We know from a recent PRRI poll that nearly a quarter of Trump-positive Republicans believe that if the former President loses the election, he should declare victory and install himself in the White House by any means necessary. Moreover, the attempted coup at the Capitol on January 6, 2021, is not so distant that it’s hard to imagine what that could look like. But we should not expect 2024 to be a simple replay of 2020.
The flurry of right-wing and far-right mobilizing we saw in 2020, much of it through mainstream social media platforms by Stop the Steal, has thus far not materialized in 2024. Rather than building toward mass protests with potential adjacent violence, far-right organizing has been focused on election officials and poll monitoring, including by the Christian Dominionist Gideon 300 project and the far-right militia ecosystem of the American Patriot Three Percenters (AP3).
Such efforts have already resulted in disruption and harassment, particularly in swing states, and local election officials are at the highest risk—particularly where named individuals have been targeted. The second most likely victims of political violence and intimidation efforts in the aftermath of the election, particularly in the case of a Harris victory, are those who have been targeted by former President Trump: journalists and opposition political figures.
There are also potential election disruption threats from the Constitutional Sheriff’s movement, which Political Research Associates has reported on extensively. This movement claims that sheriffs can intervene in election certification, although the legal theory for such intervention is pure fiction. While law enforcement interference with voting, vote counting, or vote certification is a nightmare scenario, there is little evidence that such interference will happen in 2024, much less on a significant scale. There is, of course, the possibility that the rhetoric of some of these sheriffs could signal impunity for individuals who take vigilante action.
Absent the mass mobilization of 2020, upon which organized violence of the Capitol attacks was parasitic, the most likely perpetrators of political violence in 2024 are individuals not closely affiliated with any group but mobilized by far-right rhetoric and the claims of Trump and his surrogates. I prefer not to call such individuals “lone wolves,” as this obscures the way the influencers of the far-right activate them. They’re perpetrators like Kyle Rittenhouse, or the mass shooters in Buffalo and Pittsburgh (and far too many other places). We must acknowledge the possibility of such attacks but also understand that they remain, thankfully, rare.
UPDATE: This recent report from the Institute for Research and Education on Human Rights (IREHR) does a deep dive into right-wing and far-right organizations, agitation, and conspiracy theories related to election denial and efforts to erode public trust in the machinery of voting. Titled “The Big Lie Machine,” the report was published on September 30, 2024, and covers everything you wish you didn’t have to know about organizations like The America Project, the Election Integrity Network, Only Citizens Vote, Fight Voter Fraud, the Election Transparency Initiative and the Voter Reference Foundation among many others.
