There are two big questions about what happens if Trump loses tonight. The first is whether or not Trump will concede the election, or if he will contest the results. And the second is who he will blame for his defeat.
We’ve seen signs already that Trump is gearing up to blame voter fraud. That narrative advanced today with the baseless lawsuit his campaign filed in Nevada. (It was thrown out.) On Tuesday evening, Trump campaign manager Kellyanne Conway signaled that this is becoming gospel for the Trump campaign.
Kellyanne Conway tells @HardballChris Trump is "prepared to address the results as he sees them tonight."
— Sabrina Siddiqui (@SabrinaSiddiqui) November 8, 2016
But Conway also signaled that, should Trump lose, he is going to lay into members of the Republican establishment who refused to support his candidacy.
Kellyanne Conway to @chucktodd: Trump “didn’t have the full support of the Republican infrastructure"
— Robert Costa (@costareports) November 8, 2016
Conway quickly clarified that she didn’t mean the RNC, but Republicans that failed to get in line behind their party’s nominee.
Of course, one thing we’ve learned this election is that even Trump’s closest advisers—the Conways, and the Lewandowskis, and the Pepes—never really truly speak for him, and that they are often contradicted by Trump. But it does seem like Trump and his closest supporters will blame voter fraud and the GOP (alongside the media, obviously) if he loses tonight.