As the US presidential election approaches, Republicans are reportedly positioning themselves to dispute the outcome should Donald Trump lose, The Guardian reported.

Veteran strategists warn that early lawsuits alleging unfounded claims of fraud, combined with partisan polls inflating Trump’s popularity, could make it difficult for his supporters to accept a defeat.

These concerns, voiced by Democrats and anti-Trump Republicans, arise as Americans gear up to vote on Tuesday in what is being described as one of the most significant presidential elections in decades. Current polls indicate a tight race, with Trump neck and neck with Democratic nominee and Vice President Kamala Harris in seven crucial swing states.

But skepticism surrounds a series of recent polls, primarily commissioned by Republican-affiliated groups in battleground states, which consistently show Trump in the lead.

At a rally in New Mexico, Donald Trump claimed, “We’re leading big in the polls, all of the polls” while expressing disbelief that the “race is close.” He reiterated this sentiment at another rally in North Carolina, a key swing state where polls indicate a statistical tie between him and Democratic nominee Kamala Harris.

An internal memo from Trump’s chief pollster, Tony Fabrizio, supports his claims, stating that the former president’s standing is “SIGNIFICANTLY better today than it was four years ago” in both national and battleground state contexts.

According to a New York Times analysis, GOP-aligned polling groups have released 37 polls in the campaign’s final stretch, a time when many established pollsters have reduced their voter surveys. Of these, only seven indicated a lead for Harris while the majority showed Trump ahead.

In a recent poll conducted by the Trafalgar Group, a firm established by a former Republican consultant, Donald Trump was shown to have a three-point lead over Kamala Harris in North Carolina. This finding contrasts sharply with a CNN/SRSS poll released two days later, which indicated that Harris was ahead by one point in the same state.

Polling expert Nate Silver, who has expressed a personal inclination toward a Trump victory, cautioned against overconfidence in election predictions during an interview with CNBC. “Anyone who is confident about this election is someone whose opinion you should discount,” he stated, acknowledging some recent momentum for Trump but emphasizing that small changes are overshadowed by significant uncertainty. He added, “For every indicator you point to, I could counter with examples that tell a different story.”

Democrats and some polling analysts suspect that polls commissioned by conservative groups are designed to create a misleading narrative of Trump’s unstoppable momentum.

Joshua Dyck from the Center for Public Opinion at the University of Massachusetts at Lowell criticised Republicans for strategically placing polls into the public discourse to create the illusion of Trump’s strength. He noted that their goal is not necessarily to provide accurate answers.

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Stuart Stevens, a former adviser to Mitt Romney and a founder of the anti-Trump Lincoln Project, expressed concerns that the Republican strategy aims to complicate state certification processes. He told the New Republic, “Their game plan is to make it impossible for states to certify. These fake polls are a great tool in that, as they lead people to believe the race was stolen.”

Elon Musk, a major supporter of Trump, shared this electoral map with his 202 million followers on his social media platform X, asserting, “The trend will continue.”

According to a report by the New York Times, a small number of high-stakes wagers from four accounts associated with a French national accounted for a $28 million bet on Trump’s success on the Polymarket platform.