US Election 2020: America decides today

 

About 236 million Americans  will today decide between President Donald Trump and former Vice-President Joe Biden who will lead the country in the next four years.

Already, more than 94 million people have cast their ballots in early voting, putting the country on course for its highest turnout in a century. In the US election, voters decide state-level contests rather than an overall single national one.

To be elected US president, a candidate must win at least 270 votes in what’s called the Electoral College. Each US state gets a certain number of votes partly based on its population and there are a total of 538 up for grabs. This system explains why it’s possible for a candidate to win the most votes nationally – like Hillary Clinton did in 2016 – but still lose the election.

According to national polls, Biden is leading by a narrower margin in many key states and has multiple paths to victory. Trump’s route to the required 270 votes is thinner but still viable, meaning either candidate could win. Trump’s campaign is counting on a surge in Election Day turnout from his supporters to fuel the President’s path to reelection.

Biden is ahead in sufficient swing states to allow multiple routes to the 270 electoral votes needed to win the White House, including through the Sun Belt and the Midwest.

“We feel very confident about our pathways to victory,” Biden senior adviser Anita Dunn told Jake Tapper on CNN’s “State of the Union” on Sunday. Biden is hoping that wins in states like Arizona, Florida, Georgia or North Carolina could send an early signal later today that he is heading for victory.

Trump, while trailing Biden, also has a clear, if narrower, chance to get to 270 electoral votes that relies on him sweeping through a swath of battlegrounds he won four years ago with what his campaign promises will be a huge Election Day turnout.

The President cannot afford to drop states like Florida, Georgia or North Carolina and then must battle Biden in the Midwest — the decisive territory in his victory over Hillary Clinton, where he is struggling by comparison four years later.

Still, the President is within striking distance in some swing state polls and Democrats are haunted by the idea that he could yet again defy expectations and pull off a stunning Election Day comeback.

President Trump has already  cast doubt on the integrity of vote counting and warning he will deploy squads of lawyers when polls close today as his latest attempts to tarnish the democratic process deepen a sense of national nervousness hours before  Election Day.

Fears are also growing that the President might try to declare victory before all the votes are counted as he and Biden  launch a final-day swing through the battleground states that will decide one of the most crucial elections in modern US history. Their sprint is taking place as the  coronavirus pandemic  — that Trump has denied and downplayed — begins to rage out of control across most of the country. The situation further complicates life for millions expected to head to polling places today to join the record 95 million citizens who have already cast an early vote.

can take several days for every vote to be counted after any US presidential election, but it’s usually pretty clear who the winner is by the early hours of the following morning.

In 2016, Donald Trump took to the stage in New York at about 03:00 local time to give his victory speech in front of a crowd of jubilant supporters.

Officials are however already warning that the country may have to wait longer – possibly days, even weeks – for the result this year because of the expected surge in postal ballots. The last time the result wasn’t clear within a few hours was in 2000, when the winner wasn’t confirmed until a Supreme Court ruling was made a month later.