US President-elect Donald Trump has asserted he won the popular vote on 8 November “if you deduct the millions of people who voted illegally”.

The Republican, who won the all-important electoral college count, offered no evidence to back his claim.

It comes after the camp of Democratic rival Hillary Clinton said it would support a vote recount in Wisconsin initiated by a Green Party candidate.

Mrs Clinton won about two million votes more than Mr Trump in the popular vote.

However, Mr Trump surpassed the required 270 electoral votes to win the presidency. This was based on the state-by-state contests.

Is US system a ‘disaster for democracy’?

Why US fears Russia is hacking election

US election results

In a tweet, he wrote: “In addition to winning the Electoral College in a landslide, I won the popular vote if you deduct the millions of people who voted illegally.”

Image copyrightTWITTER

In his follow-up tweets, the Republican wrote: “It would have been much easier for me to win the so-called popular vote than in the Electoral College in that I would only campaign in 3 or 4 states instead of the 15 states that I visited.”

“I would have won even more easily and convincingly (but smaller states are forgotten)!”

Mr Trump also alleged “serious voter fraud” in Virginia, New Hampshire and California – states won by Mrs Clinton – accusing US media of not reporting on that issue.

Is there any evidence of illegal votes?

Donald Trump offered no evidence himself

Claim was started by self-styled conservative voter fraud specialist Greg Phillips who tweeted “Number of non-citizen votes exceeds 3 million”

Mr Phillips declined to release any evidence

His tweets were picked up by right-wing websites like Infowars.com, which has made false claims in the past

Fact-checking website Snopes.com says there is “zero evidence” that “illegal aliens” voted in election

Earlier on Sunday, the president-elect reminded his Democratic rival that she had already admitted defeat, and published remarks from the presidential debates in which she had urged an acceptance of the poll results.