pDyaTiJVl2
As the vote count continues in the US, it was not, as many predicted (or hoped), a landslide. Donald Trump has accused his opponents of “fraud on the American public” – and claimed victory in the US election.
This morning president Trump spoke from Washington, D.C. as many key battleground states were still undecided.
Trump called a press conference in which he said “This is a fraud on the American public. This is an embarrassment to our country. We were getting ready to win this election. Frankly, we did win this election.”
He also vowed to take his fight to the Supreme Court because he wants “the law to be used in a proper manner”.
It has been a long few hours. With votes for key swing states still too close to call, there will be no clear winner projected on Election Night.
President Trump claimed victory in Georgia (it’s a key Swing State for both contenders), as well as North Carolina in a statement but all the votes, haven’t been counted for either yet.
He said “A very sad group of people is trying to disenfranchise that group of people [who voted for me], and we will not stand for it,” he said.
To clarify, he’s saying he’s won the election (he hasn’t, at least, not yet anyhow) but there are still hundreds of thousands of votes left to be counted. It could be days before we know the actual outcome with some States taking until the end of the week to get their tallies counted.
Trump won the key swing state of Florida, as well as winning Texas which has 38 Electoral votes, it was hoped this would go to Biden, leaving him a clear path to victory, but as with those all-important swing states, you just never know. The big ones still to be confirmed are Arizona, Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Georgia.
Democratic challenger Joe Biden has also held many of the states won by Hillary Clinton four years ago and the former vice president also polled strongly in some states that are seen as vital for his chances to victory.
At 7.30 AM, Biden has a projected 225 electoral college votes and Trump has 213, with either candidate requiring 270 votes to win the presidency. “I believe we’re on track to win. We need to be patient. It ain’t over until every vote is counted,” said Biden.
When Trump won the presidency in 2016 his victory hinged on victories in the so-called ‘Rust Belt states’ of Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin.
These states were targeted by Democrats during the campaign and it’s now looking like the presidency will be decided by those results.
Reports say Michigan has said that the state won’t have final results until Wednesday evening Irish-time, while it could be Friday before Pennsylvania counts all its votes.
The turnout in this election will be historic with the final numbers on track to be enormous as US voters came out in record numbers.
Whoever wins will likely win by a fraction.
Elsewhere, Pennsylvania has emerged as a hotspot for online misinformation amid misleading posts on social media claiming multiple voting machines had gone down for hours.
In reality, just a single voting machine jammed for just minutes on Tuesday morning at a precinct in Joe Biden’s hometown of Scranton, according to reports.
Facebook and Twitter scrambled to take down false posts about polling locations in Scranton, Philadelphia to minimise the spread of misinformation and prevent it from sowing doubt about the election process.