It might take some time for full and final results to be announced, but the tea leaves will become apparent in Florida and in the so-called sunbelt, where polls close at 7 p.m. (530 a.m. IST). Florida has been a “swing state” over various electoral cycles, going Republicans or Democrats by narrow margins of about one percent for each side. George Bush won the state in 2000 by just about 500 votes after 8 million votes were cast.
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The first trends will indicate whether the state will remain close (in which case it will take a few hours for the media to project a winner; AP and ABC often take the lead in “calling” a state) or whether one to victory with the help from two major demographic groups: seniors and Latino voters.
Older people backed Trump by a majority in the last election, and this time they are believed to have flocked to Biden. Is the dropout big enough? Trump also won a large number of Hispanic voters here, which is surprising considering his anti-immigration stance. But many Cuban Americans and Latinos from socialist countries in Latin America do not like the Democratic Party, which Trump has demonized as a “socialist front” friendly to people like Castro in Cuba and Maduro in Venezuela. In contrast, Latinos in Puerto Rico and voters of Caribbean origin (who see the partially Jamaican origin of Kamala Harris) tend to support the Democratic Party.
If these two constituencies (seniors and Latinos) put the Biden-Harris ballot at the top by a large enough margin for Florida (with 29 electoral votes) to be called shortly after polls close, then things will be make it very difficult for Donald Trump. This is because Biden already has a lock on about 217 electoral votes from Democratic strongholds like California (55) and New York (29), and he needs only two or three more states to reach 270. Trump, by contrast, has a blockade in 158 elections. votes from Republican strongholds, and you’ll need to win half a dozen states on the battlefield to get to 270.
Two other nearby states that are also expected to count votes quickly after the polls close are also expected to indicate which way the wind is blowing: Georgia and North Carolina. Trump comfortably won both states in 2016, but polls show him either narrowly ahead or behind in both states. There are reports of massive black voter turnout in both states, and if they lean in favor of Biden, it will be game over for Trump if Biden sells all the states Hillary Clinton won in 2016.
In fact, there are very few states where Hillary Clinton won in 2016 where Trump has made headway; while, there are half a dozen states that Trump won in 2016 where he is forced to defend when Biden grabs.
If Trump succeeds in defending Florida, Georgia and North Carolina, then the election moves to uncertain terrain in the so-called industrial rust belt: Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, the three states that placed him in the White House, although he won all three. by a combined 80,000 votes even as he lost the national popular vote by nearly 3 million votes. The three states have different rules on the processing of mail-in ballots (usually after polls close) and it is widely expected that if Biden has not blocked the election by winning the Sun Belt states, then Trump’s Republicans will seek to get bogged down. counting on legal challenges to thwart mail ballot counting, which tend to favor Democrats (for fear of the coronavirus).
It could take days, maybe weeks, to unravel the mess. Many Americans are praying for a clear verdict to avoid the social unrest and struggle that the president of the United States himself seems to be projecting, if he does not win the election.
While all the focus is on the presidential elections, the entire House of Representatives is also at stake (the 438 seats will be re-elected every two years, and the 100-member Senate, a third of which will be re-elected every two years (Senators have a six-year term; representatives have a two-year term).
Democrats currently control the House and hoped to retain it, although the Donald Trump fanciful believes that Republicans will win the House. Republicans have a 53-47 majority in the Senate, and polls show that Democrats have a good chance of landing half a dozen seats that could give them a majority.
If the Democrats win a trifecta – that is, they win the White House, the House of Representatives and the Senate – the United States faces a new dawn that will undo much of what Trump has done in the last four years and set a new agenda. If the Democrats win only the White House and the House, and the Republican Party retains control of the Senate, then it will be a messy and stagnant Washington for at least two years until another midterm parliamentary election in 2022. The same is true if Trump retains the White House and the Democrats win the House and Senate.
Also in the mix are a number of other negative-vote contests, including 11 state governorships and state legislatures, many of them under Republican control. If there is a Democratic wave, there will be fundamental changes in the political structure that will more accurately reflect the demographic changes of the United States, including the darkening of its population, as state legislatures are empowered to redistribute electoral districts.
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