How Many Votes Have Been Counted In Undecided States
This time around, Democrats had been feeling fairly optimistic about bringing Michigan back into their fold. Throughout the campaign, Biden maintained a healthy lead in the polls, and in 2018 Democrats managed to win races for governor, attorney general, secretary of state and two safe Republican congressional districts in the suburbs.
Trump looks to have maintained his hold on Macomb County in 2020, but Biden appears to have cut into his margins there. In neighboring Oakland County, comprising wealthier suburbs that once voted Republican, Biden not only won the county but improved on Clinton’s margins, mirroring trends across the country as suburban voters, especially women and seniors, shifted away from the Republican Party.
And a big factor at play in Michigan: Detroit.
Votes in the Democratic bulwark are often the last to come in and it’s a big reason Michigan turned blue so late in the count. On Wednesday morning, election officials were still counting the flood of mail ballots that had been received by Election Day, as had been expected.
Clinton turned out about 45,000 fewer votes in Detroit than Obama did in 2012. On Tuesday night, Detroit City Clerk Janice Winfrey estimated that Detroit had hit turnout records dating back at least two decades foreshadowing a healthy turnout for Biden in Michigan’s biggest city.
Secretary Of State Optimistic About Completing Vote Count Soon
Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson said election officials would be closer to a complete count of the state’s record number of votes by end of the day on Wednesday. “I’m optimistic that by the end of the day the majority of our ballots will be tabulated and we’ll be much closer to having a full, if not a full and complete, unofficial result to announce at that point,” she told reporters.
Benson said “tens of thousands of ballots” still needed to be counted in places like Detroit, Flint, Grand Rapids and Kalamazoo. “We’re focused on counting every single ballot,” she said. “That’s our focus, every single ballot in Michigan will be counted.”
Benson asked for patience as the count proceeded. “We understand that the eyes of the nation are on Michigan right now and our voters and these ballots,” she said.
Over 5 million citizens voted in the state, a record turnout, and at least 3.2 million ballots were cast absentee, she said.
Michigan Recount Confirms Trump Won County That Went To Biden
In the ongoing comedy of errors that is the 2020 presidential election, a recount confirmed that President Donald Trump won Michigans Antrim County, even though the election night results appeared to show that Joe Biden had taken the county.
A hand recount in Antrim County conducted Dec. 17 showed that Trump garnered 9,759 votes, while Biden got 5,959, the Detroit Free Press reported.
This was the third time that the countys results were modified.
On election night, it looked like Biden had won the county, with the former vice president apparently up by roughly 3,000 votes the following morning.
Two days later, the county reversed course, saying President Trump won Antrim by around 2,500 votes.
Eventually, Trump was the winner by nearly 3,800 votes a larger margin of victory than previously claimed. The audit conducted Dec. 17 showed Trump with one more vote than the previous results, and Biden with 11 fewer votes.
County officials claimed the original miscount that wrongly showed Biden had won was the result of human error a common refrain amid an alarming pattern of bizarre, dubious errors that seem to all favor Biden.
Antrim uses Dominion Voting Systems machines and software, which have come under fire amid allegations of glitches that conservatives say seem to always work against Republicans.
The election was inevitably riddled with fraud.
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How Many Votes Did Trump And Clinton Get The Final Vote Count
Despite being trounced in the Electoral College , Hillary Clinton won the popular vote over Donald Trump, but by how much? Well, after all the controversy, outrage and failed recount attempts, the numbers are finally all in. Dave Wasserman of Cook Political Report has provided a spreadsheet with all the vote totals, which show that Clinton ended up beating Donald Trump by over 2.8 million votes.
Here are the final numbers via Wasserman:
- Clinton: 65,844,610
- Trump: 62,979,636
- Others: 7,804,213
With all the numbers in, Clinton ended up winning 65,844,610 votes, which is 48.2% of the total votes. That vote total is good enough to give Clinton the third most votes of any presidential candidate in history .
Clintons total beat Trump by 2,864,974 votes, a 2.1% margin. As a comparison, Al Gore won the popular vote over George W. Bush in 2000 by less than 600,000 votes, just 0.5%: 50,999,897 to 50,456,002 .
That 2.1% gap ended up being only about 1 point lower than the final average of the national polls on the eve of the election . However, the national polls were way off on the total vote percentages, predicting Clinton winning 45.2% and Trump winning 42.2% in the four-way contest, off by 3% and 3.9%, respectively. Even the head-to-head surveys underestimated turnout for both candidates the average gave Clinton only 46.8% and Trump 43.6%, off 1.4% and 2.5%.
Michigan: Clinton 2,268,839 Trump 2,279,543
Pennsylvania: Clinton 2,926,441 Trump 2,970,733
Trump’s Working Class Appeal Is Evident As Is His Ability To Beat The Polls
The president, meanwhile, has repeatedly shown himself to be a political marvel, defying odds and proving pundits, handicappers and pollsters wrong.
Four years ago, he rode a level of support in rural and older industrial areas, especially those with large swaths of white voters, unlike that seen since Ronald Reagan in the 1980s, decrying trade deals and blustering that he’d force Mexico to pay for a wall along the southern border. Much of his bluster was false rhetoric. But he kept it up, and it worked to a great degree.
This year, despite trailing in many independent public opinion polls such as the Free Press’ by around 7 points, he brought it closer to 2 by outgaining Biden in areas like St. Clair County, where he added more than 10,000 votes, and Monroe, where he added 9,400. In the region around Saginaw Bay and the Thumb, he got 27,000 more votes than in 2016 out of an area still trying to dig itself out of long-standing manufacturing losses.
A survey of some 3,400 voters in Michigan done by the Associated Press as part of its election coverage found whites without college degrees made up some 54% of the electorate, and they overwhelmingly supported Trump 58%-41%. His margin of support among white men without college degrees was even higher, 64%-34%.
If that’s the case, it’s not just in Michigan, but in several other states as well, including Wisconsin and Florida, where Trump clearly outperformed most recent polls.
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Michigan Judge Rejects Trump Campaign Lawsuit To Stop Counting Votes
A judge in Michigan denied the Trump campaign’s request to order officials to stop counting votes, the latest setback in the president’s efforts to challenge the election in the courts.
The Trump campaign had asked a Michigan court to stop the count until the secretary of state issued a directive that election inspectors be present at all absent voter counting boards.
Judge Cynthia Stephens noted that Jocelyn Benson, the secretary of state, had already issued a directive about how to follow state laws, with instructions for providing meaningful access for poll-watchers. She also said the day-to-day process of vote counting is up to local jurisdictions, meaning the campaign’s request for relief from the secretary of state was unavailable.
Stephens noted that the suit was filed at 4 p.m. Wednesday, at which point vote counting had largely proceeded. The “essence of the count is completed,” Stephens said.
The judge criticized evidence the campaign provided, including an affidavit detailing a potential issue at a counting facility. “What I have at best is a hearsay affidavit,” the judge said. A campaign lawyer pushed back against that, but the judge wasn’t buying it.
The Trump campaign appeared to have one lawyer at the hearing, to face off against one lawyer from the secretary of state’s office, the attorney general’s office and two lawyers with the Democratic National Committee.
What Are The Limits
The court has declared that states have the right to take back the choice of electors from the people but has cautioned that they may not do so easily.
When states give the voters control over electoral picks, they confer on them a fundamental right, which is protected by other constitutional guarantees, including the due process and equal protection clauses.
But its not clear how strong that protection might actually be. State legislatures would almost certainly have to pass a new law or resolution to make any change. In each state, a majority of legislators would have to agree. And, depending on the form of the enactment, it might or might not be subject to a governors approval or a veto override.
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Trump’s Victory Margin Smaller Than Total Stein Votes In Key Swing States
Donald TrumpHillary Clintonstates latest numberstweetedobjectionAl GoreAlbert Arnold GoreMeet the red-state governor Democrats should nominate in 2024 instead of Biden or HarrisMedia narrative got education’s role in Virginia election backwardsFive things to watch in the Virginia governor’s raceMOREGary Earl JohnsonBiden broadened Democratic base, cut into Trump coalition: studyNew Mexico lawmakers send recreational marijuana bills to governorJudge throws out murder convictions, releases men jailed for 24 yearsMOREEDITORS NOTE: A previous version of this story, based on now-outdated vote totals, mischaracterized Trump’s margin of victory in Pennsylvania. It is larger than the total number of Stein votes in the state
Kent County Trending Blue Flips
Grand Rapids and Kent County have been trending blue for years and the county as a whole went from backing Trump in 2016 by 9,500 votes to backing Biden by 21,000 votes a 30,000 vote swing.
It wasnt just Grand Rapids though. Biden won by more than 40,000 votes, well above Clintons 27,000-vote margin.
Outside the city still favored Trump, but not as much as 2016.
Trump won the region by 18,000 votes, half his 36,000-vote margin in 2016. The gains in Grand Rapids for Biden were enough to flip the county.
Interestingly, U.S. Senate candidate John James, a Republican who has narrowly lost to incumbent Gary Peters, got 11,038 more votes in Kent County than Trump.
James got 7,000 fewer votes statewide than Trump, 2,630,042 to 2,637,173.
Jonathan Oosting contributed to this report.
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Every Vote Will Count Secretary Of State Says
Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson said early Wednesday that state election officials worked through the night to count votes and “that work continues.”
She said hundreds of thousands of ballots in Michigan’s largest jurisdictions are still being counted, including Detroit, Grand Rapids, Flint, Warren and Sterling Heights. Benson told CNN that the state is on track to have “a much more complete picture” by the end of the day.
“Every vote will count,” Benson said on Twitter.
Her tweet included a graphic that says: “Voters decide elections. Not candidates.”
The Republican Brand Remains Untouchable In Much Of State
Trump lost, but he gained a larger share of votes in 63 of the states 83 counties. In all, he won 73 counties, down from 75 in 2016, as Saginaw, Leelanau and Kent counties flipped to Biden.
In 27 counties, Trumps support rose by 2 to 4.5 percentage points from 2016. In Montcalm County north and east of Grand Rapids, he won with 68 percent of the vote, up from 63.5 percent in 2016.
Many of these pro-Trump counties, however, have few people. They are the reason his campaign had rallies by Trump and his surrogates all across the state, to increase turnout.
In many places it worked: Trump got more than 60 percent of the vote in 47 counties, down only one county from his 2016 campaign.
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Involvement Of Other Countries
On December 9, 2016, the Central Intelligence Agency issued an assessment to lawmakers in the US Senate, stating that a Russian entity hacked the DNC and John Podesta‘s emails to assist Donald Trump. The Federal Bureau of Investigation agreed. President Barack Obama ordered a “full review” into such possible intervention. Director of National Intelligence James R. Clapper in early January 2017 testified before a Senate committee that Russia’s meddling in the 2016 presidential campaign went beyond hacking, and included disinformation and the dissemination of fake news, often promoted on social media. Facebook revealed that during the 2016 United States presidential election, Russian company funded by Yevgeny Prigozhin, Russian businessman with ties to Vladimir Putin, had purchased advertisements on the website for US$100,000, 25% of which were geographically targeted to the U.S.
President-elect Trump originally called the report fabricated. said the Russian government was not the source of the documents. Days later, Trump said he could be convinced of the Russian hacking “if there is a unified presentation of evidence from the Federal Bureau of Investigation and other agencies.”
How Does A President Win A State
In nearly every state, the candidate who gets the most votes wins the electoral votes for that state, and gets that number of voters in the Electoral College. Second, the electors from each of the 50 states gather in December and they vote for president.
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Trump Campaign Sues To Halt Counting Of Votes In Michigan
Trump campaign manager Bill Stepien said the president’s reelection campaign has filed a lawsuit in Michigan state court today to stop the counting of ballots, citing inadequate access to vote-tallying locations.
“As votes in Michigan continue to be counted, the presidential race in the state remains extremely tight as we always knew it would be,” Stepien said in a statement. “President Trump’s campaign has not been provided with meaningful access to numerous counting locations to observe the opening of ballots and the counting process, as guaranteed by Michigan law.”
Stepien said the lawsuit was filed in the Michigan Court of Claims.
In addition to seeking to halt the counting of ballots “until meaningful access has been granted,” the Trump campaign is also demanding to “review those ballots which were opened and counted while we did not have meaningful access.”
