Trump questions midterm election honesty after saying he would accept results

President Donald Trump has questioned whether the US midterm elections were honest, days after saying he would accept the results. Democrats are projected to take control of both the House of Representatives and the Senate from his Republican Party.

In a Truth Social post on Monday, Trump asked: “Does anybody really believe that this ‘Election’ was honest.” He questioned why polls had been wrong and suggested that large batches of early votes and voting machines had affected the outcome. He did not identify a particular race, poll or machine, or provide specific evidence for his claims.

On election night, Trump told The New York Times he was “absolutely willing” to accept the results, the BBC reported. In a separate call with CBS News, he congratulated Democrats and said he looked forward to working with them.

Several polls before the election suggested Republicans could lose the House and possibly the Senate, Spectrum News reported. MIT political scientist Charles Stewart III told the BBC that the reporting of votes had followed normal patterns across the country. Some states, including Florida and Georgia, report early and postal votes quickly, he said.

State and local officials told the BBC that voting had been mostly problem-free, though extreme weather closed some locations and administrative or technical issues slowed the process in a handful of jurisdictions.

Trump and his allies also alleged that the 2020 presidential election, which he lost to Joe Biden, had been rigged. Courts repeatedly rejected their challenges to those results.