Twitter slaps warning on prominent Democrats' tweets prematurely claiming Biden wins

Twitter slapped warning labels Wednesday on a pair of tweets by prominent Democrats that prematurely claimed Joe Biden had won a key battleground state and the general election, the first enforcement actions of its policy against such declarations leveled against high profile liberal leaders.

Ben Wikler, chair of the Democratic Party of Wisconsin, claimed in a tweet Wednesday morning that “there's no realistic path for Trump to pull ahead” in the state, citing freshly reported absentee ballots. “Folks: Joe Biden just won Wisconsin,” he added.

Twitter pinned a notice on the tweet that read, “Some votes may still need to be counted.” The social media platform also added an overlay to the post on Wikler’s timeline that said the information in the tweet was “disputed and might be misleading about an election or other civic process.” Twitter said ahead of the election that it would label premature claims of victory.

Twitter added the same warning labels later Wednesday to a separate tweet by Neera Tanden, president of the liberal Center for American Progress think tank, that falsely claimed Biden was "already at 270" Electoral College votes, the threshold needed to secure the White House. Tanden later deleted the post sooner after Twitter tagged it.

Biden leads Trump by a small margin with 95 percent of the expected vote in as of now, but a winner has not yet been declared in the state, according to POLITICO’s election tracker. No major news outlet had called the overall race for either Biden or Trump as of early Wednesday afternoon.

Twitter pinned a similar label Tuesday on a Trump campaign tweet that declared victory in South Carolina. “Official sources may not have called the race when this was Tweeted,” read the label on the post.

Spokespeople for the Wisconsin Democratic Party did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The social media companies for weeks have gameplanned for scenarios in which political leaders declare victories for a presidential candidate in either the general election or in battleground states while votes are still being counted.

Trump early Wednesday falsely claimed at a rally live-streamed on social media that “we did win this election,” even as multiple key states remained undeclared. Facebook added a label to the video, that read, “Final results may be different from initial vote counts, as ballot counting will continue for days or weeks after pools close.”