Making baseless claims about the 2020 US election cost candidates for key statewide offices as much as 3.7 percentage points last November, enough to cost them several races, according to a new study.
(Bloomberg) — Making baseless claims about the 2020 US election cost candidates for key statewide offices as much as 3.7 percentage points last November, enough to cost them several races, according to a new study.
States United Action, a bipartisan group pushing for fair elections, found that candidates for secretary of state and governor who denied election results received 2.3 to 3.7 points less of the vote than expected, compared with similar candidates running in similar races.
Joanna Lydgate, CEO of States United Action, said in a statement that the study showed that election denial is “bad politics” in addition to “bad policy.”
The study highlighted candidates who lost races for governor in Arizona, Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania; secretary of state in Arizona and Michigan; and attorney general in Arizona and Michigan.
The result sends a warning signal to Republicans ahead of the 2024 presidential election, as former President Donald Trump has continued to repeat baseless claims about his loss and called for dramatic changes to the US voting system.
Bloomberg has also found that six of nine House candidates targeted by Democrats with attack ads for election denial lost in 2022, narrowing the Republican majority in the House.
A Republican-backed nominee for the Wisconsin Supreme Court also lost after facing attack ads for his role in advising a fake-elector scheme in 2020, although the race centered more on abortion rights than election denial.
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