannot allow that to happen in this country."
Trump’s election lie has become GOP orthodoxy. But, the real issue is Republican lawmakers using the ploy for an excuse to practice voter suppression in the United States. The fact that so many people believe the big lie causes GOP candidates to go to the voters and say, “We're going to make sure that only the Republican can win.”
As Congressional Republicans’ attempted to overturn the 2020 election, state-level officials began a disenfranchisement blitz, introducing more than 160 bills this year to restrict ballot access going forward.
The notion that lawmakers can simply disregard the will of the people is an affront to the very idea of representative democracy. And yet Republicans no longer seem to be exerting so much effort trying to disguise their motives. Eric Lutz of Vanity Fair explains …
“One lesson Trump taught them (Republicans) is that they need not be so subtle about this kind of thing; much of the GOP base was emboldened, rather than turned off, by his increasingly audacious attacks on the electoral system. For a party that has no real platform and represents fewer Americans, and which apparently has no immediate interest in evolving, limiting or disregarding its opponents’ voters may be the most reliable path to power.
“Thanks to Trump, some of them may no longer be so shy about saying so. 'They don’t have to change all of them,' a county-level election official in Georgia said of voting laws at a Republican meeting in January. 'But they’ve got to change the major parts of them so that we at least have a shot at winning.'”
(Eric Lutz. “Trump’s Election Lies Are Fueling a New GOP Voter Suppression Crusade.” Vanity Fair. February 9, 2021.)
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