President Donald Trump’s campaign comments about a caravan of immigrants has won the reader competition for most significant falsehood of 2018. His false statement: "The Democrats want to invite caravan after caravan of illegal aliens into our country. And they want to sign them up for free health care, free welfare, free education, and for the right to vote."

The first runner-up was a claim from Russian leader Vladimir Putin, who said that Russia had never interfered with U.S. elections. Putin spoke at Trump’s side during a July press conference in Helsinki.

Third place went to Trump’s statement that the law required that children be separated from their parents at the southwest border. He made the false claim in May on Twitter.

2018 Lie of the Year: Online smears against the Parkland students

We offered readers 10 finalists for 2018 and an option to write in a misstatement. It’s the tenth year in a row we’ve asked readers to weigh in via an online poll. We received 5,584 responses.

Here are the results:

"The Democrats want to invite caravan after caravan of illegal aliens into our country. And they want to sign them up for free health care, free welfare, free education, and for the right to vote." — Donald Trump on Oct. 26, 2018, at a rally — False 36% "The Russian state has never interfered ... into internal American affairs including election process." — Vladimir Putin on July 16, 2018, in a press conference — Pants on Fire 15.2% A "horrible law" requires that children be separated from their parents "once they cross the Border into the U.S." — Donald Trump on May 28, 2018, in a tweet — False 13.1% Saudi Arabia has ordered $450 billion, "$110 billion of which is a military order," producing "over a million jobs." — Donald Trump on Oct. 20, 2018, to reporters — Pants on Fire 9.8% "The deficit ... is coming down, and it’s coming down rapidly." — Larry Kudlow on June 29, 2018. in an interview — Pants on Fire 6.9% Other (various answers) 4.1% "Unemployment is low because everyone has two jobs. Unemployment is low because people are working 60, 70, 80 hours a week and can barely feed their family." — Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez on July 13, 2018, in an interview — Pants on Fire 3.9% Says David Hogg of Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., is a crisis actor. — Bloggers on Feb. 21, 2018, in multiple posts on the Internet — Pants on Fire 3.8% "Democrats let him (cop killer Luis Bracamontes) into our country," and "Democrats let him stay." — Donald Trump on Oct. 31, 2018, in a tweet — Pants on Fire 3.6% "U.S. Steel just announced that they are building six new steel mills." — Donald Trump on July 31, 2018, at a rally — False 2.6% "Forty percent of the guns in this country are sold without any background checks." — Bernie Sanders on Feb. 18, 2018, in an interview — False 1.1%

Results may not total 100 percent due to rounding.