Current US President Donald Trump on Thursday gave a speech in which he maintained that he was the winner of the 2020 election against former vice-president Joe Biden, despite the fact that the vote count is still ongoing.
“I’d like to provide the American people with an update on our efforts to protect the integrity of our 2020 election,” Trump started.
“If you count the legal votes, I easily win,” Trump asserted. “If you count the illegal votes, they can try to steal the election from us, if you count the votes that came in late, we’re looking at them very strongly, but a lot of votes came in late,” he said.
“I’ve already decisively won many critical states including massive victories in Florida, Iowa, Indiana, Ohio, to name just a few. We won these and many other victories despite historic election interference from big media, big money and big tech.”
Trump mentioned winning by historic numbers, “and the pollsters got it knowingly wrong,” referring to “polls that were so ridiculous and everybody knew it at the time.” The predicted ‘blue wave’ (the Democratic Party is associated with the colour blue) was in fact a red (Republican) wave, Trump said.
He also said that Republicans “kept the senate,” which, while most media are showing either a tie or a Republican lead, is not officially confirmed yet.
Trump also said that “we lost zero races in the House,” and that they “actually won many new seats.” Meanwhile, most American media are showing a Democrat advantage in the House of Representatives.
American networks MSNBC, NBC News and ABC News stopped their live broadcasts while Trump's speech was still ongoing. “Here we are again in the unusual position of not only interrupting the president of the United States but correcting the president of the United States,” said MSNBC anchor Brian Williams, stating that “there are no illegal votes that we know of, there has been no Trump victory that we know of."
With that said, let’s take a look at how things currently stand.
In terms of electoral college votes, things remain unchanged, with Democratic candidate Biden leading with 253 to Trump’s 213. The same six states remain up for grabs. With that, here’s a state-by-state rundown.
Alaska (3 electoral votes):
With around 56% of the vote in at the time of writing, the President has a strong lead over Biden of around 63% to Biden’s 33%.
Arizona (11 electoral votes):
Biden (50.1%) is ahead of Trump (48.5%), and while the Huffington Post, Fox News and AP have already called Arizona for Biden, bringing him to 264 electoral votes, other media say the race for Arizona is still open.
Georgia (16 electoral votes):
With 99% of the votes counted, Donald Trump was in the lead until around 10:45 AM Belgian time, when Biden overtook him as a result of mail-in votes in his favour.
Nevada (6 electoral votes):
Biden (49.4%) is ahead of Trump (48.5%) by just under one percentage point, with 89% of the expected votes reported.
North Carolina (15 electoral votes):
Trump leads over Biden with more than 76,700 votes, a difference of 0.4 percentage votes. Biden’s corner has already said it projects Trump will win this state.
Pennsylvania (20 electoral votes):
President Trump (49.5%) is ahead of Biden (49.2%) but his lead has been shrinking consistently. An estimated 95% of the votes are in.
So where does that leave us?
While both the Biden campaign and the Trump campaign are confident of victory, neither has won yet, and both still can. Even the rare occurrence of a tie is still possible.
To learn the basics of the American electoral system, click here.
Update: This article has been updated to reflect that Biden overtook Trump in the state of Georgia, as of 10:47 AM Belgian time.
Jason Spinks
The Brussels Times
