How US election fraud claims changed as Trump won

The BBC tracked a huge wave of pre-election fraud claims that carried through election day and into the evening.

These included claims of the vote being “stolen” in some key swing states, with exaggerated takes on real events being used in some cases to bolster the allegations.

Early on election day in Cambria County, Pennsylvania, a Republican stronghold, there were problems with voting machines malfunctioning. The issues were fixed and voting hours in the affected areas were extended.

However, many online immediately used the story to suggest nefarious activities were taking place.

One post at 08:45 local time on Tuesday said: “The election steal is happening!”

Other rumours were spread in posts that popped up throughout the day, including one at around 14:00, which claimed ballots in Delaware County, Pennsylvania, had been pre-marked for Kamala Harris.

In Milwaukee, the biggest city in the swing state of Wisconsin, elections officials made a decision to re-run around 30,000 ballots out of an “abundance of caution”, after doors on the back of voting machines were left open.

Once the count was completed, it showed that support for Harris had dropped compared with Joe Biden’s four years earlier.

Like many of the pro-Trump posters, Harris supporters pointed to real but isolated events – fires at ballot drop boxes in Washington and Oregon, and a series of fake bomb threats that disrupted voting at several polling locations on election day – as evidence of widespread voter fraud.

However, there’s no evidence that the incidents significantly altered the vote or changed the outcome.

Several posts from Democratic Party activists questioning the result went viral and were seen by millions on X and other platforms.

Pam Keith, a Harris supporter in Florida, posted: “Is it possible that the machines were hacked to switch the tallies from Harris to Trump?” Her message was seen more than one million times on X, according to the site’s metrics. The BBC has reached out to her for comment.

Unlike Trump’s campaign in 2020, however, the Harris campaign and top Democratic Party officials have not endorsed allegations of cheating or voter fraud.

On election day, fraud rumours also came from President-elect Trump himself, who has repeatedly argued from the outset of his political career that the voting system is unfairly stacked against him.

Just after 16:30 Trump posted on his social media platform Truth Social: “A lot of talk about massive CHEATING in Philadelphia. Law Enforcement coming!!!”

The now president-elect did not give any details and the Philadelphia Police Department told BBC Verify they were not aware of what Trump was referring to.

Seth Bluestein, the Republican City Commissioner in Philadelphia, posted on X: “There is absolutely no truth to this allegation. It is yet another example of disinformation. Voting in Philadelphia has been safe and secure.”

Trump has not repeated the fraud allegations since election day.

We have contacted several hugely influential accounts that regularly posted about election fraud claims in the build-up to the vote, but none of them replied.

With data firm NodeXL, the BBC tracked accounts that engaged with Donald Trump, Donald Trump Jr, Eric Trump, Lara Trump and Elon Musk on X around election day.

Posts mentioning vote fraud peaked at 15:00 EST on 5 November – but then dropped off significantly that evening and into the next day as polls closed and results came in.