Bernie Sanders accurately predicted Trump's election reaction

Vermont senator predicted US president would declare victory prematurely

Bernie Sanders’ accurate prediction for how President Donald Trump would react on election night has gone viral.

On 23 October, Vermont senator Bernie Sanders appeared on The Tonight Show, where host Jimmy Fallon asked him when Americans would know the result of 3 November’s election.

Mr Sanders initially said that “Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin,” would take longer to count their votes, as they would receive larger amounts of mail-in-ballots than other states.

He told Fallon that overnight it would look like President Trump is winning the election, as “the first votes that will be counted will be those people who came in on election day, which will be Republican.”

Mr Trump was shown to be winning those three states by a large margin overnight, but the results shifted more in favour of Democratic challenger Joe Biden when mail-in-ballots and city votes were counted as the night progressed.

Follow Live: 2020 election results, updates and analysis

Mr Sanders continued: “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 reelecting me. It’s all over. Have a good day.’”

He added: “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, at which point 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.”

Although Mr Trump did not declare victory at 10pm on Tuesday night, he falsely claimed early on Wednesday morning that he had won the election.

“We were getting ready to win this election. Frankly, we did win this election,” President Trump falsely claimed at a press conference.

“We want all voting to stop. We don’t want them to find any ballots at 4 o’clock in the morning and add them to the list. It’s a very sad moment. We will win this, and as far as I’m concerned we already have won.”

While counts showed President Trump winning in Michigan and Wisconsin, he said that he would ask the Supreme Court to halt all vote-counting even as ballots remain untallied, after suggesting without evidence that votes might be added to the list.

Mr Trump has falsely claimed for months that mail-in-ballots could lead to widespread fraud, but there is no evidence to back that up.

At the time of Mr Trump’s statement, millions of votes were still yet to be counted across the US, while no organisation had called the election for the president.

After being shared widely on Twitter, Mr Sander’s interview with Fallon has been watched by more than seven million people, according to HuffPost.

By Wednesday morning, Mr Biden had a narrow lead in Wisconsin with 95 per cent of votes counted, while the Democratic candidate had a lead of 0.2 per cent in Michigan with 90 per cent of votes counted.

However, in Pennsylvania, Mr Trump had a lead of more than nine percentage points with 76 per cent of votes counted. The race in that state is expected to narrow as the day progresses.