COMEBACK KID?: Republican presidential nominee former President Donald Trump visits his campaign headquarters, Tuesday in West Palm Beach, Florida. AP PHOTO - Evan Vucci
REPUBLICAN candidate and former president Donald Trump appeared on course to be re-elected President of the United States in the November 5 presidential election.
The race for the White House was a tight one with Vice President Kamala Harris and Trump going down to the wire in the push for the magical number of 270 electoral votes needed to become the 47th US president.
While the figures at 1 am appeared to give Trump the edge over Harris, Democrats were still holding out for victories in certain key states in order to reverse Trump's surge and help push Harris to the win.
Around 11 pm, different news sources such as Associated Press, NBC and the UK Guardian put the electoral vote count between Harris and Trump at 112 to 198, 1815 to 230 and 179 to 214 respectively.
At 1 am on November 6, the UK Guardian had Trump ahead by 230 to Harris' 205 votes. At that same time, the BBC had Trump at 230 votes to Harris' 165, while CNN had the race at 230 to 186 in favour of Trump.
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Early results projected Harris would win Vermont, Colorado, New Hampshire, Maryland, Massachusetts, Columbia, Delaware, Illinois, Oregon, Virginia and Rhode Island.
Trump was projected to win Kentucky , Indiana, West Virginia, Ohio, Florida, South Carolina, Missouri, Arkansas, Tennessee, North Dakota, South Dakota and Alabama.
The early popular vote had Harris with 5,014,898 votes while Trump had 6,104,729.
Results in several other states, where the polls closed, were too close to call as votes were being counted late into the night and early morning.
The early popular vote had Harris with 5,014,898 votes while Trump had 6,104,729.
In 2020, the margin of votes between then Democratic candidate Joe Biden and Trump was 306-232 votes.
In 2016, the margin of votes between Trump and his then Democratic rival Hillary Clinton was 304-227 votes.
Earlier in the day, information suggested the presidential race was deadlocked.
Reports from sources such as ABC News and CNN said the polls are exceptionally close across the US and in all the swing states – Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin in the industrial Midwest; Nevada and Arizona in the west; and Georgia and North Carolina in the south.
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A final New York Times/Siena poll on November 4 showed Harris leading by a very small margin or tied with Trump in all the swing states.
This has been an historic presidential election for many reasons, the chief being that it was the second time a woman was running for office, following Democratic presidential candidate and former first lady Hillary Clinton's failed run to the White House in 2016, when her opponent – Trump – was first elected to the Oval Office.
Harris spent November 4 in Pennsylvania, whose 19 electoral votes offer the largest prize among the swing states expected to determine the Electoral College outcome.
Trump held his final rallies in Michigan, Pennsylvania and North Carolina on the same day.
If re-elected, as the projections had him, Trump will be the first former president since Grover Cleveland to be re-elected to office. At 78, Trump will also be the oldest person to serve as president after a second non-consecutive term. The White House website showed Cleveland was the only president to leave the White House and return for a second, non-consecutive term four years later. Those terms were 1885-1889 and 1893-1897 respectively.
No other former president in US history has sought or won re-election.
TRINI LOVE FOR TRUMP: These people showed their support for Republican candidate and former US president Donald Trump at a US presidential election watch party on Tuesday at a bar on Cipriani Boulevard, Port of Spain. - Photo by Angello Marcelle
Trump entered the campaign with considerable political baggage which would make his re-election all the more amazing.
This included a grand jury indictment on August 1, 2023 in the District of Columbia's District Court on four charges for his conduct after the 2020 presidential election through the January 6, 2021 Capitol attack; and a May 30 conviction in a hush-money case in New York (where he was found guilty of falsifying business records in connection with a pay-off to Stormy Daniels, a porn star who claimed to have had a sexual encounter with him).
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A June 13, 2023 Politico report said, "Over a five-month span (in 2023), former President Donald Trump was charged in four criminal cases. Together, the indictments accused him of wide-ranging criminal conduct before, during and after his presidency. One of those indictments has now led to the first criminal conviction of a former president; the other three remain pending."
The report added, "For the first 234 years of the nation’s history, no American president or former president had ever been indicted."
In May, a jury in New York found Trump guilty on 34 felony counts of falsifying business records.
During the election campaign, Trump was the victim of two assassination attempts.
The first was on July 13 at a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, which killed one rally-goer and wounded two others. Trump was shot in the ear before being hustled off the stage.
In the second attempt, on September 24,a suspect later identified as Wesley Ryan Routh was arrested at Trump's Golf Club in West Palm Beach, Florida.
Trump, the 45th president, announced his campaign for the 2024 election on November 15, 2022. He was officially nominated as the Republican presidential candidate on July 15.
Throughout his campaign, Trump has made a series of false and misleading statements and used racist and incendiary rhetoric advanced by various conspiracy theories.
He made several personal attacks against Harris which were viewed as sexual in nature, racist and misogynistic and considered a continued breaking of political norms.
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Trump's campaign rhetoric has also has regularly espoused anti-immigrant nativism and anti-transgender fear-mongering.
The former includes claims which have been publicly dismissed about Haitian immigrants eating people's pets in Springfield, Ohio.
The latter involved advertisements issued by Trump's campaign which say, “Kamala is for they/them. President Trump is for you.”
Trump's public support of world leaders such as Russian President Vladimir Putin and North Korean President Kim Jong-Un, who are viewed as dictators, has raised concerns inside and outside the US that should he be re-elected, he will become one too.
When he lost the 2020 election to incumbent President Joe Biden, Trump claimed the election was stolen from him, but produced no bonafide evidence to support his claim.
He has repeated that claim during this campaign.
In a statement on November 4, Foreign and Caricom Affairs Minister Dr Amery Browne said given the long-standing and productive relationship this country maintained with the US, the ministry monitored the build-up to the 2024 presidential election, including positions espoused by the two main candidates.
“The results will be profoundly consequential to the people of this hemisphere and across the world.
“Best wishes to the US for a free, fair and safe election in the best spirit of democracy, and we look forward to working with the winning team on all matters of mutual interest in 2025 and beyond."
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