TOO CLOSE TO CALL
Key swing states still up in the air at end of Election Day
WASHINGTON — Donald Trump survived a scare in Texas, though Election Day ended without a verdict on whether his tumultuous presidency will continue for another term — or the huge blue wave that Joe Biden’s supporters had hoped for.
The former vice president held a substantial lead in national polls before the polls opened but that didn’t translate into any upsets, certainly not enough to force the contest to a quick conclusion.
Results in Pennsylvania, Arizona, Michigan and Wisconsin would be critical, and those were slow to come.
Texas looked neck and neck for hours after polls closed, a point of pride for Democrats in a state that has sent its electoral votes to Republicans, and only Republicans, since 1980.
Trump eventually pulled ahead, winning by about 5.5 percentage points, faring far worse than he had in his 9-point win in 2016 and lagging Sen. John Cornyn, an ally who won a fourth term Tuesday night. That was enough to scoop up the 38 electoral votes that he couldn’t win the White House without.
When early vote tallies were released Tuesday night, it became apparent the “blue wave” Democrats had sought never materialized.
“You can’t think of an election in the recent past where so many states are up for grabs. The idea I’m in play in Texas, Georgia, North Carolina, Florida — I mean, come on,” Biden
told reporters earlier in the day at a community center in his hometown of Wilmington, Del.
“Winning is easy, losing is never easy — not for me, it’s not,” Trump said during an afternoon visit with campaign aides.
The night held few surprises.
Biden held Illinois and Virginia, where Trump made a halfhearted foray, along with Maryland, New Jersey and other reliably Democratic states. And he led in Arizona, a key battleground.
Trump held Florida, another state that was crucial to his path to victory. And he held narrow leads in North Carolina, where Biden seemed to have a chance but neglected in the final week, and Georgia, where Biden had invested a fair amount of time and money.
Emotions were running high. Law enforcement and businesses around the country braced for potential unrest. A record 100.3 million Americans cast ballots before polls opened on Tuesday. Early voting in Texas topped turnout for all of 2016.
The COVID-19 pandemic hung over the race, reshaping the economy and forcing unprecedented adaptations to campaign playbooks and drastic changes in election procedures.
When polls opened on Tuesday, the nation’s death toll stood 231,477 with 9.3 million people infected since March.
Most states encouraged mailin voting to avoid crowding at the polls.
Trump spent months insisting that such ballots were rife for fraud on a massive scale, repeatedly claiming that Democrats were trying to rig the election and steal the presidency on a pretext of public health.
“A lot of shenanigans, a lot of bad things happen with ballots when you say, ‘Oh, let’s devote days and days.’ And all of a sudden the ballot count changes,” Trump insisted Tuesday. “The whole world is waiting, this country is waiting.”