Highlights so far from the US elections
With the US elections on knife-edge and the count taking longer than expected, election night is stretching into election week. Here are some of the key takeaways from the results so far and a digest of the best coverage.
The last battleground states will decide the fate of the presidential race. Joe Biden stood on the brink of defeating President Donald Trump after taking Michigan and Wisonsin and edging closer to the 270 electoral votes needed to win the election.
Biden has 264 electoral votes next to Trump’s 214, according to projections by Bloomberg. The race remains too close to call with several key battleground states still left to play for including Arizona, Georgia, Nevada, Pennsylvania - the latter counting for 20 electoral votes.
Legal Challenges Trump’s campaign has launched a legal strategy attacking the integrity of the voting process in states where the result could mean his defeat. It is challenging the vote counts in Wisconsin, Georgia, Pennsylvania and Michigan.
The “squad” are re-elected. All four members of the progressive “Squad” of Democratic congresswomen have won re-election. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts and Rashida Tlaib of Michigan will return to their seats in the US Congress. Since taking office in January 2019, the lawmakers, all women of color have championed progressive causes and also attracted the ire of Donald Trump.
Our sisterhood is resilient. pic.twitter.com/IfLtsvLEdx
— Ilhan Omar (@IlhanMN) November 4, 2020
The battle for House and Senate control. As Donald Trump and Joe Biden vye for the White House, Democrats and Republicans are locked in a tight race for control of the US Senate. So far there have been a number of firsts, including the first openly transgender state senator. In Missouri, veteran Black Lives Matter activist Cori Bush has become the first Black woman to represent the state in Congress. Meanwhile, a record number of Republican women ran for federal office this year, boosting the number of women in the House by at least 10 members.
Trump won swing state Florida after winning over Latino voters in the Miami area that he had previously lost out to Hillary Clinton in 2016. This marks a key set back for Joe Biden in what would have provided from there a surer passage to the White House.
QAnon enters the US Congress. Marjorie Taylor Greene was elected to the Congressional House of Representatives. The candidate from Georgia expressed her belief in the QAnon conspiracy theory, which considers Donald Trump invested with a sacred mission against satanist pedophile movements, affiliated with the Democratic Party.
The world reacts to the US elections. As American wait for the final count, an international audience also waits anxiously for the results. Countries including China and the UK have refrained from commenting on the elections. Iran’s supreme leader Ali Khamenei said in a tweet that the outcome of the U.S. election “won’t affect our policy towards the U.S.”
Peace starts at home. Whoever wins or loses, the outcome will have important ramifications for international relations and the future of multilateralism. We explore what these will be in the context of peacebuilding.