Did Biden win the American election? Where we are – Corriere.it

Joe bidennow he appears to be one step away from winning the US presidential election.

According to the accounts of the Agenia Associated Press – the most accurate and cautious in the assignment of states – to the former deputy of Barack Obama it would be enough to conquer the Nevada (the state of Las Vegas, which is worth 6 big voters) to beat the current White House tenant, Donald trump. (Please find the updated map below).

The situation today looks very different from what emerged in the hours immediately after the polls closed: At the time, Trump seemed advanced, while Biden’s path to the White House now seemed completely closed. What changed? And where we are Let’s try to answer.

What changed, first of all?. The answer could (the conditionals are all essential, for the moment, given the absolute fluidity of the situation) have to do with a scenario that had been foreseen – and also very feared: we will see why – by some analysts: that of the mirage. Red. In essence, the prediction was this: Trump would end election night with several states where he was ahead of Biden; at that moment he could have declared victory, even without any certainty of the veracity of this scenario; and then he would have watched a wave of blue rise (the color of the Democrats, in the United States), linked to the count of ballots that arrived in the mail. what, according to the data, is happening.

On the American night, after the polls closed, Trump declared victory, arguing that Biden couldn’t have beaten him in states like Pennsylvania (where he’s still going), Georgia (now on the scale), but also Michigan and Wisconsin, where he seemed to have the upper hand.

The opposite happened: as the counts progressed in Michigan and Wisconsin, Biden grew: and he went on to win those states (again according to AP projections).

The AP also awarded Biden l’Arizona, which Trump won in 2016, arguing that now there are not enough votes to count for a recovery for the current president. The decision was made when 80% of the votes were counted, Biden was ahead by 130,000 votes. Trump’s election campaign has heralded a battle, arguing that rural votes for Trump are lacking here.

With Arizona, the Democratic candidate was positioned, as we said at the beginning, only six large voters away from the 270 quota, the quota needed to win.

How was this possible? The reason has to do with a situation that was not never verified, in the United States– Nearly 102 million people voted before Election Day, which is November 3. Why? To avoid crowds at the polling stations, since we are entering a situation that it hadn’t happened in the world for decades: a pandemic, that of Covid. And how did they vote before Election Day? In two ways: by taking advantage of the early opening of polling stations (both Trump and Biden did: by voting face to face, but in advance) or by voting by mail. Millions of citizens in America have done it – and never before have so many votes arrived by mail.

Now, voting by mail has three important, indeed decisive characteristics. First: it is administered by each state differently. Each state counts the votes at a different time and with different criteria: to give just two examples, as written here, Pennsylvania accepts ballots that will arrive until November 6, as long as they are postmarked certifying that they have been sent November 3 ; some states do not separate the counting of votes by mail from those cast in person. Second: disproportionately democratic. Democratic voters have a much more cautious attitude toward the pandemic. We wrote it inaccurately, but just to be clear: more Democratic voters believe the virus is dangerous than Republican voters. And the behavior was consistent: far more Democrats than Republicans used the mail vote. Third: Trump knew this dynamic very well. And it has long begun to launch attacks on voting by mail, repeating, for months, that voting by mail was a deceptive tool in itself, a door to fraud on a large scale. (At one point he even ventured, via tweet, the hypothesis of postponing the elections: a hypothesis never taken into consideration). Now Trump is saying what he always said: that vote-by-mail is a fraud. The fact is that, now as in recent months, Trump has never presented evidence of this claim, which in itself is very important and serious.

Now, the next questions. Where we are and what can happen

The first: where we are. Very little is missing: at least in theory. We said it above: Nevada is enough for Biden to win. But in Nevada This is happening: In the most populous county, Clark County, where Las Vegas is, the results will keep coming in on Thursday afternoon; and in those results will also be the votes by mail that arrived on Tuesday and Wednesday. But how many are those postal ballots? Hard to know: Nevada has sent ballots to the homes of all registered voters (1.7 million), due to the pandemic. And you have decided to leave the count open until November 10 (postmarked, as mentioned above).

Not only that: Trump’s legal team has announced a very tough battle (not just in Nevada, but also in Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Georgia).

And now, what can happen? The answer is very, very difficult to know. Even if the Palestinian Authority assigns Nevada to Biden, thus assigning him the necessary 270 votes, it would be necessary to wait for the data to become official: unless Trump admits defeat and grants victory to Biden. This seems like a highly unlikely scenario (although there are some in the Republican Party who are beginning to think it would be better to do so – also because Republicans would still have a majority in the Senate, and a Biden presidency would start with a major hurdle ahead). And while long legal battles are being prepared – we have told it here – the tension is increasing in many areas of the country: there have been clashes in New York yes (where protesters set fire and clashed with police in Washington Square); In Arizona, in populous Maricopa County, dozens of pro-Trump protesters, some of them armed, gathered in front of the polling place where votes are counted and asked to enter.