The most polarizing U.S. election in decades was on the edge of the sword on Tuesday as President Donald Trump appeared to have dashed huge Democratic wave expectations, but Joe Biden also had key victories.
In the wake of the covid-19 pandemic that killed more than 230,000 people in the United States, the quick Biden victory – which some Democrats dreamed of – is not very close to being called by key states.
With the first results disappointing, U.S. media predicted successes for the incumbent Republican so far in 18 states, including Indiana, Kentucky, Missouri, Oklahoma and Tennessee – all the states he won in 2016.
Biden has occupied 17 states, including his home state of Delaware and big prizes California and New York, as well as the US capital. Like Trump, so far, Democrat Hillary Clinton has won all the states that Biden has argued in 2016.
Trump has a narrow, crucial lead in Florida, and despite opinion polls that Biden is still on the edge, he is expected to win to retain the presidency.
Although only Fox News has so far called Florida for the presidency, Trump senior adviser Jason Miller wrote on Twitter that “this is happening.”
Exit polls suggest Trump captured Latin American vote after Republican businessman repeatedly attacked left-wing leaders in Latin America and made rhetorical attempts to link them to Biden.
The Biden team has long insisted that Florida does not need to win, and analysts have suggested that Democrat gains in some Trump areas of the state may well show up in other large states.
Biden enjoyed his early strength in Arizona, which Trump took over four years ago, and he was neck-and-neck in Ohio and Texas – a few weeks ago the Democrat party seemed less likely.
And Biden – as expected – picked up the biggest prize of the night with victory in Democratic California.
But attention has quickly shifted to results from Georgia and North Carolina, with two other states hoping to get away from Biden, and the Midwestern, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin trio of Midwestern – in which Trump won a surprise 2016 victory over Hillary Clinton. House.
With more than 100 million Americans voting before Election Day due to the covid-19 pandemic, accurate final results can easily take hours or days to calculate.
As widely expected, the networks predicted that the Democrats would have control over the House of Representatives, but it remains to be seen whether they can win back the Senate.
Democrats ousted a Senate seat from Republicans in Colorado, predicting victory for former Governor John Hickenlooper, but also expected to lose a particularly vulnerable senator in Alabama.
Trump, 74, expressed confidence as the evening approached, tweeting in his feature all-caps: “We look really good all over the country. Thank you!”
Trump has repeatedly refused to confirm that he will accept the election results – this is the first for the US president. Without proving it, he argued that a large number of mail-in ballots could be used to block elections against him.
In the final run-up to Election Day, Trump focused specifically on Pennsylvania, which allows post-marked ballots to be counted later on Election Day.
