Watch Bernie Sanders's Election Day Predictions on Fallon
Bernie Sanders Predicted How the Election Count Would Unfold — Down to the States
No, Sen. Bernie Sanders doesn't have a crystal ball, he just truly understands the American people and the state of our democracy. On Oct. 23, Sanders appeared on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, where he spoke with the late-night host about how the results of the presidential election would take longer than usual and his predictions for Election Day. Well, just hours after polls closed on Nov. 3 — and with millions of mail-in votes still being counted — the video is circulating again because of how spot-on Sanders's statements were.
"My view is every vote must be counted," Sanders said. "You're gonna 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 — unlike states like Florida or Vermont — they're not able 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."
Sanders went on to explain that Democrats are more likely to use mail-in ballots and Republicans are more likely to vote in person on Election Day. He said it was possible that the first results we'd see would be from in-person voting and might show a Republican lead in favour of Donald Trump's reelection. Now this is where he really hit the crystal ball prediction for Trump's night-of reaction.
"Here is the fear — 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,'" Sanders said. "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.'"
As of Tuesday night, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania were among the states that were too early to call. And of course, Sanders's was right about Trump's reaction. Watch the accurate predictions during Sanders's interview with Fallon above.
