A video falsely claiming that RealClearPolitics withdrew President-elect Joe Biden’s win in Pennsylvania has been circulating on social media.
The clip was originally posted on Nov. 10 to YouTube by conservative Gary Franchi on his channel The Next News Network (here) .
It was then shared on Facebook with the caption: “News Breaking!!! The World Should See This. The Tide is Turning. Trump is on The Rise,” gaining 3,200 likes.
In the video, Franchi said that non-partisan news provider RealClearPolitics rescinded Biden’s victory in Pennsylvania. He claimed the change meant Biden no longer had enough Electoral College votes to win the election.
Franchi uses a tweet by Pam Bondi, President Trump’s former special advisor, as evidence.
However, RealClearPolitics did not withdraw Biden’s Pennsylvania victory. In fact, they never announced the outcome in that state.
Bondi has since deleted her tweet (here), but the claim was repeated on Twitter by Trump’s Lawyer Rudy Giuliani and ex-White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer, who also posted a later correction (here and here) .
RealClearPolitics President Tom Bevan described Giuliani’s tweet as “false”, adding: “We never called Pennsylvania, and nothing has changed” (here) .
Carl M. Cannon, Washington Bureau Chief at RealClearPolitics, told Reuters: “We made no change on Pennsylvania whatsoever. Where Rudy Giuliani got the impression he did is anybody’s guess. We have no idea.”
RealClearPolitics carries a map of 2020 presidential election results here . The states of Alaska, Arizona, Georgia and North Carolina as well as Pennsylvania are shaded grey, signifying that the website has not yet given an outcome.
Reuters reported on Nov. 10 that Biden was leading in Pennsylvania by 45,000 votes with 98% of ballots counted as of Tuesday morning (here) .
VERDICT
False. RealClearPolitics could not have withdrawn Biden’s Pennsylvania win, because they had not yet declared an outcome in that state.
This article was produced by the Reuters Fact Check team. Read more about our fact-checking work reuters.com/fact-check/about .
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