Home > ... > Forum 36932

USA : It Is Not Our Election But Their Election

9 November 2016, 13:54

CNN reported at about 2:45 AM Eastern Standard Time that Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton had made a concession call to her Republican opponent Donald Trump, acknowledging that the billionaire real estate mogul had won the presidential election in a stunning upset and debacle for the Democratic Party.

Trump’s victory was accompanied by a rout of the Democrats in the congressional races, with the Republicans retaining control of the Senate and suffering only a small reduction in their majority in the House of Representatives.

When the concession call came, vote counting was continuing in a handful of states, but Trump had effectively secured a victory in the Electoral College. According to television network projections, Trump had 244 electoral votes and was leading in states with enough electoral votes to give him the 270 required to win.

Some 45 minutes before the announcement of Clinton’s concession, the Hill web site reported that Trump had won Pennsylvania, one of the industrial states that had been chalked up by pollsters and the media as firmly in the Clinton column. The win in Pennsylvania brought Trump’s electoral vote total to 264.

Shortly thereafter, Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta told the gloomy crowd gathered at Clinton campaign headquarters in Manhattan that the candidate would not make an appearance until the morning.

The result came as a political shock, as pre-election polls and media commentators had almost unanimously predicted a Clinton victory by a relatively comfortable margin. Financial markets went into convulsions, with the Dow Jones Industrial Average futures market plunging 900 points in overnight trading. The NASDAQ market halted futures trading as prices fell through preset triggers.

According to network projections, Clinton was trailing by 1.2 million in the national popular vote. She could retake the lead in the popular vote after late vote counts in the Pacific Coast states, where she was winning by wide margins. It is the Electoral College, however, that determines the outcome of the presidential race.

When CNN announced Clinton’s concession, the networks had not yet called the major industrial states of Pennsylvania, with 20 electoral votes, Michigan (16) and Wisconsin (10), as well as New Hampshire (4) and Arizona (11). There were two other undecided electoral votes, one each in Nebraska and Maine—states that award electoral votes by congressional district as well as statewide.

By 11 PM on Tuesday, Trump had won five of the closely-contested “battleground” states, including Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, Ohio and Iowa, while taking substantial leads in Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin and Arizona. Clinton won only Virginia, Colorado and Nevada, while taking a narrow lead in New Hampshire.

Trump carried every Southern state except Virginia, which he lost narrowly, as well as the less populated states of the Great Plains and Mountain West, except for Colorado, New Mexico and Nevada. He also won Ohio, Indiana, Missouri and Iowa in the Midwest, and took leads in Wisconsin and Michigan, while Clinton won only Illinois and Minnesota outright.

Any message or comments?

pre-moderation

This forum is moderated before publication: your contribution will only appear after being validated by an administrator.

Who are you?
Your post

To create paragraphs, just leave blank lines.