On election night, around 9:30 p.m.—before Texas turned blue, before the other flips in North Carolina and Iowa and on and on—the far-right podcaster Jack Posobiec happened to say something correct on X: “It’s going to get worse.” Posobiec came to prominence in late 2016 with Pizzagate, a conspiracy theory alleging a secret sex trafficking cabal in the Democratic Party, and went on to become one of Stop the Steal’s strongest soldiers, taking a leading role in pushing what became another deadly conspiracy theory: that Democrats stole the 2020 presidential election. But there was precious little conspiracy-mongering from Posobiec and his cohort last night. Instead, there was a series of self-important and increasingly pathetic posts, as they witnessed their power and influence fade before their eyes. They were losers, and their leader quickly confirmed as much. In 2026, Stop the Steal has met an absolute dead end.
Heading into election day, after months of progressive groups organizing election defense and Democrats war-gaming election interference scenarios, there was ample reason to believe we would be facing down another attempt to overturn an election result Trump didn’t like, although what exactly that looked like might be different this time. As the Brennan Center warned, “a new threat to free and fair elections has emerged: the federal government itself.” A redux might look more like a “white collar January 6,” as the hosts of the podcast Posting Through It suggested earlier this week. “Stop the Steal” could be coming from inside the house.
Certainly there were bad signs. In January, there were Trump’s threats about canceling the midterms that press secretary Karoline Leavitt claimed were “jokes.” Trump appointed Ed Martin, a key 2020 Stop the Steal leader, as an acting federal prosecutor for Washington, D.C., after which he served in other Justice Department roles, until departing in August 2026, in order to, according to Trump, “go outside to fight Legal Battles for the upcoming Midterm Election.” Tina Peters, a leading election denier who was imprisoned in Colorado, met with Trump in the Oval Office with her attorney, who said he wanted Trump to essentially declare martial law. At the same time, it seemed that talk of a “stolen” election was down, with claims of a “rigged” election taking more prominence, noted Matt Cohen at Democracy Docket, a shift to narratives claiming that the law made it “too easy” for disfavored groups to vote. Old hand James O’Keefe, once of Project Veritas, tried to make a scandal out of the state’s legal process by which a registered voter can vouch for an unregistered voter, but it didn’t seem to get much traction. It was almost comical how many high-profile Stop the Steal leaders were competing with one another to influence Trump to declare a “national emergency” in order to take over the election.
Then came election day. At first, Chaya Raichik of Libs of TikTok, the prominent right-wing X account that had pushed 2020 election conspiracy theories in the past, attempted to transform news of a handful of minor incidents into evidence of wrongdoing. She shared a CBS News post explaining that not all results may be known on election night, claiming, “Only someone who plans to cheat would say this.” But when she eventually posted news of Democratic wins, it wasn’t to suggest election theft or fraud. It was to do what she built her account on: pointing her audience at a name and photo of a trans woman, or a Muslim man, or a socialist. In this case, however, these posts were about were newly elected state representatives and a U.S. senator.
Even the dedicated election denier Kari Lake, who in 2022 refused to concede her loss in the Arizona governor’s race, broached election theft or fraud only as a question. “Americans, do you think our elections are honest?” she posted on X, at 12:38 a.m. Eastern time on Wednesday. “Did we properly deal with election fraud after the 2020 stolen election after the 2022 stolen election and after the ‘24 rigged elections?”
As for Jack Posobiec, he chalked the election losses up to Trump’s Iran War. The morning after, J.D. Vance later struck a similar note. In place of the stolen election conspiracy theory, there were concessions: They lost, they were admitting, and they lost for a reason.
There was one alternate conspiracy theory offered that may not have immediately read as such. The wins, as Chaya Raichik explained them, were because “Democrats imported millions of foreigners, handed them a bunch of free shit, and then registered them to vote.” This is the so-called “great replacement” conspiracy theory, as mainstream now as J.D. Vance. Raichik didn’t call for patriots to seize ballots or storm counting sites; instead she called on the state. “If we ever want to win again,” she posted, “we need deportations and denaturalizations ramped up on steroids.”
In this election, with wins so vast, there was simply no room for Stop the Steal. Even election deniers lost their races last night. There’s a victory in that—not so much because “democracy held,” as some said, but because people worked hard to make it hold. At the same time, as one particular narrative about stealing elections recedes, we can see more clearly the racism and xenophobia that was always a part of it. Such white supremacism should have been more obvious when (soon to be former) Texas Governor Greg Abbott hired a Stop the Steal guy, the Christian nationalist pastor Nate Schatzlein, as an “election integrity” advisor, only for him to be far more focused on scapegoating Muslims. Far-right influencer Mike Cernovich made it impossible not to see in an X post on Wednesday: “Republicans have a choice. Court the white vote or suffer personal defeat.”
Perhaps the bottom line, though, is that without Trump on board, there is no next step. Trump quickly claimed it wasn’t his loss, and did not contest the results. Without Trump, there was only one other figure to turn to. “God can override,” said the self-described prophet Julie Green on Rumble on Wednesday. “God can overturn. God can throw out. God’s also talked about martial law.”
