Washington (AFP) - Conspiracy theorists backed by Donald Trump were sent packing in many hotly-contested US midterm races, but scores who embraced his bogus claims of a stolen 2020 election won lower-profile contests -- stoking fears of chaos in the next Congress.
Despite voters in swing states rejecting his attempts to relitigate 2020, the continued support from Trump's resilient base emboldened him to launch his 2024 campaign last week on the same platform of baseless accusations of voter fraud.
"Realistically, what we all know we're about to see is the Donald J. Trump show, Act II, Scene I," political analyst Aron Solomon, of lawyers' marketing agency Esquire Digital, predicted of the coming two years.
"No matter how much we hope that Congress focuses on the building blocks necessary to restore a greater and deeper faith in democracy...we are about to witness a political telenovela of unparalleled proportions -- so we should all buckle up."
The November 8 ballot was seen as a rebuke of the authoritarian Republican far right, as the party failed to take the Senate and won only the barest of House majorities despite predictions of a "red wave."
Yet two years after Trump fired up a mob that stormed the US Capitol in a failed bid to stop the certification of President Joe Biden's victory, election deniers will make up a large majority within the 2023 House Republican caucus.
Enormous sway
The "Grand Old Party" lost most of the key Senate battlegrounds and many statewide offices that help oversee voting, amid complaints from within its ranks over the quality of Trump-backed candidates.
But some 170 Republicans who rejected the 2020 outcome won House seats and will have enormous sway over the choice for speaker -- the official who oversees the day-to-day business of legislation in the lower chamber.
Many belong to the hardline House Freedom Caucus, which typically has 35-45 members and is expected to wield its increased influence in a razor-thin Republican majority to press Trump's agenda of revenge against his political foes.
With a Democratic Senate and a House being pulled to the right, observers expect two years of legislative gridlock and endless investigations of the Biden administration rather than action on crime, inflation and other so-called "kitchen table" issues.
Outside of Washington, the pro-democracy lobby group States United Action estimates that around a third of the country will be represented in 2023 by a governor, attorney general or secretary of state who has cast doubt on the legitimacy of elections.
Democrats and Republicans in these positions were key bulwarks against attempts by Trump and his acolytes in 2020 to have the results in their states overturned.
In the Senate, which will be evenly-divided or in a 51-49 split favoring the Democrats by the time the midterms are settled, a handful of winning Republican election deniers includes Rand Paul of Kentucky and controversial Ohio venture capitalist JD Vance.
'Democracy can prevail'
And some of the year's most prominent misinformation spreaders coasted to victory in races for House seats, including hardline Trumpists Matt Gaetz and Marjorie Taylor Greene, as well as Greg Pence, the brother of former vice president Mike Pence.
Elaine Luria, a Democrat on the House committee investigating the attack on the Capitol, was ironically put out to pasture in Virginia by an election denier who opened a 10,000-vote lead.
"The results of this year's midterm election are worth celebrating.Most voters rejected giving election deniers power over their votes," said Thania Sanchez, of States United Action.
"But we need to keep in mind that election deniers did win statewide office in some races, and in other states they already hold positions of power...The threat to our democracy isn't over.Our foot is still on the gas when it comes to protecting our free and fair elections."
A group of incoming secretaries of state at a pro-democracy event last week announced a drive against efforts to subvert the election process, proposing a raft of new laws, including making harassment of election workers and volunteers a felony.
"What the 2020 election showed was that democracy can prevail against an unprecedented effort to overturn the election results of a fair and free and accurate election," said Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson, who was reelected to a second term.
She added though that after the 2020 election that saw Trump unseated and the 2022 midterms, democracy was just "two-thirds of the way" to being saved.
"Act two ended with a success for democracy just as act one did," she said."But we now have act three -- the 2024 presidential election."
