Bernie Sanders goes viral for his scarily accurate election night prediction

4 November 2020, 12:11

Bernie Sanders predicted what might happen on election night weeks ago

By Katie Louise Smith

Bernie Sanders told Jimmy Fallon that he predicts Trump will claim false victory and try to say mail-in ballots are fraudulent.

Election day might be over in the US, but the winner has yet to be announced. The polls have closed and voting has stopped but, due to a huge increase in mail-in ballots, it may take days before we know the outcome.

12 days ago (Oct 23), however, Bernie Sanders predicted exactly how things would go down on election night, even right down to Trump's false victory claim. And lo and behold, he was right.

Last night (Nov 3), Trump prematurely claimed victory over Joe Biden. At the time of his speech, he had not officially won, with millions of votes still yet to be counted in key states. He also claimed that the completely legitimate mail-in ballot system was a "fraud on the American public" (it's not), and that he would call on the Supreme Court to stop the vote counting.

The clip of Sanders predicting the events of election night on The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon is now going viral on Twitter. Read the full transcript of what he says below.

Trump falsely claims victory on election night, doesn't want remaining votes to be counted

When asked by Jimmy Fallon when he thought we would know the results of the election, Sanders said:

"Jimmy, you raise an important point, and I hope the American people understand it, because this is something I worry about. My view is every vote must be counted."

"For reasons which I don’t have the time to get into tonight, you’re going to have a situation, I suspect, in states like Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, other states, where they are going to be receiving huge amounts of mail-in ballots. And unlike states like Florida or Vermont, they’re not able, for bad reasons, to begin processing those ballots until Election Day or maybe when the polls close. That means you’re going to have states dealing with perhaps millions of mail-in ballots."

He continued: "Here is my worry. What polls show, and what studies have shown, is that, for whatever reason, Democrats are more likely to use mail-in ballots. Republicans are more likely to walk into polling booths on Election Day. It is likely that the first votes that will be counted will be those people who came in on Election Day, which will be Republican."

"And here is the fear – and I hope everybody hears it – it could well be, you know, I don’t know what’s going to happen, nobody does. But it could well be that, at 10 o’clock on election night, Trump is winning in Michigan, he’s winning in Pennsylvania, he’s winning in Wisconsin, and he gets on the television and he says 'Thank you Americans for re-electing me. It’s all over, have a good day.'"

"But then the next day, and the day following, all of those mail-in ballots start getting counted, and it turns out that Biden has won those states. And Trump says, 'See? I told you the whole thing was fraudulent. I told you those mail-in ballots were crooked. And we’re not going to leave office.' So that is a worry that I and a lot of people have."

Sen. Bernie Sanders Says Texas Can Change the Face of American Politics

Due to the coronavirus pandemic, millions and millions of people cast their votes by mail this year, as opposed to queuing and voting in person on election day. Due to the overwhelming number of early mail-in ballots that cannot be counted in some states until the polls close, the final vote totals may take days to come in.

At time of publishing, the 2020 election has not yet been called.

In other election news, Kanye West reportedly received almost 60,000 votes in the 2020 election. He's said he's running again in 2024.

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