Live coverage of the US election results

Donald Trump just visited a Republican National Committee office in Virginia, near Washington D.C. The staff gave him a standing ovation as he entered.

"Thank you very much," he told them.

"We just got back, we had some incredibly rallies and incredible times. I hear we're doing very well in Florida and very well in Arizona, Texas. The lines are amazing, and we're going to have a great night.

"Someday, some of the people in this room, some of them I predict will be president.

"We had rallies, there was love at those rallies. There's never been rallies like that. I say it in front of the media, they can fact check it if they want. But we've never had anything like it.

"You see these people, we travel with these people, they're extremely nice and I think they respect what we've done. They really do."

He was referring to the media there.

When his initial statement was out of the way, the President held an impromptu press conference.

A reporter asked him what he would say to Americans who were not voting for him today.

"Everybody should come together, and I think success brings us together. We're going to have a tremendous success," said Mr Trump.

"Success is going to bring unity. It was bringing it before, and then we got hit by the China virus.

"I think we've done an incredible job in regard to that, other than public relations. You people (the news media) were really not convincible, no matter what we did.

"Remember, we were expecting and people were predicting 2.2 million people. We saved more than two million lives, and did an incredible job with therapies and therapeutics and maybe cures.

"I say it, I say it properly, we are rounding the corner."

Mr Trump was referring to a study published by British academics back in March, which predicted what would happen if governments and citizens did nothing whatsoever to slow the virus’s spread. It was not an expectation so much as a worst-case scenario.

The US is currently averaging 83,500 new cases of the virus each day, which is the highest that number has been during the pandemic.

Sorry, I know you're probably bored of me bringing up this stuff all the time, but if Mr Trump keeps saying these things, I have to keep fact-checking them.

Otherwise I'd just be spreading a politician's spin for him. And that ain't my job, whether said spin comes from Mr Trump, Joe Biden, Scott Morrison, Anthony Albanese, or anyone else.

Moving along, a reporter asked whether Mr Trump had already written an acceptance or concession speech (or both).

"I'm not thinking about concession speech or acceptance speech yet. Hopefully we'll only be doing one of those two things. You know, winning is easy. Losing is never easy. Not for me it's not," he said.

"There's a tremendous love going on in this country, and there's really a tremendous unity.

"Our opposition, as you know, would have a few people sitting in circles, and that's OK. That's normal.

"But we were having rallies with 50,000 people, 45,000 people, more. Nobody's ever seen that. So it was an honour."

The thing about the circles is true. The Biden campaign held small events – in its words, to comply with local health guidelines.

Mr Trump's rallies did indeed draw impressively large crowds, though no, none of them were anywhere near 50,000 people.

Finally, the President repeated his complaint about a recent Supreme Court decision regarding the counting of ballots in Pennsylvania, which is of course a crucial swing state.

Mr Trump wants a winner to be declared tonight. Due to the amount of time it takes to count mail-in ballots – particularly in a state like Pennsylvania, which does not allow officials to start counting them ahead of time – that might not be possible.

"I think you'll know possibly tonight, depending on the extent of victory. I think the ruling on Pennsylvania was an unfortunate one," Mr Trump said.

"You have to have numbers. You can't have these things delayed for many days, and maybe weeks.

"A lot of shenanigans, a lot of bad things happen with ballots. All of a sudden the ballot count changes.

"I think it's a very dangerous thing that they've done with that decision.

"You have to have a date. And the date happens to be November 3rd, and we should be entitled to know who won on November 3rd. And if someone comes along and puts a ballot in way late, they should put the ballot in earlier."

I should note that the vote count is never complete on election night. Indeed, some of the states Mr Trump won four years ago were not called on the night itself.

The President is not wrong when he says "you have to have a date". The actual date, however, is December 8. That is the deadline, under the law, for each state to certify its results.

The specific decision Mr Trump is agitated over came from the US Supreme Court a few days ago. It upheld a ruling from Pennsylvania's state Supreme Court, which means mail ballots that arrive up to three days after the election will be counted, as long as they are postmarked by election day.