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Republican majorities in Congress are at risk in the 2026 midterms. President Trump, though, is still talking about 2020. But how much do GOP voters and candidates still care about false claims about election fraud? NPR's Sam Gringlas reports.
SAM GRINGLAS, BYLINE: A few months after President Trump pressed Georgia's secretary of state to find enough votes to reverse his 2020 loss, Mike Collins launched a bid for the U.S. House claiming Trump did win Georgia.
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MIKE COLLINS: Georgians are sick and tired of weak-kneed, spineless politicians who won't fight for Trump, get to the bottom of 2020 and fix our elections.
GRINGLAS: Collins won that election. Now he's running for Senate, maintaining that the 2020 election was stolen. It's one reason Trump endorsed him in the primary over two alternatives.
LYNN: It worries me for him to get elected. He would not have been my first choice.
GRINGLAS: At a farmers market in the Atlanta suburbs, I met a voter in athleisure named Lynn (ph). She asked NPR to use only her first name for fear of being ostracized from her community. Lynn is a lifelong Republican but is considering voting for Democratic Senator Jon Ossoff, in part because Collins' claims about 2020 really bother her.
LYNN: I get concerned anytime somebody gets pulled into those ridiculous, looking-back discussions.
GRINGLAS: Finishing a plate of grits, Republican Austin Sapp (ph) says he believes election fraud does happen. But he's also ready for the president to move on from relitigating 2020.
AUSTIN SAPP: It is what it is. He lost, and then he won. Beating a dead horse serves no purpose. What is your platform? What are you going to do for me?
GRINGLAS: Just 1% of voters in a New York Times/Siena College poll out this week said election integrity is the top issue deciding their vote this November. After 2020, Gabe Sterling, with the Georgia secretary of state's office, was one of the most visible officials pushing back on Trump's false claims, warning people could get hurt. He says that's not the climate now.
GABE STERLING: It's really big with the media and the far edges of both parties. Regular humans have given this up a long time ago.
GRINGLAS: Sterling says the 2020 obsession is mostly alive among die-hard activists. Though, that's not insignificant. Some now hold key positions on state and local election boards, and they vote in Republican primaries. Sterling spoke with lots of these voters this year as he ran in the GOP primary for secretary of state. He stood firm on Georgia's elections being free and fair. And he did not win.
STERLING: I would say things like, Georgia has the cleanest voter list in America. It would get some boos and hisses. But I would just keep on pounding away.
GRINGLAS: In primaries elsewhere, some one-time critics of Trump's claims have come to embrace them. In Michigan, the GOP Senate nominee Mike Rogers once called Trump's Georgia pressure campaign more gangster than presidential. But while making a 2024 Senate bid, he refused to answer who won in 2020. Then, at a local Republican meeting last fall, after losing that race, Rogers claimed the Senate seat was stolen from him.
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MIKE ROGERS: Now, there was some ballots that showed up at 5:30 - I wish I weren't kidding - in a van. And that swung the election on us. And it happened to be here in Detroit.
GRINGLAS: Michigan Republican strategist Jason Roe says candidates see echoing Trump's claims as a condition for his support.
JASON ROE: Frankly, I think most of the elected officials that still talk about it, it's not necessarily a sincerely held belief. It's usually at, like, a Republican central committee meeting. And it's throwing red meat to the base.
GRINGLAS: That red meat could turn off swing voters in a toss-up state. So come fall...
ROE: I can't imagine any Republican in a general election spending one penny in paid advertising talking about what happened in 2020.
GRINGLAS: And yet Trump is still talking about it, potentially to the detriment of his party's majorities. The president nearly halted Congress as he demanded more voting restrictions and has attempted to take unprecedented control of the voting process. Gabe Sterling says this fixation is by design.
STERLING: It distracts from the Iran war. It distracts from the Epstein files. And this is the ground on which they want to fight.
GRINGLAS: Sterling also says Trump seems to be laying the groundwork to shift blame if Republicans lose. And if that happens, claims about rigged elections could find an audience once again.
Sam Gringlas, NPR News. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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