“Almost all the people I supported won,” the former president wrote on social media platform Truth Social early Thursday. While that’s true, nearly all of Trump’s candidates’ supporters were running for Republican seats, so they were likely to win anyway. Who wins? Watch the latest results live Use Chrome browser for more accessible video player 0:24 “I would like to welcome fake media” Looking at the House of Representatives, for example, the former president has officially endorsed 174 of the 430 Republican nominees. Although 159 of Trump’s handpicked candidates emerged winners, 149 of them were defending Republican seats. A truer measure of a candidate’s success is the degree to which they were able to increase the percentage of people who voted for the Republican Party compared to the 2020 presidential election. Looking at the 71% of counties where more than 90% of the results have been reported, Trump-backed House candidates managed to increase the Republican vote share by two percentage points. That’s far less than the 7.1 percentage point increase for the party in non-Republican counties that Trump supports. The difference was greater in districts held by Democrats. In precincts where the local Republican candidate was supported by Trump, the party’s share of the vote fell by 3.6 percentage points. But when the Republican challenger was not endorsed by Trump, the Republican vote share increased by 5.9 percentage points. Similar patterns were seen in the races to unseat Democratic senators, governors and secretaries of state. Here the Republican vote share fell in areas where the candidates had Trump’s support and rose where they did not. Election deniers While Trump’s support may not have helped Republican candidates, those who doubted or denied the legitimacy of Joe Biden’s 2020 election fared relatively well. Of the 430 Republican candidates for the House, 224 had previously refused or challenged the legitimacy of this election. These candidates performed slightly better than average, increasing the Republican vote in their districts by six percentage points (compared to 5.2 percentage points for other Republican candidates). But it didn’t appear to help Republicans win seats. Election denialists were relatively successful when defending Republican seats, but fared much worse than other Republicans when facing incumbent Democrats. However, many election naysayers won their races. Of the 36 new Republicans in Congress, 18 have contested the 2020 presidential outcome. That includes eight of the 18 Republicans who won House seats from Democrats. Two of those 18 aren’t entirely new to the building they’ll now call their office. George Santos (NY-3) and Derrick Van Orden (WI-3) were both present outside the Capitol on January 6 of last year, attending a pro-Trump rally to deny the election that culminated in the violent storming of the US Legislature body. Read more: Trump’s Midas reverse touches Republican fortunes For the Republican candidates for the Senate, the denial of the 2020 presidential election may have done them more harm than good. Their share of the vote increased by just 0.6 percentage points, while candidates who have not denied the legitimacy of Joe Biden as president saw an increase of 4.6 percentage points. This analysis of Senate races is based on results for 67% of counties, while the analysis of other races is based on 71% or more. Counties were excluded from the analysis if they had not reported results for at least 90% of their precincts at the time of writing to ensure that comparisons with 2020 results were valid. Click to subscribe to Sky News Daily wherever you get your podcasts The Data and Forensics team is a multi-skilled unit dedicated to delivering transparent journalism from Sky News. We collect, analyze and visualize data to tell data-driven stories. We combine traditional reporting skills with advanced analysis of satellite imagery, social media and other open source information. Through multimedia storytelling we aim to better explain the world while showing how our journalism is done. Why data journalism matters to Sky News
