violent events declined, but targets shifted from property to people—minorities, abortion providers, and federal agents. 2 Two subgroups appear most prone to violence. The January 2021 American Perspectives Survey found that white Christian evangelical Republicans were outsized supporters of both political violence and the Q-Anon conspiracy, which claims that Democratic politicians and Hollywood elites are pedophiles who (aided by mask mandates that hinder identification) traffic children and harvest their blood; separate polls by evangelical political scientists found that in October 2020 approximately 47 percent of white evangelical Christians believed in the tenets of Q-Anon, as did 59 percent of Republicans.3 The bedrock idea uniting right-wing communities who condone violence is that white Christian men in the United States are under cultural and demographic threat and require defending—and that it is the Republican Party and Donald Trump, in particular, who will safeguard their way of life.4 In 2020, SPLC partnered with Western States Center to launch a campaign to address extremism in elections in U.S. Deep South and the Pacific Northwest states. • In Georgia, SPLC led a coalition of the Carter Center, Fair Fight, ADL, and others calling on businesses to speak out and denounce political violence. In Oregon, Western States Center led a regional coalition of civil society and elected leaders denouncing the January 6th attack on the Capitol, launched a rapid response campaign, and led a successful effort to expel extremist Rep. Nearman from the legislature after he illegally helped rioters break into the Oregon State Capitol. • Our combined coalition presented briefings to over 100 organizations, businesses and legislators in both Georgia and Oregon, including a pre-election briefing to election protection partners in Georgia and a legislative briefing to 5 members of the Oregon state legislative delegation. Success with this early coalition work led to the creation of SPLC’s Exposing Extremism in Elections project. Exposing Extremism in Elections 5 Individuals who belong to extremist organizations or harbor extremist views employ a variety of strategies to influence mainstream society, one of which is running for public office. Once elected, these candidates can affect laws and public policy from the inside as a part of the political system. Using the data provided by the Exposing Extremism in Elections project, concerned voters, community leaders, political parties, public officials, and businesses can learn about the ideology of these candidates and the individuals they associate with. The SPLC Action Fund has compiled a list of candidates running for office who appear to have ties to extremism. These ties take different forms – seemingly sympathetic retweets, endorsements, organization memberships or other indications of alignment with philosophies dangerous to participative democracy. We believe that providing this information to the public will expose the ties these candidates have to extremist groups or ideologies and contribute to an informed voter base. The Exposing Extremism in Elections project provides information about extremist-tied candidates, new or incumbent, running for public office at local, state and federal levels. The project provides detailed information about the candidate, their election status and any apparent ties they have to extremist groups and/or ideologies. You will find candidates with apparent relationships to, or support from, both hate and antigovernment extremist movements, as well as an array of extremist groups and ideologies. Such candidates are running for all levels of office, across the U.S., and in almost every state – extremist-tied candidates are not isolated to any geographic area.