Concession state­ments by defeated can­di­dates are an important political ritual. They signal the candidate’s adherence to the demo­c­ra­t­ic rules of the game, which depend on parties to settle who holds power via elections and to respect the legit­i­ma­cy of the system in both victory and defeat.

Donald Trump’s attempt to overturn his defeat in the 2020 U.S. pres­i­den­tial election fla­grant­ly violated this norm, raising concerns about a potential wave of non-con­ces­sions among like-minded election deniers running for office in 2022. After hedging as to whether they would accept the results, some prominent statewide can­di­dates did refuse to acknowl­edge the results but the feared avalanche of election denialism never mate­ri­al­ized. Still, experts currently forecast that former President Trump will again refuse to concede if he loses the November 2024 pres­i­den­tial election (median forecast: 93%) and that one or more statewide can­di­dates in 2024 will refuse to concede (75%).

This report offers the most com­pre­hen­sive account of con­ces­sions and explicit refusals to concede in elections for federal office since Trump’s landmark election denial. We measure the frequency of these state­ments among runners-up in the 2020 and 2022 con­gres­sion­al elections from both parties and also identify can­di­dates for whom no public statement on the outcome of the election can be found.