Trump again throws doubt on mail in voting after expert predicts 'Biden will smash him thanks to postal ballots'
DONALD Trump again threw doubt on mail-in voting after expert predictions that he would lose to Joe Biden.
On Wednesday, the president responded to claims that his "incredible landslide" would be "flipped" by mail-in voting.
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"Rigged election?" Trump replied to journalist Raheem Kassam's tweet about the election predictions.
His latest comments come after it emerged that Trump will “appear” to have won on election night.
However, analysts have said that Biden will actually beat him when all the votes are counted.
Hawkfish CEO Josh Mendelsohn told Axios that votes coming in on November 3 could very well show that Trump won re-election, but described it as a “red mirage.”
"We are sounding an alarm and saying that this is a very real possibility, that the data is going to show on election night an incredible victory for Donald Trump," Mendelsohn said.
"When every legitimate vote is tallied and we get to that final day, which will be some day after Election Day, it will in fact show that what happened on election night was exactly that, a mirage.
"It looked like Donald Trump was in the lead and he fundamentally was not when every ballot gets counted."
Hawkfish is a Democratic data and analytics firm funded by former New York City mayor and presidential candidate Mike Bloomberg.
Per a possible scenario from the group, Trump “could hold a projected lead of 408-130 electoral votes on election night” – even if only 15 percent of mail-in votes are counted.
Once 75 percent of the mailed-in ballots are counted, Biden could be in the lead.
This particular scenario from Hawkfish shows Biden winning the Electoral College 334-204.
In the 2016 election, Hillary Clinton beat Trump by nearly 2.9million popular votes with 65,844,954 to his 62,979,879.
Trump won 306 Electoral College votes to Clinton’s 232.
Hawkfish’s scenario was partly based on polling from FiveThirtyEight, per Axios.
Tim Murtaugh, the Trump campaign communications director, said; “The news media should get out of the business of predicting the future.”
During the 2016 election, Clinton was expected to beat Trump by a massive landslide – based on polling from likely voters leading up to Election Day.
Most national surveys overstated what would likely be a narrow popular vote advantage for Clinton and led many to believe she was a shoo-in to win the Electoral College.
Because of the coronavirus pandemic, states have expanded their mail-in voting laws and Americans are expected to vote-by-mail more this fall than in any other election.
The shift to voting via the US Postal Service is increasing the chances that the US will not know the winner of November’s presidential race on election night.
But last week, Trump claimed that his Dem rivals would use the election to "steal the election" via postal voting and ballot "harvesting."
He's repeatedly blasted so-called voter “fraud” in the wake of the pandemic, which is expected to impact the number of in-person votes at polling stations.
Speaking at his party's convention in Charlotte, North Carolina, last night the Republican said: “They're trying to steal the election from the Republicans, that's what it means.
“In a very nice way, I will tell you, they are trying to steal the election just like they did it last time with spying and we caught them."
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