Leonhardt) have expressed alarm at the "growing movement inside one of the country's two major parties—the Republican Party—to refuse to accept defeat in an election". In a survey by journalists (of the Washington Post) less than two months before the 2022 congressional election, a "majority of Republicans" in "important battleground" election campaigns, refused "to say they will accept the November election outcome". Six key Senate and gubernatorial Republican party nominees refused to commit to accepting the results of the November election: Blake Masters in Arizona, J.D. Vance in Ohio, Rep. Ted Budd in North Carolina, Kelly Tshibaka in Alaska, Tudor Dixon in Michigan and Geoff Diehl in Massachusetts. While the claim by a losing candidate that they won "despite clear evidence he lost", may have start with Donald Trump after his loss in 2020, during primaries leading up to the November 2022 general election, "candidates across the country have refused to concede—even in races that are not remotely close". The trend has been manifest in the violent January 6, 2021 attack on the US Capitol to prevent the certification of Joseph Biden as president, the hundreds of elected Republican officials throughout the United States that the 2020 presidential election was "rigged", some of whom "are running for statewide offices that would oversee future elections, potentially putting them in position to overturn an election in 2024 or beyond". According to Yascha Mounk, "There is the possibility, for the first time in American history, that a legitimately elected president will not be able to take office". In part the phenomenon is international, democracies are struggling in other parts of the world led by the forces of "digital media, cultural change and economic stagnation in affluent countries". Leonhardt states that "many experts point out that it is still not clear how the country will escape a larger crisis, such as an overturned election, at some point in the coming decade." Deterioration of other norms Abandonment of campaign debates In the 2022 elections observers have noted lack of participation in debates between candidates, and in the "retail politicking" that has been a political "cliché ... for generations" in American politics: pressing the flesh at "diners and state fairs ... town-hall-style meetings ... where citizens get to question their elected leaders and those running to replace them". Replacing these are "safer spaces" for candidates, "partisan news outlets, fund-raisers with supporters, friendly local crowds," as the