Even securing Illinois’ 20 electoral college votes was not enough to allow the state’s Democrats to go to sleep without downing Xanax. Last night, as polls closed and votes were still being tabulated in several key states, both Democrats and Republicans went (or at least tried) to sleep with extremely close election results being reported. And despite what incumbent Donald Trump tweeted, Americans also woke up to an undecided anxiety-inducing race.
For months, the battle between Trumpsters and Liberals as well as traditional Republicans and Conservatives dominated the news. With record early voting and mail-in ballots, it is impossible to declare a winner. It just wasn’t possible to count all the ballots in one day. At the time of this writing only 50% of votes from Philadelphia and its surrounding suburbs have been counted.
At press time, Trump had 213 electoral votes and Joe Biden had 238 according to Politico. CNN, as of the publication of this article, had Biden ahead 224-213. A candidate needs 270 electoral college votes to win. Also of note, Biden is leading in the popular vote 69,771,823 to Trump’s 67,162,318.
“We feel good about where we are,” Biden said during a short speech that began after midnight on the east coast. “I’m here to tell you tonight we believe we’re on track to win this election. We knew, because of the unprecedented early vote and the mail-in vote, that it’s going to take awhile. We’re going to have to be patient until the hard work of tallying the votes is finished. And it ain’t over until every vote is counted, every ballot is counted.”
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Trump, despite vowing that he would not prematurely declare victory until the totals for all states were known, took a much different tone during his speech in the early hours of Wednesday morning.
Of course he did.
“This is a fraud on the American public,” Trump said, after claiming victory in states that have yet to be decided. “This is an embarrassment to our country. We were getting ready to win this election. Frankly, we did win this election.”
Conservative commentator Ben Shapiro said Wednesday it was “deeply irresponsible” for the President to falsely claim victory in a tweet. “No, Trump has not already won the election, and it is deeply irresponsible for him to say he has.”
Despite Trump’s claims, votes in several swing states — including Pennsylvania, Georgia, Michigan and Wisconsin — will continue to be counted until a proper winner can be declared. Right now all the races are tight with Trump leading in PA and GA. Biden is widening his lead in Michigan and Wisconsin due to urban votes being counted.
