Uncertainty lingered over the November 3 US Presidential election, as no clear-cut winner emerged even as polls closed in all states in the country, in a nail-biting aftermath of the much-watched electoral contest between the incumbent President Donald Trump, a Republican and his Democratic challenger, Joe Biden.
As at Wednesday morning, hours after the voting ended, states such as Minnesota, New York, California , Arizona, Virginia, Connecticut, Oregon, Washington, New Jersey, among others, had been called for Biden while Trump had states like Ohio, Florida, Kentucky, Georgia, Idaho, Utah, Tennessee and Wyoming in his column.
The Trump camp, however, quickly disputed projections that Biden had won Arizona, a state where Trump had prevailed in 2016, saying there were about a million votes still to be counted in the home state of Trump’s bitter political rival, the late Senator John McCain.
Also speaking late on Tuesday night at an impromptu drive-in rally in his home state of Delaware, the Democratic flagbearer in the election, Joe Biden, expressed optimism that he would eventually prevail in the poll, saying there remained a lot of mail-in ballots to be counted, which he noted would be enough to give him victory in the battleground states that remained to be called, included Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania.
Biden also noted that it could take a “few days” to count the ballots in those and other battleground states in the polls which status remained uncertain a day after millions of Americans went to the polls, shattering voter turnout records.
President Trump, meanwhile, tweeted a note of warning about attempts by his Democratic opponents to “steal” the election, especially with the decision to call the state of Arizona, a traditionally-Republican state, for Biden.
As at Wednesday morning, both candidates were slowly approaching the 270-threshold for an Electoral College win, with Biden amassing 237 votes while Trump had 213. Significantly, supporters of both candidates referenced the polls as a “referendum” on Trump and his first term, particularly his administration’s handling of the Covid-19 crisis.
President Trump monitored the election returns with members of his family in the living room of the White House residence. Going in and out of the room were first lady Melania Trump, his son-in-law Jared Kushner and his daughter Ivanka among others. “He’s calm, chilling,” said a source familiar with the scene.
Also, a senior Trump aide who watched returns at the White House, described the mood there in a text: “Good. But nervous” In the East Room of the White House, where 200 Trump supporters were having drinks and eating chicken fingers, sliders and cookies, cheers broke out when an US news network called Florida for Trump, said a source in the room.
“The place just erupted,” said the source, who said the mood was both “extraordinarily positive” and “cautiously optimistic.” “Everyone started cheering.”
Voters were also to decide which political party controls the U.S. Congress for the next two years, with Democrats expected to recapture a Senate majority and retain their control of the House of Representatives.
As it were, there were no early surprises as the two contenders split the U.S. states already projected. Much earlier on Election Day, Trump captured conservative states like Alabama, Indiana, Kentucky and Tennessee while Democratic-leaning Connecticut, Massachusetts, New York and Vermont went to Biden, according to projections by television networks and Edison Research.
None of the approximately dozen battleground states that will decide the race had been called as polls closed in most U.S. states, although Trump was moving into a lead in many of them.
Early on, in Florida, Trump was leading Biden 51.2% to 47.7% with 94% of the expected votes counted. Electoral College votes are assigned to each state, in part based on their population.
Trump’s strong performance in Florida was powered by his improved numbers with Latinos. His share of the vote in counties with large Latino populations was larger than it was in the 2016 election.
For months there had been complaints from Democratic Latino activists that Biden was ignoring Hispanic voters and lavishing attention instead on Black voters in big Midwestern cities. Opinion polls in key states showed Biden underperforming with Latinos in the weeks leading up to the election.
Many younger Hispanics were ardent supporters of U.S. Democratic Senator Bernie Sanders during the party’s primary campaign, but in opinion polls expressed little enthusiasm for Biden, viewing him as too moderate and out of touch.
In the Miami area, Latinos are predominantly Cuban Americans, where generations of families have fled communist rule in Cuba. Trump’s messaging about Biden being a socialist seemed to work with them and with Venezuelans there despite Biden’s denials.
A national exit poll showed that while Biden led Trump among nonwhite voters, Trump received a slightly higher proportion of the non-white votes than he did in 2016. The poll showed that about 11% of African Americans, 31% of Hispanics and 30% of Asian Americans voted for Trump, up 3 percentage points from 2016 in all three groups.
The national exit poll also found that support for Trump declined by about 3 points among older white voters, compared with 2016, while it rose by about 15 points among older Latinos and by 11 points among Black voters between 30 and 44.
The poll found Biden made significant gains in suburban areas across the country. In 42 suburban counties spread across 13 states where most of the votes had been counted, Biden was doing about 5 percentage points better than Clinton did in 2016 and than Barack Obama did in 2012.
Biden, 77, still has multiple paths to the 270 Electoral College votes he needs to win without Florida, despite having spent lots of time and money trying to flip the state that backed Trump, 74, in 2016.
But Biden was trailing in the battleground state of North Carolina, where Trump led 49.9% to 48.8% with 93% of expected votes counted. Trump also moved out to leads in Ohio, Texas and Georgia, all battleground states he won in 2016 but which Biden had hoped to recapture from him this year.
Voters, many wearing masks and maintaining social-distancing to guard against the spread of the coronavirus, streamed into polling places across the country through the day, experiencing long lines in a few locales and short waits in many other places.
There were no signs of disruptions or violence at polling sites, as some officials had feared.