FOR months, conspiracy-peddling supporters of President Donald Trump spread baseless theories that the vote would be rigged. But those claims all but dried up after Democrats swept the US midterm elections.
Political pundits had anticipated a wave of legal challenges from election deniers seeking to contest the results of Tuesday's vote, or efforts by Trump himself to tilt the outcome in his favour — as he did when he tried to overturn his 2020 election defeat.
And evidence-free claims of fraud slowed to a trickle after what observers called the decisive "blue tsunami" of Democratic victories that handed the party control of both chambers of Congress.
Trump's acceptance of the results, signalling he would not challenge his Republican Party's sweeping defeat, set the tone for many of his loyalists to follow suit.
