Millions of Americans on November 3rd left their homes early in the morning to elect the 46th president of the United States of America in what many experts have entitled the “most important election in history.”
Donald Trump, the Republican Party candidate and the incumbent President of the United States, and Joe Biden, the Democratic Party candidate and the former Vice-President of the United States under Barack Obama, are in a cut-throat competition for the presidency.
The polling started on November 3rd in all 5o states of the US ended at the end of the day. Millions throughout the United States cast their votes. The presidential candidates also visited several polling stations and addressed the crowds.
Currently, Democratic candidate Joe Biden is leading the race for the presidency with 248 states, whereas the Republican candidate Donald Trump is trailing behind with 214 votes. Neither candidate has cleared the required 270 Electoral College votes to win the White House. The counting in battleground states – Michigan, Pennsylvania– that could drastically change the electoral results. Top advisors for both Biden and Trump have argued that their respective candidates have a likelier path for victory.
Biden and Trump with 50% and 48% votes respectively are in a neck-and-neck competition. It is getting increasingly difficult to predict the outcome, but according to the recent reports, Biden has cleared Wisconsin and is also leading in Michigan.
Hundreds of thousands of votes are still being counted in Pennsylvania.
The margins were exceedingly tight in the states across the country, with the candidates trading wins in swing states. Trump bagged Florida, the largest of the swing states, while Biden pocketed Arizona, a state that has voted for Republicans in the past elections.
Texas, Ohio, Iowa, North Carolina, Georgia, Alabama and several other states opted for Trump. New York, Wisconsin New Hampshire, Nevada, California, Illinois, Washington, Oregon, New Jersey and many other states were bagged by the Democrats.
With 48 votes, the Republicans are leading for the Senate, whereas the Democrats lag with 45 votes. Both parties need 51 votes to hold the Senate.
Other than the presidency, the Democrats are also leading the county for the House of Representatives with 199 votes, whereas the Republicans stand at 185. 218 is the required majority for the House.
The US presidential election comes at a crucial point in not only the American but the world history; analysts across the globe have dubbed as the “most important election in history.” The consequences of the decisions made by the Americans in the past few hours will have effects across the planet.
The high-stakes election was held against the historic backdrop of the Covid-19 pandemic which has killed 232,000 Americans, wiped off millions of jobs and has thrown the US economy in a downward spiral. The country also witnessed massive racial unrest in the past few months. Both candidates have pressed dramatically different visions of the country’s future – Biden, with his “battle for the soul of the nation”, has promised to rejoin the Paris Agreement on climate change, raise the taxes for high earners and repair relations with the US allies; and Trump, with his populism-tinged slogan “Make America great again”, has promised to reduce taxes, create millions of jobs for Americans and diminish the US military build-up overseas.
Analysts and independent polls throughout the country and beyond projected an effortless win for Joe Biden. Biden had a 95% probability of winning the elections, and Trump trailed behind with only 5%. But as the Election Day enrolled, the figures drastically changed: Trump’s electoral support throughout the country bounced to an astounding 48%, leaving the pollsters and Democrats in shock and bringing the entire election to a knife-edge.
In an extraordinary move, Donald Trump announced his premature victory on Twitter, attracting widespread condemnation. He claimed that the elections were being tainted by late-counted ballots, and warned that he will take the elections to the Supreme Court to stop the counting. Twitter flagged a number of his tweets, noting that the some – or whole – of the information in them was “disputed and might be misleading about an election or other civic process.”
Biden appeared in front of supporters in Delaware, urging patience and saying that the “election ain’t over until every vote is counted, every ballot is counted.”
“It’s not my place or Donald Trump’s place to declare who’s won this election,” Biden said. “This is the decision of the American people.”