As he closed his campaign with a series of boisterous rallies, President Donald Trump told his cheering crowds they would prove all the experts wrong again — just as they had when he improbably won the US presidency in 2016.
“A great red wave is coming’’, Trump said at an October 31 rally in Pennsylvania, predicting a surge of Republican support would carry him to re-election. “There’s not a thing they can do about it.”
Trump lost the White House, according to media outlets that called the tight race on Saturday morning for his Democratic opponent Joe Biden, the former vice president. And yet Trump clearly outperformed scores of polls that suggested he might lose in a landslide and proved his base of supporters was bigger and more loyal than many observers realised.
Democrats had hoped that voters would hand Trump a stark repudiation of his often chaotic first term and his divisive campaign. Instead, Trump has captured about 7.3 million more votes than he did in 2016, preliminary returns show.
Many Republican lawmakers who faced election stuck by Trump through an impeachment last year and, this year, his widely maligned handling of the pandemic and the civil unrest over police killings of Black people. Some of those allies were rewarded with Senate victories that may allow the party to maintain a narrow majority. Republicans also gained five seats in the US House of Representatives, which is controlled by Democrats. The Republican party’s strong showing, defying critics and pundits, came despite a massive fundraising advantage enjoyed by Democrats at the campaign’s end and, according to polls, a sharp turn of support toward Democrats in America’s suburbs.
The tight race came down to late-counted mail-in ballots in Georgia and Pennsylvania, which tipped the election to Biden. Trump, however, has not conceded. The incumbent, who received more votes than any Republican candidate in history, has sought to de-legitimise the outcome by claiming, without evidence, that he was cheated. There will likely be recounts in several states.
And Trump continues to wage legal fights to nullify the results. Still, Trump faces a formidable struggle to prevail in the Electoral College that decides US elections.
Each state is allotted electoral votes based on its population. In most states, the candidate that wins the popular vote takes all its electoral votes, no matter how close the margin of victory. In the popular vote nationally, Biden has so far racked up 4.1 million more votes than Trump.
The Trump campaign issued a statement on Saturday morning saying the election was “far from over. Joe Biden has not been certified as the winner of any states, let alone any of the highly contested states.”
Trump tweeted: “I WON THIS ELECTION, BY A LOT!” Even as states count the last ballots, the results have dashed Democrats’ hopes for the death of Trumpism. If Biden’s victory is certified and the Republicans retain the Senate, the new president may be handcuffed in his efforts to push legislation and win confirmations of judges and administration officials. Whatever the future for Trump himself, Democrats and Republicans alike said they will have to reckon with the continuing appeal of his brash brand of populist politics. —Reuters
Joseph Tanfani & Tim Reid
Oman Observer is now on the WhatsApp channel. Click here
