Donald Trump’s bogus election denial movement is the real winner of the Republican primaries

The winner of the Republican primaries is Donald Trump’s bogus conspiracy theory that the 2020 election was stolen from him, with a vast majority of his supporters in Iowa and New Hampshire agreeing, falsely, that Joe Biden was not legitimately elected.

Eighty-six per cent of New Hampshire primary voters who supported Mr Trump believe that the current president is an illegitimate one, according to exit polls.

In Iowa, where caucus goers were asked whether they believed Mr Biden was legitimately elected to the presidency, more than two-thirds said no. That includes 69 per cent of Iowa caucus-goers who supported Mr Trump. Only 11 per cent of his supporters in Iowa and 13 per cent of supporters in New Hampshire believe the sitting president was legitimately elected.

Even before a single vote was cast in either contest, Mr Trump repeatedly told his supporters that the only way he would lose was through widespread fraud, echoing the same false narrative he drove home to his base in the months before the 2016 and 2020 elections, before any ballots were even filled out.

And after his victory in New Hampshire, Mr Trump continued to gripe on his Truth Social in all-caps posts repeating false claims about the electoral process in an election he won, decisively.

As he campaigns for the Republican nomination for president, Mr Trump – fuelled by lies and debunked claims alleging a Democratic-led conspiracy that “stole” the White House and “rigged” elections against him – is priming his supporters to reject a potential loss.

He hasn’t given any indication he would do anything differently than what he did in 2020, when he dispatched campaign lawyers and pressured state officials to overturn results, and then failed to say or do