Election fraud claims shifted after Trump’s victory, but baseless theories persisted

In the months preceding the 2024 election and during early voting, PolitiFact fact-checked numerous claims about election fraud. Most were about vote counting, mail-in ballots and voting machines, but there were also false claims about noncitizens voting, election workers committing fraud and early voting.

These claims flourished on Meta platforms Facebook, Instagram and Threads, and on X, the platform owned by billionaire Elon Musk, who will now have a role in President-elect Donald Trump’s upcoming administration.

Trump may never concede the 2020 election he lost to President Joe Biden, and he and his supporters were primed to question the 2024 results in his race with Vice President Kamala Harris.

But when favorable results started being reported on election night, culminating with Trump winning Pennsylvania and eventually the election, Republicans’ claims of chicanery mostly dissipated.

In the days that followed, claims from right-leaning speakers shifted to questioning results in down-ballot races. (How could Kari Lake lose in Arizona while Trump won easily? Split-ticket voting is a voter phenomenon, not a conspiracy theory.)

After Trump’s win, election fraud claims began to emanate from left-leaning accounts, although in much lower volume than they had from right-leaning accounts post-2020. Some accounts questioned how Trump could win key swing states handily even though Democratic Senate candidates in Wisconsin and Michigan won their races. Others questioned whether Musk’s Starlink satellite service somehow altered votes in battleground states (It didn’t).

“There was some disparate and diffuse rumoring amongst left-leaning communities on X, TikTok and Telegram about potential election fraud, some blaming machines, some blaming Starlink, others questioning right-wing political mobilization,” Danielle Lee Tomson, a University of Washington’s Center for an Informed Public research manager, said.

But, Tomson added, there was no political strategy by Democratic leaders or the left to amplify the claims and mobilize around them. Unlike Trump, who supported the “stop the steal” movement and wouldn’t acknowledge his loss in 2020, Harris conceded the day after the election.

Here’s a look at 60 election-related claims PolitiFact checked pre- and postelection, common themes; who shared them and on what platform; and what happened after Trump’s victory.

For this story, we tracked claims that may undermine the public’s trust in election processes starting from Labor Day. These claims grew more frequent in late October, as Americans voted early, and we saw at least seven claims made on Election Day itself.

We also tracked how claims travel across platforms and which speakers became their mouthpieces.

Twenty-three claims PolitiFact checked this election cycle originated on X; some of them spread to other platforms. Meta’s three platforms were responsible for half of the claims we fact-checked, coming from Instagram (12), Threads (nine) and Facebook (nine).

PolitiFact partners with Meta — which owns Facebook, Instagram and Threads — and TikTok to help try to slow misinformation’s spread online. Read more about those partnerships here. X does not have a similar partnership with independent fact-checkers, leaving the work to authors of community notes.

Musk, a huge Trump supporter both in dollars and social media clout, had his hands and X platform on election misinformation. PolitiFact followed two weeks of Musk’s posts in October and found he often shared false claims about elections and noncitizen voting.

We fact-checked one Musk election claim since Labor Day — he falsely said Pennsylvania Democrats were trying to count noncitizens’ votes in a close U.S. Senate race that ultimately went to Republican challenger Dave McCormick.

Musk amplified other claims to his 205 million X followers and at least 24 were shared on the Election Integrity Community on X, which Musk’s political action committee started.

That community encouraged people to post supposed evidence of election fraud; Musk’s PAC described the space as “dedicated to sharing potential instances of voter fraud and irregularities.”

Musk’s false election claims began well before the election. A Center for Countering Digital Hate report published in August found that users viewed Musk’s false election claims 1.2 billion times on X from Jan. 1 through July 31.

About 70% of the claims we checked came from right-leaning speakers, versus 8% from left-leaning accounts. Most of what we looked into came from random social media posts, although we examined claims from Musk, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., and losing Republican Wisconsin Senate candidate Eric Hovde.

We covered Trump’s False claim about a real inquiry into Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, voter registration applications, which he mistook for ballots cast. We also examined several false election claims he made, including that cheating was happening on Election Day in Pennsylvania, a state he won several hours later.

“A lot of talk about massive CHEATING in Philadelphia,” Trump wrote on Truth Social about three hours before the polls closed. “Law Enforcement coming!!!” An hour later, he wrote,”heavy law enforcement is there!”

State and local officials, including Republican City Commissioner Seth Bluestein, said they didn’t know what Trump was talking about. As PolitiFact reported, Trump and others’ claims about election fraud in Pennsylvania stopped as reported totals showing him winning rolled in, and the president-elect didn’t mention fraud when he gave his early morning victory speech after winning the state.

False claims about fraudulent vote counting were the most common we checked, followed by false claims about mail-in ballots and voting machines. These mirror claims from right-leaning accounts in 2020 that falsely said that year’s election was stolen from Trump.

As early voting was underway in some states, some social media users raised suspicions about how mail ballots were being submitted or processed. There were claims — including one from Trump — that voters cast multiple votes in Pennsylvania and Michigan. We also fact-checked claims about “ballot mules,” a claim a 2022 film by Trump supporter Dinesh D’Souza had popularized.

We fact-checked multiple claims that voting machines were flipping votes. Greene claimed on X and on Alex Jones’ podcast that Dominion machines in Whitfield County, Georgia, were flipping votes, “exactly the kind of fraud we saw in 2020.” That was as wrong then as it is now. There were similar claims involving machines in Shelby County, Tennessee, and Tarrant County, Texas.

Unsurprisingly, many of the claims centered on battleground states. Pennsylvania was the focus of 20% of claims we fact-checked.

But the election noise wasn’t exclusive to battlegrounds — we also documented false claims and conspiracy theories about voting in states including Alaska, Arkansas and California.

Another common 2024 theme was that Democrats opened the southern border so they could get noncitizens to vote for Harris. Trump falsely claimed the Justice Department was suing Virginia and Alabama to keep noncitizens on the voting rolls. Conservative activist James O’Keefe shared a selectively edited video to claim Philadelphia officials were helping noncitizens vote. And a Russian influence network posted a fake video of supposed Haitian immigrants saying they were voting for Harris.

Republicans, including Trump and Musk, shared false claims about noncitizens voting all year. The Republican-led U.S. House passed a bill requiring proof of citizenship to vote in national elections, even though it’s already illegal for noncitizens to vote in federal elections.

After Trump’s clear electoral win, social media claims shifted to claims comparing the Democratic turnout with 2020.

Some claims cited an early count that showed Harris receiving 20 million fewer votes than the 81 million Biden earned in 2020. That early figure ignored that millions of votes were still being counted. Harris had more than 74 million votes, with more to count, as of Nov. 26.

For liberal-leaning accounts, millions fewer votes were proof that the 2024 vote counts were fraudulent (they weren’t). For conservatives such as D’Souza, the lower vote totals proved the 2020 election was stolen from Trump (it wasn’t).

Some left-leaning accounts accused Musk of using his Starlink satellite technology to manipulate votes. That claim is Pants on Fire! Most voting machines are not connected to the internet.

Other users found it suspicious that Trump won battleground states while Democratic down-ballot candidates won, a natural phenomenon known as ticket splitting.

Right-leaning accounts shifted their focus away from claims about the election being rigged against Trump to baseless claims that down-ballot elections were being stolen from Republicans. They shared tales of late-night ballot dumps that turned elections in favor of Democrats, or aired suspicions about ballot counts.

This fact check was originally published by PolitiFact, which is part of the Poynter Institute. See the sources for this fact check here.