With almost all votes counted, Demuth was more than 45,000 votes ahead of Lindell, who had the backing of Donald Trump, beating him by 43.4% to 32.5%.
Businessman Kendall Qualls, backed by the Republican state party, was trailing in third.
Told by a reporter on his own streaming channel, LindellTV, that the AP had declared the race over, Lindell dismissed the wire service outright. Asked why he wouldn’t accept the call, he questioned the AP’s authority to determine the outcome and insisted hundreds of thousands of votes remained uncounted.
“I’m not going to give up this race until the votes are counted,” Lindell said. “That’s nonsense.”
It’s not even that conspiratorial. It’s even more stupid. It’s “the GOP primary, organized and administered by my own GOP party, so that the GOP party can pick their candidate to run in the general election, is…rigged!!11!!1!1”