US Election: ‘I Won Election … Bad Things Happened’ – Trump Turns On Twitter

KEY POINTS
• Joe Biden has defeated President Donald Trump and is set to become the 46th President of the United States.
• Biden won Pennsylvania to exceed the 270 electoral votes needed to win the White House.
• Biden also led Nevada, Arizona, Wisconsin and Michigan on his way to make Trump the first incumbent since George HW Bush to lose his bid for a second term.
• Trump said the result was “far from over” and said a legal challenge would begin on Monday (US time).
• Trump took Twitter by storm, writing “WATCHERS WERE NOT ALLOWED IN COUNTY ROOMS. I WON THE ELECTION” and “MILLIONS OF BALLOTS WERE MAILED TO PEOPLE WHO NEVER REQUESTED THEM”

President Donald Trump has skyrocketed on Twitter after news networks this morning called Joe Biden the winner of the US presidential election.

Trump played golf before the result was announced this morning (New Zealand time), but has returned to the White House amid crowds of people celebrating outside its doors.

Shortly after his return, he tweeted “bad things happened” and claimed to have won the election. Twitter flagged the tweet, saying the claim about voter fraud was disputed.

Then Trump quickly sent another tweet, saying “71,000,000 legal votes. The maximum for a sitting president!”

There were boos when Trump returned to the White House. Rebecca Tan, a reporter for the Washington Post, tweeted images of Trump’s caravan traveling through the streets of Washington as people booed.

“Lots of thumbs down and middle fingers up,” he added.

THE STORY CONTINUES AFTER THE LIVE BLOG

THE STORY CONTINUES

The AP reports that Biden’s victory in the White House was driven by a broad and racially diverse coalition of voters driven to the polls by fierce opposition to Trump and anxiety over a growing and deadly pandemic.

Both domestically and in key states on the battlefield in the Midwest and Sun Belt, the Democrat dominated with voters concerned about the coronavirus and hungry for the federal government to do more to contain its spread, according to a broad AP poll. to more than 110,000 voters across the country.

After four years of political turmoil under Trump, Biden easily won voters who were looking for a leader who could unify the country and those who were pushing for racial justice. More saw him as empathetic and honest, and willing to stand up to extremism, compared to the Republican incumbent.

“It’s about decency. This country has integrity and hopefully we can achieve decency,” said Kay Nicholas, a 73-year-old retired teacher and school principal from Brighton, Michigan, a suburb of Detroit. “I think Joe Biden can do it and return the kindness.”

The election ultimately emerged as a contest between two conflicting views of the United States in a time of crisis. Biden voters saw a nation in chaos and a void in presidential leadership, while Trump supporters believed the economy was regaining health and that the president was delivering on the dramatic political change he campaigned on four years ago. .

“We love our president, we love our Constitution, we love everything he promised and delivered,” said Annastasia Theodoropoulos, a 50-year-old Trump supporter in Milford, Pennsylvania.

Biden’s coalition included a clear majority of college graduates, women, urban and suburban voters, youth, and black Americans – all groups that have risen up in resistance to the Trump presidency. He kept his promise to win over moderate voters, including some Republicans who rejected the president.

Trump, meanwhile, kept his base of white voters with no college degrees, rural voters and religious conservatives. And in some competitive states, like Nevada and Florida, Trump ate Biden’s support among Latinos, according to the poll.

The two coalitions reflected a striking racial divide. About 40 percent of Americans identify as racial minorities, but only 14 percent of Trump supporters do. Biden’s voters most closely mirrored America: 63 percent of his supporters were white and 37 percent were people of color. “We are a force to be reckoned with,” Linda Wilson, a black woman and Biden voter, said of mobilizing black voters. “Let’s pray that this is just the beginning.”

Ultimately, Biden’s coalition was large enough for the former vice president to seal a victory, although not the kind of overwhelming wave that Democrats hoped would secure a dominant majority in the Senate.

Biden’s victory was assured on Saturday (US time) when a narrow victory in Pennsylvania earned him a majority in the Electoral College after he consolidated the lead on the battlefields of Wisconsin and Michigan on Wednesday. Trump refused to budge and threatened further legal action over the vote count.

Biden changed the industrial states by securing central Democratic groups. 55 percent of women won nationally. It was backed by 56 percent of voters under 45 and 90 percent of black voters. Biden also led among moderate voters, with 61 percent. He outscored Trump in the suburbs, 54 percent to 44 percent, and dominated with roughly two-thirds of voters in urban areas.

And while Trump won white voters overall, Biden ate his lead among white women and young white voters. And in a sign of the growing education gap between the parties, Biden led by a narrow margin among white college graduates, while Trump dominated among white voters without a college degree.

It was a race to build determined supporters: About three-quarters said they knew from the start which candidate they backed. Still, both candidates went to great lengths to get new voters, those who were left without voting in 2016 or voted for candidates from minority parties. The AP poll shows that those voters ultimately favored Biden, about 60 percent of them nationwide voted for the Democrat, and they made up about 20 percent of all voters.

Almost three-quarters of American voters were white, and 55 percent of them supported Trump. A solid 81 percent of white evangelical Christians backed him. The men leaned toward him over Biden, 52 percent to 46 percent. Trump won 60 percent of voters living in small towns and rural areas.

Eight months after a pandemic that has disproportionately affected African Americans and Latinos, Biden voters were more likely than Trump voters to say they had been personally affected by the coronavirus pandemic. And Biden’s campaign managed to make the choice on the controversial president, as well as his leadership on the virus.

For Brittany Walker, a 29-year-old nurse from Virginia Beach, Virginia, the turning point was when Trump himself contracted the virus. She cast her vote for Biden.

“Seeing that Trump said he had it … and that he was not wearing masks; for me that is very important,” said Walker, who works on the floor of a hospital that treats patients with Covid-19.

“How can you show us how to live if you are not really living it yourself?”

Biden’s message about the virus also appears to have resonated in key states on the battlefield, especially those that saw an increase in virus cases in the weeks leading up to Election Day. In Wisconsin, which saw an increase in cases in October, 45 percent of voters said the pandemic was the main problem facing the country. They were more likely to say that the pandemic was not under control at all, compared to voters across the country. Half of all voters said the coronavirus was not under control in the US and they cast their votes as a third wave of infections was adding to a death toll that has now surpassed 236,000. About 8 in 10 of these voters supported Biden.

Biden prevailed despite Trump being the preferred candidate to run the economy, an issue that the Trump campaign tried to turn into a top selling point for his re-election. He repeatedly rejected public health restrictions that could slow economic growth and made inaccurate claims about the state of the economy before the pandemic.

Trump voters believed the president. About three-quarters of his voters said they thought economic conditions were good or excellent, although only 4 in 10 voters overall agreed. “We live with our 401Ks and it’s been going up, up, up for the last four years,” said Bill Roan, a retiree from Snellville, Georgia. “I’m scared about Biden’s tax plan and what’s going to happen to him.”

Throughout the campaign, Trump also sought to use racial tensions to shore up his support, particularly among suburban and older voters. He positioned himself as an advocate for the police and portrayed protesters calling for racial justice and police reform as radicals. While the appeal showed some signs of resonance in small towns, it did little to sway the suburbs. When asked who could best address police and justice issues, suburban voters, an increasingly racially diverse group, preferred Biden to Trump by a narrow margin.

In Kenosha, the Wisconsin city that suffered violence after police shot a black man, Trump’s rhetoric about surveillance and race was too divisive for some of his own supporters. Steelworker Jason Beck voted for Trump four years ago because he “felt it was time for something different,” he said. “And it was a big mistake.”