[ad_1]
-
2020 U.S. elections
You may have reasonably expected to have some kind of clue on the results of the US presidential election by now.
Okay, so who will be the next president?
We don’t know, because not enough votes have yet been counted for Donald Trump or Joe Biden to claim victory.
image copyrightReuters
In fact, due to the time it takes to count the large number of mail-in ballots cast during this pandemic election, it could take days.
And if there are legal challenges to the results, it could even take weeks. This could get complicated.
Not even a clue?
To become president, you don’t really need to win the popular vote. Instead, a candidate has to win a majority in a system called an electoral college, where each state gets a certain number of votes or “electors” roughly in proportion to its population.
-
LIVE: The election goes to the thread
- US election results on maps and graphs
- In Pictures: 2020 US Election Night
- Razor’s Edge US Elections in Key States
So if that state wins, it wins its votes (except Nebraska and Maine, but that’s tricky). There are 538 of these state votes in total – whoever gets 270 will become president.
So despite near-record turnout this time around, it’s just a few key states on the battlefield whose voters decide the elections.
- Biden and Trump are projected to win the states expected to win comfortably
- The race is still tight in some crucial competitive states.
- In some of those close races, officials haven’t even started counting mail-in votes, and that could change everything.
So, let’s take a look at some of those states.
Florida: Projected for Donald Trump, where many point to Cuban-American support in Miami-Dade County.
image copyrightReutersArizona: The state hasn’t voted Democrats since 1996, but it seems like a potential win for Biden, who went after the young progressive Latinos who live there.
Wisconsin Y Pennsylvania: These states haven’t even started counting mail-in ballots and that could take days.
Story of the night in a line?
Donald Trump is doing better than expected and Joe Biden hasn’t been able to win those battle states that count votes quickly, which means more uncertainty as we wait for some key states.
And in his own words …
Joe Biden addressed supporters saying, “We’re going to win this,” but also urged patience.
Minutes later, Donald Trump tweeted: “We are BIG, but they ate trying to steal the election.” Twitter has flagged that tweet as potentially misleading – the Trump campaign said it was censorship.
Should I have stayed awake?
There were some important moments, but especially in the other elections that are taking place, where the control of the Senate still hangs by a thread:
- Sen. Lindsey Graham, a Trump ally, is set to beat his Democratic challenger Jaime Harrison in South Carolina, a race that at one point looked like he could lose.
- Republican Marjorie Taylor Greene, the first outspoken defender of the QAnon conspiracy theory, won a seat in Congress; it remained unopposed.
- Also in the race for control of the Senate, the Democrats lost Alabama, their most vulnerable seat, but Colorado won over the Republicans.
- Arizona and New Jersey have voted to legalize marijuana for personal use.
- The United States has its highest-ranking openly transgender elected official after Sarah McBride was elected to a seat in the Delaware state legislature.
And now that?
We may not know for days. Well, this seems like the most likely scenario, as this battle will carry over to mail-in ballots that have yet to be counted in places like Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania.
Lawyers could get involved. Donald Trump has previously said that it would pose legal challenges if the outcome is close. This means that it could potentially take weeks.
Will uncertainty lead to riots? There will definitely be uncertainty, but while many Americans have spoken out about their concerns, it is too early to say if there will be any significant unrest.
