President Donald Trump has questioned the validity of the US midterm election results, days after saying he would “absolutely” accept the outcome.
In a social media post on Monday, Mr Trump asked: “Does anybody really believe that this ‘Election’ was honest. How could the Polls be so wrong???”
He focused on early voting, claiming that large batches of votes had created margins that were impossible to overcome. “Some early voting ‘dumps’ were so large that it was impossible to win, no matter how many people went to vote,” he wrote.
Mr Trump also questioned the accuracy of voting machines, saying: “It’s all about the machines, which are far more important than the voter!” The claims were not substantiated in the material provided.
Speaking to reporters later on Monday, he said he had “real concerns” about the number of early votes cast, adding: “I think the numbers were terrible in terms of early votes, you look at all those early votes.”
The president has also been angered by the presence of a second candidate named Dan Sullivan in the Alaska Senate race. He claimed Democratic efforts to recruit the candidate were intended to confuse voters and said the rival had received more than 3,500 votes that should have gone to Republican Senator Dan Sullivan.
“They stole it and that election should be called right now because Dan Sullivan won easily if you add up the numbers,” Mr Trump told reporters.
Last Friday, Mr Trump declared that Senator Sullivan had won re-election even though a quarter of the votes had still to be counted.
The president’s latest comments mark a change in tone from last week, when he told the New York Times he would “absolutely” accept the midterm results. Since then, he has repeatedly raised unsubstantiated allegations involving early voting, postal voting and election machines.
Mr Trump has also offered several explanations for the Republican losses. In an interview on Sunday, he said his immigration and deportation policies had been “too tough” and had ultimately hurt him.
He also acknowledged that the war in Iran had cost Republicans votes, while insisting he would still have ordered military operations to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon. He said voters may have been unwilling to accept the short-term impact of paying more for petrol.
Despite those comments, Mr Trump later argued that his absence from the ballot was the main reason for the result. “I wasn’t on the ballot, and if I was, we would have won in a landslide,” he wrote.
Vice President JD Vance similarly blamed the war, saying that many people who had voted for Mr Trump in 2024 had since turned their backs on him. He challenged supporters of the conflict to argue that losing the Senate for the next six years had been worthwhile.
