AILSA CHANG, HOST:
Overall, it was a night full of stunning victories for Democrats. And as Republican losses continue to mount, President Trump seems to be accepting it, even as he has spent the last 10 years claiming massive fraud in American elections and had even tried to overturn his loss in 2020. NPR voting correspondent Miles Parks joins us now to talk about all of this. Hi, Miles.
MILES PARKS, BYLINE: Hi there.
CHANG: OK, so catch us up on what Trump has specifically said about the results so far.
PARKS: I mean, he said explicitly that he would accept them. First, he said this in an interview around 10:30 p.m. last night with The New York Times, and then again in an interview with Bret Baier on Fox News.
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BRET BAIER: You're going to accept all these races, right?
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: Yeah, sure I'll accept.
BAIER: Yeah.
TRUMP: Why wouldn't I?
PARKS: To be clear, this normally would not even be news, but with Trump's...
CHANG: Right.
PARKS: ...Track record, it is, right? And there was some conspiracy theorizing online last night about different issues in different states. But it was a clear example of what happens when that online chatter is not elevated by candidates and politicians.
CHANG: Totally. But I mean, do you have any thoughts on why President Trump did not claim fraud this time around?
PARKS: It's obviously harder to do with a loss that is this resounding, right? There was no red mirage where it looked like Republicans might win early in the night. And Trump was not on the ballot last night. But also all year, in conversations I've had with local officials, it was clear that these sort of fraud narratives were not catching on with voters in the same way they were a couple years ago. Part of that could be that this is the first federal cycle where the - what we're seeing is these fraud narratives be trotted out after Trump already won. So that kind of undercuts them to some degree. Carly Koppes, a Republican county clerk in Weld County, Colorado, told me recently that Republicans in her county were also just kind of tired of the shtick.
CARLY KOPPES: You have to remember, when you try to reignite a fire that has already burned, you're never going to get the same impact in volume.
PARKS: All that said, the thing I heard over and over again from experts is that if this had come down to one or two seats, it may have been a different story last night.
CHANG: OK. Well, I get that maybe the fraud claim thing is getting old, but Miles, over the past two years, the Trump administration has put - what? - an unprecedented amount of resources into trying to find voter fraud. Where does all of that effort go from here?
PARKS: I mean, leading up to Election Day, the administration was publicizing its efforts almost every single day - new threats to voting officials, press releases. And that public showing may slow down, but it does seem like that same work is going to continue. You can just listen to Secretary of Homeland Security Markwayne Mullin on Fox yesterday.
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MARKWAYNE MULLIN: After this election, we'll be gathering all the data, we'll be gathering the voting logs, and we'll be going through those and making sure that no illegals voted.
PARKS: We've seen that agency come out with similar reports over the last two years that have had significant flaws and come nowhere close to proving the fraud Trump has claimed at various times. But one thing I'll be watching as Democrats take over the House next year is whether they set their investigative sights on this voting work that's been happening at DHS and at the Department of Justice, since there are real questions about the legality of that work when it comes to the use of Americans' personal data.
CHANG: Can I also ask you about the whole redistricting battle? Because that played out over the past two years. And I think a lot of listeners are wondering why Democrats won a wide majority in the House, considering all of Trump's efforts to get Republicans to draw new districts with built-in advantages for Republicans. How do you square that?
PARKS: The effort basically failed. Texas is the most glaring example here. It was the state that first responded to Trump's request to redraw, putting five different Democrats in Trump plus-10 districts, and Democrats won 4 out of those 5 seats and also flipped a couple other seats in Texas as well. And it was a similar story in Florida as well, where Democrats look on track at this point to potentially hold all four of the districts that were redrawn to give the GOP an advantage. One takeaway there is that redrawing maps based on shifting political dynamics is a pretty dangerous game. It can backfire, right? It's also hard not to wonder whether all of this messing with the system potentially energized Democrats in some of these places to turn out.
CHANG: Well, speaking real quick of turnout, I know votes are still being counted, but do we have a sense of what turnout looked like?
PARKS: It was extremely high. Michael McDonald, who runs the University of Florida's Election Lab, estimates this will end up being the second highest midterm turnout in the past hundred years.
CHANG: Wow.
PARKS: And when you think about a year where voters said they were feeling incredibly anxious about potential federal interference or law enforcement at the polls, voting rights groups are celebrating that turnout as a testament to Americans' resolve.
CHANG: That is NPR's Miles Parks. Thank you so much, Miles.
PARKS: Thank you. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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