Why do Republicans undermine their election results?

Trying to recover after the shakes of Wednesday’s bananarepublic-like coup attempt, many civic optimists are appropriately highlighting that the dikes protecting American democracy held. Vice President Mike Pence upheld his constitutional duty over and against his personal loyalty to President Donald Trump. After sheltering in place for their own protection against a riotous mob, members of Congress did their constitutional duty to certify the will of the people in the presidential election won by Joe Biden.

It is true that democracy survived the assault, albeit bruised and battered.

But even after the insurrection was quelled, six Republican senators and 121 Republican members of the House continued to object to election results. Their subversion of the democratic transition of power is not only disturbing, but puzzling, because it undermines Republican victories.

In many elections, as the president goes, so goes the president’s party. That was decidedly not the case in 2020.

The election was a remarkably strong one for Republicans. The razor-thin but historically monumental victory of both Democratic senatorial candidates in Georgia’s runoff elections became crucial to national politics precisely because the Democrats fared far worse than expected with a Biden victory. Because Democratic hopes to garner a several-senator majority were dashed, the Georgia runoffs became a lifeline, resulting in a 50- 50 senatorial split. In the House, where Democrats had expected to widen their slim majority, voters narrowed it. (Currently they have 12 more seats than Republicans, with three elections still in play or in runoff.) Democratic hopes were even more soundly trounced in state legislative races. Democrats failed to achieve every statehouse flip targeted by the Democratic National Commitee.

Many factors underlie the combination of Biden’s win with strong Republican showings, including pernicious effects of gerrymandering in some states. But a more civically intriguing factor was significant levels of split-ticket voting. In some districts that Biden won, so too did Republicans running for Congress. In some districts where Trump won by narrow margins, other Republican candidates won by wider margins. In Maine, the senatorial election went to a moderate Republican despite the state going for Biden. In several states Biden victories failed to budge Republican control of state legislatures.

Split-ticket voting had pervasive statewide effects on federal elections in Nebraska, Texas and Maine, with notable effects in specific districts and local elections elsewhere. Split-ticket voting deserves attention because it defies prevalent characterizations of contemporary American politics as stridently partisan. Some Democratic political analysts lamented legislative results of split-ticket voting, blaming it on wildly erroneous pre- election polls that predicted a blowout presidential election for Biden. They speculated that centrist voters who disliked Trump but placed stock in those polls leveraged their bets to promote checks and balances in party politics.

Whatever the explanation, the math is clear. If Biden’s election was illegitimate, so too was the election of many Republicans. The ballots in question are the same ballots.

This elephant in the room deserves more attention. Why do some Republicans delegitimize not only Biden’s, but also their own, victories? Has the theater of politics become so cynical that they simply don’t care about the illogic of pillorying ballots that elected them? Or do these Republican naysayers come from districts delineated so protectively that they consider their own seats an entitlement? Or do they cower so before the potential post- election power of Donald Trump that they would rather call their own legitimacy into question than cross the defeated president?

Americans deserve real, not just speculative, answers. Every one of the Republican lawmakers who objected to checked and rechecked, counted and recounted, certified election results should be asked: Why do you think your and many other Republicans’ election was invalid and fraudulent?