Washington, Nov 9:As the first U.S. polls closed, Republican Presidential nominee Donald Trump was projected to win in Indiana, West Virginia and Kentucky and his Democratic rival Hillary Clinton in Vermont. With nearly 125 million votes counted, The Associated Press tally had Clinton with 47.7 percent and Trump with 47.5 percent. The results are still too close to project a victor, though Trump leads handily in the counties counted so far. CNN projected a win for Trump in IN and Kentucky, while it projected a win for Clinton in Vermont.
Clinton asked voters to keep the White House in her party’s hands for a third straight term. In the battleground states of Georgia and Virginia, polls have closed though there were no immediate results.
“I don’t think he’s cut out to be no president”, she said.
“Just imagine what our country could accomplish if we started working together as one people, under one God, saluting one American flag”, the 70-year-old former reality television star told cheering supporters.
However, California, with 55 Electoral College, the largest of the 50 US states, would be called last in the exit polls, while its votes are usually seen to swing the election to whoever wins the state. And election officials at a handful of precincts in Durham County, North Carolina, were using paper roll books after technical issues with computer check-in.
Democrats did pick up a consolation prize, with IL with Rep. Tammy Duckworth ousting Republican Sen.
Donald Trump claimed his place Wednesday as America’s 45th president, an astonishing victory for the celebrity businessman and political novice who capitalized on voters’ economic anxieties, took advantage of racial tensions and overcame a string of sexual assault allegations on his way to the White House.
The events of Clinton’s awful final week on the campaign – the revival of her email controversy by FBI Chief James Comey and a damaging drip, drip, drip of revelations by WikiLeaks that her campaign says was orchestrated by Russian intelligence – could have helped consign her to defeat.
Republican Rand Paul is seeking a second term following his failed bid for president. Trump has 204 votes from states that are solidly in his column or leaning that way. Once in 1964 and then again in 2008, when Barack Obama edged out Republican John McCain in a closely fought election. If Clinton wins the presidency, four pickups would be enough to allow her vice president, Tim Kaine, to cast the deciding vote in an evenly split chamber.
But Clinton quickly claimed NY with 29 electors, as well as lesser prizes including Illinois, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Vermont and Maryland. Democrats would need to pick up a net of five or more additional seats to have control of the Senate.
In the House of Representatives, Republicans were poised to maintain a solid majority. Aside from getting the most votes, 270 out of 538 votes in the electoral college has to be secured as well.