13 - Conservative Extra-Party Coalitions and Statehouse Democracy

Summary

Over a month after 2020 election night had ended, the results of the presidential contest between former Vice President Joe Biden and Donald J. Trump seemed obvious to all except President Trump and his supporters in the Republican Party. Even as Biden’s victory over Trump became clear in the days following the election, a campaign unfolded to overturn the vote totals and deny Biden his victory. The most worrisome elements have involved armed supporters of President Trump threatening election officials with violence or death. No less extreme has been unprecedented litigation supported by seventeen Republican state attorneys general and more than half of House Republicans asking the US Supreme Court to reverse the election. The case is sure to lose. But in the process, broad swaths of the Republican Party leadership have indicated they are willing to use every institutional lever at their disposal to overturn public opinion as expressed in the voting booth.