Midterms: Donald Trump questions the results of the congressional elections

Almost a week after the midterm elections, Donald Trump is casting doubt on their results. “Does anyone really believe that this ‘election’ was fair,” he wrote on his Truth Social platform. Trump asks how it could be that the polls were wrong. What he doesn't say: Experts had definitely predicted a defeat for the Republicans given the president's weak approval ratings.

Trump also suggested that voting machines had a distorting influence on the result. He did not provide any evidence for his claims.

On election night, Trump announced that he wanted to accept the election results. He also congratulated the Democrats on their success and promised cooperation in Congress. Trump recently admitted that high fuel prices and overly rigorous migration policies had deterred voters.

However, the appointment of his close advisor and strategist Stephen Miller as the new White House chief of staff at the weekend was seen as a clear declaration of war on the Democrats: no cooperation, instead a veto course by the White House on projects of the new Democratic-led Congress.

Even before the midterms, there were fears that Trump would try to discretize and manipulate the election results. One possible scenario: voting documents and machines could be confiscated. Trump said he regretted not taking this step after the 2020 presidential election.

Over the weekend, Trump spread posts questioning the Democrats' lead in the general election as being too high. In many races for seats in the Senate or House of Representatives, the counting of votes is still ongoing almost a week after the election.

In recent months, Trump has repeatedly raised doubts about the integrity of the US electoral system. For example, he warned of alleged widespread fraud through postal votes and voting machines, without providing any evidence.

The Trump administration had also tried to take legal action against election procedures. In California, the Justice Department wanted to ensure that postal votes from around 20,000 people whose US citizenship it questioned were not initially counted. After defeats in federal courts, the government's urgent application to the Supreme Court was not heard. In addition, the government failed in its attempt to grant the US Postal Service extensive powers to verify postal votes.