Well, one nightmare is finally over! Trump lost the US presidential election !! Joe Biden is the next President. The final result looks likely to be Biden 306-232 Trump.
It was a horrible few days through. Trump had strongly encouraged his followers to vote in person on the day, while Biden encouraged his to vote by post to avoid coronavirus risks. This meant that in many states Trump initially had a huge lead – only for it to evaporate as postal votes were counted.
For example in Philadelphia, his initial lead at 13.28 on the 4th was 620,000! But there were 1.6 million votes still to be counted – 25% of the state, and so the lead was slowly eaten away by postal votes till at 13:52 on the 6th Biden nudged ahead and as of the 8th, he leads by 41,000 and has taken the state as there are only 71,000 left to be counted and postal votes have been breaking 60/40 for Biden.
Similarly in Georgia, Trump started off 110,000 ahead but it flipped on the 6th and Biden is now 10,000 ahead. Its going to a recount but Biden is almost certain to win anyway (no recount in US history has changed the result by more than 300 votes).
Naturally though, Trump is not accepting it. He’s already called it a fraud, claimed the postal votes are “illegal”, and is inciting his followers to violence. During the week he tried to have postal votes excluded, counts stopped, and has encouraged his supporters to intimidate and attack counting stations. His attempts failed. He’s currently hiding at Mar a Lago playing golf.
This is a dangerous time though. He can still incite his supporters to extreme violence, try to annul the election or to convince state legislatures to send faithless electors to the electoral college. He’s already tried to persuade PA’s republican administration to do just that (he failed).
Final result map with just Georgia, Arizona (Biden leads) and North Carolina (Trump leads) left to be called:
And here’s where it stood on the 4th.
