Trump claims Biden ‘stealing election’ as vote goes down to wire in key states

As Joe Biden told a crowd in Delaware that he felt good about his chances in the face of slow returns from many states, Donald Trump fired off a tweet accusing the Democrats of electoral fraud.

“We are up BIG, but they are trying to STEAL the Election," the president wrote. "We will never let them do it. Votes cannot be cast after the Poles [sic] are closed!”

The tweet was immediately hidden by Twitter itself behind a warning message applied to deliberate misinformation.

“Some or all of the content shared in this Tweet is disputed," it reads, "and might be misleading about how to participate in an election or another civic process.”

Mr Trump soon replaced the tweet with a properly spelled version, but the  warning remained.

The president has pulled ahead in early counts from several states; among those already called for him are Ohio and most importantly Florida, where Mr Biden had been thought to have a good chance of victory.

By 1am east coast time, the electoral map therefore looked good for the president. However, as Mr Biden pointed out at a speech to a drive-in rally in Delaware, there are millions more votes left to count – many of them mail-in ballots and early votes from Democratic-leaning areas.

Perhaps the most extreme example is Pennsylvania, which may not return a definitive result for days.

Mr Trump has repeatedly insisted that the Democrats will try to steal the election by deluging states with “fraudulent” postal ballots, variously claiming that they will be wrongly filled out, counted illegally after missed deadlines, or – in the case of postal votes belonging to his supporters – not counted at all.

These allegations are baseless, and have been flagged as  misinformation by Twitter and other platforms before.