America makes up its mind
Georgia and North Carolina were the last states to be called in the US Presidential race, ten days after the election. Democratic nominee Joe Biden won 306 Electoral Votes in total, flipping five states along the way.
President Donald Trump improved on his 2016 performance, gaining 1.4 percentage points in the share of ballots, and attracting a huge 73.2 million individual votes. That number is second in the history of US elections only to the 78.9 million popular votes obtained by Biden.
The result makes Donald Trump the first one-term President since George H.W. Bush in 1992. That year was also the last time that Georgia had turned blue, delivering a win for Bill Clinton. But unlike Mr Bush, President Trump has refused to concede, instructing instead his personal lawyer Rudolph Giuliani to launch a flurry of lawsuits challenging election results in multiple states. Experts, however, are doubtful that the legal actions will have any significant impact on the election results.
Influential people in the Republican Party including Sente Majority Leader Mitch Mcconnell, Texas Senator Ted Cruz, and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo have closed ranks with the President, claiming that the election is not over yet. Others, such as Michigan Representative Paul Mitchell and former Trump advisor John Bolton urged the President to concede.
Surveys in the weeks before the election suggesting a big blue wave rising to Congress were wide of the mark, and although Democrats held on to their majority in the House by winning the 218 seats to put them in control, Republicans made inroads and narrowed down
the gap. In the Senate, the GOP arrived first to the halfway mark with 50 seats secured. The Democrats slightly increased their share from 2018, adding one seat to reach 48. And now it comes back to Georgia for the two seats left undecided. Republican incumbents Kelly Loeffler and David Purdue will face run-offs against the Democratic challengers after none of them obtained an absolute majority the first time round.
The election will be held in the first week of the new year and the two parties are expected to go all in, pushing the south-eastern state into the centre of the political universe for a second time in as many months.
Meanwhile, congratulations to President-elect Joe Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris have been flowing in from all around the world including statements by British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, Turkish President Recep Erdogan, and Saudi King Salman al Saud. China extended its congratulations through a foreign ministry spokesperson, which is still more than Russia’s silence two weeks after the elections.
Joe Biden delivered his acceptance speech on November 9th, vowing to work for unity in a deeply divided nation. He placed the fight against the coronavirus as the first priority of his administration and said the effort will be led by scientists.
The President-elect closed his address by reciting the hymn ‘On Eagle’s Wings’ in memory of his deceased son, Beau, and of the victims of Covid-19 across America.
Joe Biden delivered his acceptance speech on November 9th, vowing to work for unity in a deeply divided nation. He placed the fight against the coronavirus as the first priority of his administration and said the effort will be led by scientists.