HateHow extremist candidates fared in the midterms

The 2018 midterms were not kind to most of the country’s extremist and bigoted candidates, but a number of them did garner disturbingly high vote counts. More than 1.8 million Americans voted for known extremists and bigots who were running for national offices. In races for the U.S. Senate and U.S. House, extremists pulled in, on average, 29 percent of the vote.

ADL says that it is important to acknowledge that some of these votes – perhaps even the majority – may reflect voters’ ignorance and/or their decision to vote a straight party ticket. But it’s also impossible to ignore the fact that a certain number of people felt, in the case of each of these candidates, that it was reasonable to vote for an overt white supremacist, or an outspoken bigot. 

The extremists’ sole winner of the night was U.S. Rep. Steve King (R-IA), whose reelection prospects appeared briefly dimmed by his embrace of overtly white nationalist rhetoric. King beat back a strong Democratic challenger to keep his seat in Iowa’s 4th Congressional District. He won his 9th term with 50.4 percent of the vote.

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How the candidate fared

·  King: % of total vote: 50.40% / Total votes: 157,221

·  Jones: % of total vote: 26.50% / Total votes: 56,350

·  Fitzgerald: % of total vote: 528.10% / Total votes: 43,053

·  Stewart: % of total vote: 41.00% / Total votes: 1,352,179

·  Tyler: % of total vote: 1.80% / Total votes: 4,515

·  Fawell: % of total vote: 38.2% / Total votes: 86,518

·  Grossman: % of total vote: 46.20% / Total votes: 108,822

·  Condit: % of total vote: 1.20% / Total votes: 3,473

Average: % of total vote: 29.175% / Total votes: 1,812,131

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Despite their losses, the following extremist and bigoted candidates were successful in another, critical sense: For the past several months, they enjoyed a very public platform for disseminating their vile ideologies to millions of potential voters.

Moreover, the political atmosphere that allowed these candidates to compete also allowed others who are not on this list to rely on racist, anti-Semitic and bigoted arguments against their opponents.