Four years ago, heading into election day, the tension and foreboding that many people are feeling right now was slightly less-formed and more uncertain. Trump had suggested that the election was going to be stolen from him, but we hadn’t yet seen armed Trump supporters surround the bland office buildings where votes would be tallied. Trump had declined to promise a peaceful transition of power, but the shape that would take on January 6 was not clear.
This time, if something violent is coming after the presidential election, we know much more about what to look out for, who might be behind it, and where to look in advance. Based in part on 2020, we can anticipate opportunities for far-right formations to mobilize supporters, attempt to intimidate election workers counting votes, or support local officials who refuse to certify election results. Trump and the GOP galvanized those far-right efforts in 2020, spreading conspiracy theories that inspired Trump supporters to join in disruptions. This time, the campaign claims to have recruited more than 200,000 volunteers to “Protect the Vote.” If you want to know what to watch for and where to look, this is it: Trump will likely announce his victory, no matter the result; a convergence of far-right paramilitary groups with the Trump campaign could follow, in the cities and counties they’re groundlessly claiming are havens for election fraud. As proof, they will offer invented examples of voter fraud, collected by far-right and Trump-connected election volunteers that they have trained.
The groups who backed Trump’s post-election efforts to remain in office were already active and being monitored by researchers and journalists prior to Election Day 2020. Today, many of those groups, such as the Oath Keepers, appear less visible and less active. One exception appears to be the Proud Boys. Like the Oath Keepers, much of its leadership was prosecuted in connection with the January 6 attack on the Capitol, including former chairman Enrique Tarrio, who was sentenced to 22 years in federal prison for seditious conspiracy in 2023. Still, the Proud Boys continued to mobilize, with a focus on anti-LGBTQ harassment and threats, such as gathering at Drag Story Hour events around the country, from Manhattan and San Francisco to Helena and Cleveland.
The Proud Boys still embrace the role Trump made for them in his infamous debate answer in 2020, in which he directed the group to “stand back and stand by.” Some reporting indicates that at least some chapters of the Proud Boys have been active ahead of the election in Telegram groups, a more private social messaging platform. Some of the content points toward to the group anticipating they’ll be tapped by Trump after the election, like one video noted by the New York Times, captioned, “1/20/25: Trump is sworn in as President. 1/21/25: Me and the Proud Boys begin the deportation.” Much more is concerned with mobilizing around the election itself.
If they mobilize, where will it be? The swing states that are most decisive in the presidential race seem likely to get the most attention and momentum. This is what happened in 2020, for example with the sustained presence outside the counting center in Maricopa County, Arizona. As one of the states where results are likely to come in later, Arizona is also an opportunity for election deniers to seize on any delay or issue. One of the state’s most prominent 2020 election deniers, Kari Lake, is running for the U.S. Senate—despite or perhaps because of the fact that she still maintains she won her 2022 race for Arizona governor. Lake has also been tapped by the Republican National Committee to train MAGA-aligned poll watchers.
There’s a recent history of armed election threats in the state: In October, a man was charged in Maricopa County for firing shots into the front doors and windows of a Democratic National Committee office on three occasions this fall. There is continued concern about militia groups like American Patriots Three Percent, or AP3, who organized members to engage in armed ballot box surveillance in Arizona in 2022. In early October, the independent media organization Unicorn Riot reported leaked Telegram messages that exposed some of AP3’stactics. An activist who infiltrated the group and was the source for the messages has warned, “Most of the so-called lone wolves who participated in the 2022 ballot box watching in Arizona were not ‘lone’ at all—far from it.”
Michigan will be another state to watch. In 2020, Stop the Steal activists attempted to disrupt election workers in Detroit. One of them, who had livestreamed himself amongst the crowd, screaming for supporters to “Get down here!” is now working as a regional campaign director in the state for the Trump campaign, NBC has reported. He’s not the only one: The far-right troll Jack Posobiec has moved from stoking Pizzagate to training poll workers in Michigan for the RNC, telling these would-be election monitors, “it doesn’t matter who votes. It matters who counts the votes.”
Concerns about election violence are now mainstream: Recent polls found that one third of Americans say they don’t have confidence in a peaceful transfer of power; among young voters, only 20 percent are confident there will be a peaceful transfer of power. In battleground states, 57 percent of voters are worried Trump supporters will turn violent if he loses; 31 percent fear Harris voters becoming violent if she loses. Across the country, nearly one in five Republicans say they want Trump to declare the election invalid and do “whatever it takes” if he loses, compared with 12 percent of Democrats if Harris loses.
There are numerous other examples those concerned about election violence can point to: the ballot box fires in Oregon and Washington; the two Florida men who have intimidated Harris voters at polling places, one with a machete and one with his fists. But rather than panic, it’s also important to remember that more research and effort has gone into identifying, tracking, and predicting election interference this time around. Those encouraging violence don’t just aim to steal or disrupt an election with force, but to intimidate people from voting. So far, there’s nothing indicating they have succeeded in that.
