Dismayingly, Trump has sent a Tweet claiming that the election is being stolen. This is contrary to any evidence. The fact is, the winner of the election remains unclear, with many votes still needing to be counted.
Trump’s falsehood has long been in the cards. Axios reported over the weekend that Trump has been discussing the possibility of declaring victory this evening if he looked “ahead.” Of course, as we at FiveThirtyEight and many other outlets have spent the past few weeks emphasizing, this year’s vote count was always expected to take longer than usual because of the number of mail-in ballots. And we have always emphasized that what matters is the final vote count, not who looks “ahead” at the end of election night.
Given the high volume of ballots and rules in some states that don’t allow counting to start until Election Day, it’s been entirely expected and is entirely legal that some ballots will be counted after the clock hit midnight. The Trump campaign, however, has been pushing to have the counting of these ballots stopped.
We’ll continue to keep abreast of the counts in the various states, but for now, know this: We do not yet have a clear winner in the election, nor is there any evidence of fraud or malfeasance, despite the president’s statement.