United States | Heads we win, tails you cheated

America’s battle over election laws

The conflict over democracy has escalated since Donald Trump’s exit from the White House

|WASHINGTON, DC

AFTER THE Republicans lost the presidential election in 2012, a period of gloomy introspection set in. The party commissioned an excoriating report. “Devastatingly, we have lost the ability to be persuasive with, or welcoming to, those who don’t agree with us,” it declared. The lesson the Republican Party learned from 2020 is different. There has been no comparable period of inquiry. Instead, the party has found another culprit for its disappointments—widespread election fraud—that it is now committed to rooting out.

This article appeared in the United States section of the print edition under the headline “Heads we win, tails you cheated”

Biden’s big gamble: What a $1.9 trillion stimulus means for the world economy

From the March 13th 2021 edition

Discover stories from this section and more in the list of contents

Explore the edition

Discover more

Former Maryland Governor Larry Hogan, speaks to the press after the Maryland Senate debate in Maryland.

Why Larry Hogan’s long-odds bid for a Senate seat matters

He offers conservatives a pragmatic path beyond Trumpism

Democratic suppporters at the campaign trail for Vice President Harris, Pittsburgh, USA.

Polarisation by education is remaking American politics

The battle for Pennsylvania is a test case for new coalitions of Democrats and Republicans



Hurricane Milton inundates Florida

Three factors laid the ground for its destructiveness

Shirley Chisholm is still winning

The first black woman to run for president taught a lesson in making political change

US election forecast: who will control the House of Representatives?

Our prediction model assesses each party’s chance of winning the chamber