Besides the White House, the 435 seats of the House of Representatives are at stake
Washington:
Americans voted Tuesday in the shadow of a growing coronavirus pandemic to decide whether to re-elect Republican Donald Trump, one of the most polarizing presidents in American history, or send Democrat Joe Biden to the White House .
A record number of early votes – some 100 million – have already been cast in an election that is putting the country in trouble and which is closely watched in capitals around the world.
Biden, 77, who served as Barack Obama’s vice president for eight years, leads Trump in national polls and in many battlefield states that will decide the White House.
The former Delaware senator, who is running for his third presidential bid, started his day with a visit to church in Wilmington, Delaware, where his son, Beau Biden, and his first wife and daughter are buried .
Trump, 74, who is seeking to become the first U.S. president to win re-election after being impeached, has rejected polls showing him behind Biden.
“I think we have a very good chance of winning,” he said Tuesday morning on “Fox and Friends”. “We think we are doing really well everywhere. The crowds have been amazing.”
“Our country can never be the same country if they win,” Trump said, adding that America would become a “socialist” nation.
At the same time, Trump has cast doubt on the integrity of the election and threatened legal action, saying the only way to lose would be to “rig” the results.
Casting her vote in New York City, Megan Byrnes-Borderan, 35, said Trump’s threats were “part of the reasons it’s so scary.”
“I believe Trump will go through all the stops to try to win the election,” she said.
Trump has been campaigning against postal voting for months, saying it could lead to fraud and that all ballots should be tallied on election day.
Several states, including the battlefields of Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin, do not begin counting the mail-in ballots until election day itself.
“No more chaos!
Besides the White House, all 435 seats in the House of Representatives are on the line, and Democrats are expected to hold and possibly expand their majority in the House.
About a third of the Senate is up for grabs and Republicans stand to lose their 53-47 majority.
The divisions and bitter passions sparked by the murderous election campaign are sure to leave a disappointed side and have raised fears of unrest.
In Washington and many other cities, stores have boarded and law enforcement is on high alert.
In a tweet posted with a warning tag by Twitter, Trump said a slow vote count in crucial Pennsylvania could lead to “rampant and uncontrolled cheating.”
“It will also induce violence in the streets. Something must be done!” he tweeted.
Biden focused his attacks on Trump’s handling of the Covid-19 pandemic, which has claimed more than 231,000 lives in the United States, and on the divisive nature of his presidency.
“We’re done with the chaos! We’re done with the tweets, the anger, the hate, the failure, the irresponsibility,” Biden said at an election vigil rally in Cleveland, Ohio.
“We’re coming together for a big win tomorrow,” Biden said in Pittsburgh, Pa., Where he was joined by pop superstar Lady Gaga. “It is time to stand up and take back our democracy.”
Biden, like Hillary Clinton in 2016, is expected to win the popular vote, but all eyes are on the 538-member constituency that ultimately determines the winner of the race.
A candidate needs 270 electoral votes to win and that can go to voters in the states of Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Michigan, North Carolina, Ohio, and Pennsylvania.
Trump won 306 electoral votes in 2016 and he predicted on Tuesday that he would do even better this time around. “I think we’re going to outdo it,” he said.
Trump, who was briefly kicked out of the election campaign in early October by a fight against Covid-19, concluded his campaign with a day of swirling rallies, addressing two supporters in Michigan and making stops in North Carolina, in Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.
He found himself in the early hours of Tuesday in Grand Rapids, Mich. – the same place he concluded his campaign against all odds in 2016.
“How could he not win?”
While Tuesday is officially Election Day, in reality Americans have been voting for weeks.
With a huge expansion of postal voting to guard against the Covid-19 pandemic, some 100 million people have already made their choice.
Trump has lost ground among suburban women, who favor Biden by a double-digit margin, and his “law and order” response to the racial justice protests may have discouraged many black voters.
Trump’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic has also led to a potential loss of support among the elderly.
In one of the great political bets in American history, Biden stood at socially distant rallies with small crowds while Trump held large rallies where few supporters wore masks.
Many early votes are said to have been cast by Democrats, and Trump’s party is hoping for a massive wave of Republican supporters voting in person on Tuesday.
“When you come to one of these rallies, all you think about is, how could he not win?” said Kolleen Wall, who turned out to be cheering Trump in Grand Rapids.
As voters walked to the polls in the United States, the eyes of the world were on the fate of a norm-breaking president with the campaign slogan “America First”.
Trump’s first term was marked by strained relations with NATO allies, the withdrawal of the Paris climate agreement and the World Health Organization, and the renunciation of the Iran nuclear deal.
Relations with China have also become increasingly strained, with Trump accusing Beijing of being responsible for the Covid-19 pandemic.
(This story was not edited by GalacticGaming staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
