As Election Day nears, former President Donald Trump has increasingly warned that if he loses, it will be because of fraud.

“They want to cheat. They cheat. It’s all they want to do is cheat,” Trump said of Democrats during a rally this month in Juneau, Wisconsin. “It’s the only way they’re going to win. And we can’t let that happen and we can’t let it happen again. We will have no country.”

He continued at a rally in Greenville, North Carolina, last week, looking across the crowd at Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Whatley and asking, “They’re trying, but they’re not going to get away with it. right?”

And at a rally in Prairie du Chien, In Wisconsin in September, Trump said he would win despite cheating and then prosecuting those involved in alleged voter fraud.

“When we win, we will judge the people who are rigging this election. And if we can, we’ll go back to the last one, if we’re allowed,” Trump said, referring to the 2020 election. “We’re going to watch people, so at least they know that’s going to happen.”

Trump has long inaccurately claimed to be the legitimate winner of the 2020 election, and false claims about Democratic meddling have been a centerpiece of his campaign this cycle. But by preemptively raising doubts about the results, Trump is setting the stage for him to challenge the result and throw the electoral system into chaos once again.

An NBC News analysis found that Trump mentioned the likelihood of Democrats cheating in the November election at 14 of the past 20 rallies. By comparison, over the summer Trump referred to Democrats trying to cheat in the 2024 race just five times in 20 rally speeches.

Democrats are already preparing for Trump to either declare a premature victory on election night or legally challenge the results if he loses. Some of Trump’s allies did as well he speculated to NBC News that they anticipate that a winner can be declared even if the results are not yet determined.

“Of course,” Vice President Kamala Harris told NBC News in an interview last Tuesday when asked if her campaign was preparing for such a scenario. “This is a person, Donald Trump, who tried to overturn a free and fair election, who still denies the will of the people, who incited a violent mob to attack the United States Capitol and 140 law enforcement officers were attacked.”

Trump’s statements that he might not accept the results of the election are not new; is the frequency that has increased. In May, he told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: “If everything is honestI would gladly accept the results. If not, you must fight for the right of the country.”

In late April, he did not rule out the possibility of political violence, telling Time: “If we don’t win, you know, it depends. It always depends on the fairness of the elections.”

Printed on campaign signs scattered in arenas and repeated in speech after speech by the former president is the phrase “too big to handle”; it’s about ensuring that so many voters come out for Trump that it would have dwarfed any potential Democratic cheating.

In the past few weeks, however, Trump has raised the possibility that Democrats are cheating on a large scale more often:

In an interview on the Sid Rosenberg podcast on Oct. 7, Trump said, “These guys go to the election and their first meeting is like (Democratic attorney) Marc Elias and all these people they have and figure out how to cheat. How do we cheat? And that’s all they think. It’s a passion for them.”

Last month, Trump made a baseless allegation that Democrats plan to use a decades-old law that allows Americans living abroad to vote by mail to “cheat.” In a Social Truth postTrump wrote: “Democrats talk about how they are working so hard to get millions of votes from Americans living abroad. In fact, they are preparing to cheat! … They want to dilute the TRUE vote of our beautiful military and their families…”

Trump has repeatedly said, without evidence, that Democrats are registering undocumented immigrants to vote illegally. “They’re actually using it to cheat,” Trump said on Los Angeles radio station KFI AM 640 on Oct. 8. “I think they’re putting a lot of people on the voter rolls and trying to get them to vote. “

At a campaign rally last week, Trump claimed he would even win California in November, claiming he won it in 2020, despite losing it to Joe Biden by 5 million votes – a claim he has made repeatedly since leaving office.

“If Jesus came and was the voter booth, I’d win California,” Trump told Phil McGraw in a September interview.

Trump’s running mate, Sen. JD Vance of Ohio, and his billionaire ally Elon Musk have sown similarly misleading claims about voter fraud.

In Trump’s return to ButlerPennsylvania, this month, the Tesla CEO took the stage, encouraging the crowd to vote and warning them that if Trump loses, it will be the last US election that will ever be held.

“Get everybody you know and everybody you don’t know, get them to register to vote,” Musk said. “Make sure they actually vote. If they don’t, this will be the last election,” he said.

That same day, Vance falsely claimed that Democrats were working to give millions of undocumented immigrants the right to vote in US elections.

“One of the things you’ve seen is an astonishing willingness on the part of the Democratic leadership in this country to talk about enfranchising millions and millions of illegal aliens,” Vance argued. “If you take millions of people who shouldn’t be here and give them the right to vote, that fundamentally deprives American citizens of their constitutional right to vote.”

But so far, the Trump campaign has failed to identify evidence that the 2024 election will not be free and fair, including when asked for comment for this article.

Trump himself admitted he could not identify any cases of fraud in the 2024 election so far, when asked by NBC News last week in Swannanoa, North Carolina, if he had specific allegations.

“Well, I haven’t,” Trump replied. “Unfortunately, I know the other side and they are not good. But I didn’t see him. Michael, did you see anything suspicious? We are very early in the process.”

He then turned to Whatley, the RNC chairman, who replied, “Yes, we’re very early in the process and we’re looking in all 50 states right now to make sure that the systems that we want to have are in place. straight away. And we are very pleased with the initial results.”

Trump had similarly mixed messages about early voting. He stayed vocally skeptical of practice and noted on several occasions that if early voting takes place, fraud will result.

“They have early voting, late voting, it’s all so ridiculous,” Trump said on stage in Palm Beach, Florida, in July. “We should have a polling day, paper ballots, voter ID and certification of citizenship. And that’s what we strive for.”

But Trump has also spoken favorably of early voting, usually in more choreographed settings. Trump has posted a TikTok video encouraging people to vote early and will occasionally deliver a prepared remark during campaign speeches encouraging early voting without any warning. Trump also voted early in Florida in September.

Trump also raised questions about the federal government’s disaster relief efforts in the mostly rural, conservative North Carolina areas hit by Hurricane Helene in September, suggesting the Biden-Harris administration sought not to help the victims in the “republican areas”.

However, when asked last week if he had any concerns or reason to question the credibility or legitimacy of North Carolina’s election results as a result of the storm’s impact, Trump said he did not.

“No, I think in a way, it’s the opposite,” Trump replied. “I mean, we’re so impressed and I think they’ve got a pretty good system here. Michael Whatley was responsible to a certain extent and the new people who took Michael’s place. I don’t think I’ve heard any complaints about it.”