Most congressional Republicans are still avoiding acknowledging a winner in the presidential election, survey finds

Only 27 out of 249 congressional Republicans have acknowledged President-elect Joe Biden's election victory, a Washington Post survey has found.

The results of the survey aren't surprising, given that only a handful of GOP lawmakers have explicitly referred to Biden as the president-elect, but it does provide the most comprehensive look at where the party's elected officials stand.

Post reporters contacted aides for every Republican in the House and Senate between Wednesday evening and Saturday, asking them who the lawmakers consider to have won the presidential election, if they support or oppose Trump's continuing efforts to overturn the results, and if they'll accept Biden as a legitimately elected president should he win a majority of the Electoral College vote, as expected.

The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

The most common answer, by far, to all three questions was actually a non-answer. In fact, more than 70 percent of Republicans left the Post's questions unattended. But two Republicans said they consider Trump the winner of the election, eight said they support his legal challenges, and two said they wouldn't accept Biden as a legitimate president even if he wins the Electoral College vote.

The Senate, proportionally, was more willing to acknowledge Biden's win than the House — 12 of the 52 Republicans sitting in the upper chamber told the Post he won the election, compared to just 14 of the 197 in the lower chamber. Among those 14, six are retiring from politics at the end of the month, suggesting that many Republicans may be staying out of the fray to avoid jeopardizing their re-election chances going forward. Read more at The Washington Post.