US presidential election on a knife edge, winner could be Trump or Biden

The two main candidates in the United States ongoing presidential elections, incumbent President Donald Trump of the Republican Party and former Vice President Joe Biden of the Democratic Party are neck and neck in key swing states election results released so far.

President Trump has defied the pre-election polls to do better than predicted, but Biden has a narrow lead in several key states.

In the US election, voters decide state-level contests rather than an overall, single, national one.

To be elected president, a candidate must win at least 270 votes in what is called the Electoral College. Each US state gets a certain number of votes partly based on its population and there are a total of 538 up for grabs.

Meanwhile, Democratic candidate Joe Biden has said he believes he has won enough votes to secure the White House, while Trump, a Republican, also claimed to have won. His campaign has filed lawsuits in two states, Michigan and Wisconsin and others where Biden leads.

However, no candidate can credibly claim to have won as yet, and both campaigns said they had potential paths to victory.

As at the time of filling this report, Biden has secured 264 Electoral College votes with 72,049,708 total votes representing 50.4% while Trump follows with 214 votes with 68,586,319 total votes representing 48%. Results from few states are expected to decide where the swing goes.

At the legislative Chamber, The Democratic Party has won 47 seats in the senate and 119 in the House of Representatives while the Republican secured 48 seats in the Senate and 188 in the House.

Recall that officials had warned before Election Day that we might have to wait days or even weeks for the presidential result this year because of the surge in postal ballots.

Different states have different rules for how – and when – to count postal ballots, meaning there are large gaps between them in terms of reporting results. In some states it will take weeks to get complete results.

The last time the result was not clear within a few hours was in 2000, when the winner, George W Bush, was not confirmed until a Supreme Court ruling was made a month later.

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