Future of American democracy loomed large in voters’ minds
WASHINGTON >> This week’s ballot had an unspoken candidate — American democracy. Two years of relentless attacks on democratic traditions by former President Donald Trump and his allies left the country’s future in doubt, and voters responded.
Many of the candidates who supported the lie that Trump won the 2020 election lost races that could have put them in position to influence future elections. But the conditions that threatened democracy’s demise remain, and Americans view them from very different perspectives, depending on their politics.
In New Hampshire, voters reelected Republican Gov. Chris Sununu to a fourth term but rejected three congressional candidates who were either endorsed by Trump or aligned themselves with the former president. Instead, voters sent Democratic incumbents back to Washington.
Bill Greiner, a restaurant owner and community bank founder, said the Trump candidates won their Republican primaries by “owning the crazy lane” and then provided an easy playbook for Democrats in the general election.
Greiner, a Republican, said in past years he has fallen in line behind GOP nominees when his preferred candidates lost primaries, but he couldn’t vote for candidates who continued to deny the legitimacy of the 2020 presidential election.
“The election was not stolen, and anyone who leads with and finishes with being an election denier is not going to do well,” he said. “I think that point was proven with exclamation marks.”
In the run-up to the midterm election, President Joe Biden put the spotlight on threats to American democracy, although critics suggested it was a ploy to take attention off his poor approval ratings and voter concerns about the economy.
On Thursday, Biden said the nation’s core principles had endured: “There were a lot of concerns about whether democracy would meet the test. And it did!”
Election Day showed Biden was not alone in his anxiety: 44% of voters said the future of democracy was their primary consideration, according to AP VoteCast, an extensive survey of more than 94,000 voters nationwide. That included about 56% of Democrats and 34% of Republicans.
But among Republicans, those who identify as being part of Donald Trump’s Make America Great Again movement were more likely than others to say the future of democracy was the top factor when voting, 37% to 28%.
The concerns over democracy were shared by members of both major parties, but for different reasons: Only about a third of Republicans believe Biden was legitimately elected, according to the AP VoteCast survey, showing how widely Trump’s continued false claims about the election have permeated his party.
Democrats, meanwhile, believed the spread of election lies and the number of Republican candidates repeating them were an assault on the foundation of democracy.