Candidates who have questioned or denied past election outcomes are running in 23 states — including five presidential battlegrounds — for statewide offices that can play roles in administering or certifying elections, according to a new analysis by States United Action shared with NPR.
A new analysis from States United Action, a nonprofit that tracks candidates’ positions on election results, identifies at least 53 candidates seeking statewide offices that can influence how elections are administered, certified, or legally enforced.
States United said it reviewed races in 39 states holding elections in 2026 for offices that interact with election administration or certification — including secretary of state and governor, and, in some states, attorney general.
The organization classifies a candidate as an “election denier” if the candidate meets at least one of five criteria, including falsely claiming that Donald Trump was the rightful winner of the 2020 presidential election or supporting efforts to undermine the results after audits and legal challenges had concluded.
Joanna Lydgate, States United’s CEO, said the group’s intent is to help voters understand candidates’ views on elections.
“The goal is to be able to provide voters with the most accurate information possible,” Lydgate said, “and understand exactly what these candidates stand for and whether they fundamentally believe in free and fair elections in this country.”
Several presidential battleground states are highlighted in the analysis. States United said Georgia and Michigan will both elect new secretaries of state and governors in 2026, and that candidates who have denied election results are running for those roles.
The NPR report also points to the pressure election officials faced after the 2020 vote. In Georgia, Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger rejected Trump’s request to “find” 11,780 votes. In Michigan, Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson reported that armed protesters came to her home in the weeks after the election.
In Arizona — another presidential battleground — States United said election deniers are running for all three of the statewide positions it describes as critical to election oversight: governor, secretary of state and attorney general. NPR reported that Rep. Andy Biggs, who is running for Arizona governor, voted against certifying the 2020 presidential election results in Congress and contacted a key Arizona lawmaker in 2020 to discuss investigating other ways to interfere with the state’s certification process.
States United and NPR reported that the number of election-denying candidates in statewide races is lower than in recent election cycles. Lydgate attributed the decline to candidates concluding that election denial is a poor strategy in competitive general-election races.
NPR also cited its own post-2022 review, which found that Republican candidates for secretary of state who denied the 2020 results generally underperformed other GOP candidates in competitive states. A separate States United analysis of the same election estimated an “election denial” penalty of about three percentage points.
Brendan Fischer, who leads research on election subversion efforts at the Campaign Legal Center, told NPR that an “election denial infrastructure” has developed since 2020 and continues to influence Republican politics even if explicit election denial remains a minority position.
“The election denier movement still represents a tiny, tiny minority of the country,” Fischer said. “But it is an energized and active force within Republican politics.”
