Morning Consult Tracking 2024 is a biweekly newsletter analyzing our high-frequency data on the key trends, candidates, voter groups and issues that will decide who controls the White House and Congress in 2025 and beyond.
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The more things change (the more they stay the same)
Earlier this month I wrote about how we shouldn’t be surprised if Trump wins a second term in office. We have more to come on that — as well as on Kamala Harris’ path to victory — in our final Election Watch report of the cycle in the next few days. (Make sure to register for our final pre-election webinar on Monday as well!)
But today I want to talk about what happens if Trump loses again: How he might react and, consequently, how Republican voters might react.
You may recall that we tracked voters’ confidence in the U.S. electoral system throughout the fallout from the race four years ago, when Trump’s loss to Joe Biden resulted in a massive decline in trust in elections among Republican voters.
For the past four months, we’ve been similarly tracking these attitudes, and as you’ll see below, little has changed since the presidential transition that followed the 2020 election.
Since our tracking began in July, Democrats have consistently been far more likely than Republicans to say that the 2024 election will “definitely” be free and fair and that they trust the U.S. elections system “a lot.”
The 18% of Republicans in our latest survey who say they trust U.S. elections a lot is virtually identical to the 15% of GOP voters who said the same in our poll conducted the week before Biden’s inauguration. And the 27% of Republicans who are sure that 2024 will definitely be a free and fair election is also similar to the 19% who said the 2020 contest was free and fair just before Biden took office.
In other words, Republican voters’ skepticism of the security and validity of U.S. elections remains low, with very few expressing confidence that the 2024 race will be above board. That means the GOP base is primed to embrace attempts to sow doubt about the election outcome if Harris wins.
In Trump they trust
Obviously, Trump is the key figure to watch in the coming weeks. Public opinion tends to flow from the top down, and when it comes to the conservative half of the country, Trump’s the undisputed top dog.
It was his baseless allegations of widespread voter fraud in 2020 that eroded Republican voters’ confidence in elections, and for the most part, his version of reality remains theirs.
According to our latest survey on the topic, 57% of Republican voters say they have “a lot” of trust in Trump to be honest about the validity and security of U.S. elections, quite a bit more than the next most trusted spheres of influence: GOP officials, the Supreme Court and Fox News.
That disparity is why the Republican Party remains in Trump’s grasp. As we saw and documented in the fallout from the 2020 election, influential Republican messengers in the media and on Capitol Hill saw their popularity and credibility with Republican voters drop sharply as they clashed with Trump’s claims of election fraud.
Where that leaves us
A Trump loss next week would provide another natural inflection point for his relationship with the GOP’s elected leaders and influencers, who have over the past several years have found that there’s little, if any, safety in numbers when it comes to breaking with Trump.
It’s not a given that Trump will try to take the campaign to “Stop the Steal” as far as he did four years ago in the event of another loss. After all, his legal exposure on federal charges related to the events of 2020 would never be higher, and another pressure campaign could further imperil his chances in court.
But if he does try to sow doubt on the results of another election that he loses, it would probably behoove the rest of the official Republican Party to put more effort into rebutting those claims in order to move on and chart its new course.
Cameron Easley is Morning Consult’s lead analyst for U.S. politics. Prior to moving into his current role, he led Morning Consult's editorial coverage of U.S. politics and elections from 2016 through 2022. Cameron joined Morning Consult from Roll Call, where he was managing editor. He graduated from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Follow him on Twitter @cameron_easley. Interested in connecting with Cameron to discuss his analysis or for a media engagement or speaking opportunity? Email [email protected].
