What drives Donald Trump and his movement’s belief in voter fraud and election denial?
Of course there are superficial, and obvious, layers: a sense of grief, a desire for revenge from a man known for never admitting loss, and a movement that believes in him unequivocally. There is also a slightly deeper ideological sense – the frustration of a political party being unable to achieve its policy goals due to an electoral defeat. But at the core, researchers and political theorists (including my colleague Jacques Beauchamp) argue, there’s a whole sense of racism and bigotry—reactive hostility toward a conservative white majority that’s losing its grip on power, radicalizing democracy against retention, and explaining this shift. Facilitates voter fraud as a means.
In that context, the grossly obscene and racist speech on display at Trump’s rally Sunday night in Madison Square Garden was no coincidence. This happened after the Speaker warned of the threat of non-whites to the country and its elections.
There was Steven Miller, the extreme anti-immigration hawk, warning that Trump was fighting a system that was trying to “take away your voice, take away your vote, take away your right to your own country.” To defend the American identity that voted for Trump, he said: “America is for Americans and Americans only!” (Also used as “America for Americans”). KKK slogan in 1920.).
There was former Fox News anchor Tucker Carlson, warning of a “leadership class” that Trump supporters “hate their values and their history and their culture and their customs.” [and] Really hates them that it’s trying to replace them.”
And there Donald Trump Jr. claimed that Democrats, “instead of taking care of Americans,” thought it would be “easier to replace those who would be reliable voters.”
These comments not only echo right-wing “Great Replacement” conspiracy theories; They update the GOP’s stolen electoral narrative with a new villain. In 2020 it was “the urbanVoters who were coded as primary perpetrators of voter fraud, in 2024 Immigrants and non-citizens Those are frauds incarnate and will be blamed for another loss of Trump.
Trump has made this claim for years (attributing to his 2016 popular vote loss and 2020 non-citizen vote loss in Arizona). But this time, it seems, who claims is Much more mainstream.
In September, during the first and only presidential debate between Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris, Trump made it clear who he would blame for the election defeat in November. He said, our elections have been bad. “And a lot of these illegal immigrants are coming in, they’re trying to cast their votes. They don’t even speak English, they don’t know what country they’re actually in and these people are trying to vote them out, and that’s why they’re letting them come into our country.”
The ugly voter fraud rhetoric of the MAGA movement has deep roots
an array Republican member of CongressGOP activists, and state officials are complicit Similar beliefs about voter fraud were aired on stage Sunday nightAs a significant proportion of voters – About 85 percent are Trump supporters Concerned about non-citizen voting. That belief, research and polling suggests, is tied to racial resentment and fear-mongering about a rapidly diversifying country that is skewing toward excess among Trump voters.
in Study and research This summer the Brennan Center for Justice’s Kevin T. Led by Morris and Ian Shapiro of Tennessee State University, the authors found a strong correlation between beliefs and talk of voter fraud and racist rhetoric in the 2020 election. They found that the focus of right-wing voter fraud talk in 2020 was predominantly black cities, as opposed to multicultural or majority white cities; that electoral confidence declined the most after 2020 among “racially disaffected whites”; And these “racially disaffected white Americans” were especially likely now to believe in voter fraud.
They argue that the dynamic exists because these racist accusations of fraud do one thing for these Americans: they allow them to preserve their sense of superiority over non-white Americans and theoretically support democracy, while still rejecting election results with which they disagree. . Thus, racial discourses of voter fraud serve a purpose for elites as well.
“By focusing allegations of electoral fraud on black individuals and municipalities, elites made their claims more credible to white audiences,” Morris and Shapiro write. “White Americans were more susceptible to these narratives precisely because they leveraged selective abuse and produced associations between races.”
In other words, racist discourses of voter fraud exploit white anxieties and fears of change, while reinforcing a political position that emboldens the conservative elites who make these accusations.
Under this theory, the arguments Trump and his allies are making this year make a lot more sense. per Voting Outside of Michigan State University, Trump voters this cycle, at least in Michigan, are more likely to say the country is “changing too fast, undermining traditional values” than in 2016. The researchers were the first to find a strong correlation Between Aversion to Social Change and Votes for Trump.
That dividing line is becoming clearer now, with voters who told pollsters that “by embracing different cultures and lifestyles, our country continues to thrive” lining up sharply for Harris.
This division is a threat to a multi-ethnic, multicultural, pluralistic society.
“At a time when America’s multiracial democracy appears fragile, groups are ready to lose power over rote narratives linked to race and crime to legitimize their denial of free and fair elections,” Morris and Shapiro argue.
And on Sunday night, Trump once again reminded the world that he thinks this division is beneficial. “For the last nine years, we have been fighting against the most evil and corrupt forces on earth,” he exclaimed. “With your vote in this election, you can show them once and for all that this nation is not theirs. This race is yours. it’s yours
