The few counts still in progress indicate with a high degree of certainty that Donald Trump will win the US presidential election. He won important and contested states, the so-called swing states.
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These include Florida, Ohio, North Carolina, and Iowa. Trump leads the electors by 264: 215
He is also ahead in Wisconsin and Michigan – states in the industrial northeast, where the Republican is clearly doing significantly better than predicted. Swing State Pennsylvania could also go to him, the AP agency sees him there as the winner. Favored Democrat Hillary Clinton is lagging behind in these crucial states.
Anyone who wants to succeed Barack Obama in the White House on January 20 needs the votes of at least 270 voters. The candidate who has the most votes nationwide does not win; the US president is only elected indirectly by the people. Each state has a certain number of votes on a 538-member body of electoral men and women. Their number depends on the size of the population in each state.
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Trump has also already won the votes of the electorate in the states Utah, Idaho, Georgia, Alabama, Arkansas, Nebraska, Louisiana, Indiana, Kentucky, West Virginia, Oklahoma, Mississippi, Tennessee, Kansas, Texas, Wyoming, North und South Dakota, Montana such as South Carolina.
Clinton won in California, Oregon, Colorado, New York, Virginia, New Mexico, Connecticut, Massachusetts, New Jersey, Rhode Island, Delaware, Maryland, District of Columbia, Illinois such as Vermont.
Read all developments live in our news blog.
In the last hours of the election campaign, both opponents had once again tried everything to get the citizens on their side in particularly hotly contested US states. Both invested another million dollars in TV commercials.
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Clinton held an event in Raleigh, North Carolina, after midnight on election day, along with pop star Lady Gaga. She gave her followers a recommendation in case their children and grandchildren later asked her what they had done in 2016 “when everything was at stake”. The answer is, “You voted for a stronger, fairer, better America – an America where we build bridges, not walls.”
Meanwhile, Trump completed his last day as a candidate in Grand Rapids, Michigan. “Today is our Independence Day”, he quoted a line from the 1996 Hollywood film “Independence Day”, slightly changed. “We are finally ending the chapter in the history books about the Clintons, their lives, their machinations, their corruption.”
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About 219 million people were eligible to vote. The prerequisite was that a voter registered and was not excluded from the election – for example because of a criminal past. More than 42 million Americans voted early.
The detailed election results can be found in the graphic:
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