Summary
Donald Trump is likely to claim victory on election night, despite the vote count possibly extending over several days.
Early tallies may lean Republican, reflecting in-person votes, while absentee ballots counted later may shift toward Democrats, creating a “blue shift.”
Key states like Pennsylvania, Arizona, Michigan, and Nevada may take extra time to declare results due to laws and ballot processing delays.
Trump might exploit early Republican leads to allege fraud.
Trump can declare whatever he wants. No one is going to listen to him.
They will. This is the entire reason for the attempted coup last time. Trump was up early, declared victory, then absentee ballots were counted and …. It must be fraud
That’s the problem a LOT of people listen to him now and will when he try to cheat and declaring victory really early is only one of those try
His fans will listen, and that’s the plan. He did this in 2016 and 2020 - declare victory during the “red mirage” portion of the evening, when he’ll probably be ahead, because Republicans tend to live in low-population areas that finish their counting early because they have fewer ballots. This is a well known phenomenon on national election nights. Democratic votes tend to come in later, because more democrats live in larger urban areas that take longer to count. After Trump declares victory based on these early returns, his fans will go to bed happy. Then when all the votes are in and it turns out he lost, they’ll “know” the election was stolen because in their minds they already “saw” him win.