Called it.
It's safe to say that trying to predict results in the US election is a dangerous game, but Bernie Sanders appeared to give it a more than decent lash 10 days in advance of the election when he gave his two cents on what he thought would unfold on election night.
Let's be clear, the results of the US election are not yet decided and vote tallying in a number of key states, including Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan, North Carolina, Georgia and Arizona, is still ongoing.
Despite all of this, Donald Trump has already - and wrongly -
declared victory and made claims, that have no basis in fact, that "fraudulent" people are trying to undermine his victory, before threatening to bring the result to the Supreme Court.
Sanders, a Vermont Senator and former Democratic presidential candidate, appeared on The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon in October, where he outlined what he thought would happen on election night.
Fallon asked him: "Although the election is November 3rd, and it’s been said that we won’t know the results until days later, when do you think we’ll know the results?"
Sanders explained why the results will take longer than other years and why he thought Trump would attempt to declare victory prior to the counting of all the votes.
"Jimmy, you raise an important point, and I hope the American people understand it, because this is something I worry about," Sanders said.
"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.
"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 that – 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. 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."
https://youtu.be/xyGr_huFMh4
Clip via The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon
