Live fact check: Election Day 2026

PBS NewsHour and MS NOW both cover Election Day 2026, but with different emphasis. PBS NewsHour, working with PolitiFact, is running a live fact check of competitive midterm races, online misinformation, lawsuits and fraud allegations. MS NOW, in an analysis by Glenn Kessler, says President Donald Trump has repeatedly signaled that he will blame Democratic cheating if Republicans fare poorly, as polls suggest, and calls his claims false.

MS NOW lists several accusations it expects from Trump. One is that late mail ballots flip Republican leads. Kessler says a shifting margin often reflects only the order in which states count votes, and that Brookings Institution research on four general elections between 2016 and 2022 found mail fraud in about four of every 10 million mail votes. He adds that the Supreme Court blocked an attempt to give the U.S. Postal Service more power to restrict mail voting in the midterms.

A second claim concerns noncitizens. Trump put the national number of registered noncitizens at approximately 278,000 and claimed 35,152 in New Jersey, but MS NOW says no disclosed evidence supports either figure. New Jersey's own preliminary count found roughly 6,600 improper registrations.

Summarized by PolitiKool from PBS NewsHour and MS NOW’s reporting. Read the full story at PBS NewsHour → Also at MS NOW →