President Donald Trump questioned the legitimacy of the November 3 midterm elections Monday, pointing to early voting and voting machines after Democrats won control of both chambers of Congress.
Trump wrote on Truth Social, “Does anybody really believe that this ‘Election’ was honest.” He questioned why the polls were off and said some early-vote batches he called “dumps” were too large for Republicans to overcome.
🚨 WOW! President Trump just said the 2026 midterms may have been RIGGED
"Some early voting 'dumps' were so large that it was impossible to win, no matter how many people went to vote. It’s all about the machines, which are far more important than the voter!"
Pretty much the… pic.twitter.com/PEfWb1e3Sx
— Eric Daugherty (@EricLDaugh) November 9, 2026
“It’s all about the machines, which are far more important than the voter!” Trump wrote. His post identified no county, voting machine or specific tally discrepancy.
Trump told Fox News during its election-night coverage that he would accept the results. On November 7, he shared a chart projecting 70.4 million votes for Democratic U.S. House candidates, up from 51.3 million in 2022. The projection assumed officials had counted 85% of the expected vote.
What the Texas returns show
In Texas, state Rep. James Talarico (D-Austin) won the U.S. Senate race, and state Rep. Gina Hinojosa (D-Austin) defeated Gov. Greg Abbott (R-Texas), as The Dallas Express reported on election night.
A breakdown of Texas Secretary of State data showed Talarico with 4,397,474 votes in the early-vote tally, about 148,000 more than Attorney General Ken Paxton (R-Texas) received overall. Talarico also led Paxton by 30,802 votes on Election Day.
A November 1 New York Times/Siena poll put Talarico ahead by seven percentage points and Hinojosa ahead by one. The state’s unofficial returns put their leads at about 12 and seven points, respectively.
Tarrant County’s count
Tarrant County scheduled its first election-night release for 7:15 p.m. or earlier. That report covered 582,119 early in-person and absentee ballots, about 79% of the 733,287 ballots in its November 4 update.
The county’s preliminary reconciliation put the ballot count 1,016 above the adjusted voter count, a gap of 0.14%. The adjustment subtracts rejected or pending ballots from the voter tally. The report said staff were checking variances in mail, early in-person and Election Day voting.
Tarrant County planned to resume counting ballots no earlier than 5 p.m. Monday. As of Monday afternoon, the county had yet to post its final reconciliation or hand-count audit results.
