US elections: Biden-Trump battle shifts to swing states after early, easy wins

Joe Biden scored early wins in traditionally Democratic states in the U.S. while President Donald Trump won Republican strongholds, according to the Associated Press and networks, with key battlegrounds still to be decided.

Florida, which Trump’s campaign considers crucial to his re-election hopes, remains undeclared. Trump held a lead in the state after out-performing in one of its most populous counties, Miami-Dade.

Other battleground states were also undecided, including North Carolina, Ohio, Georgia, Pennsylvania and Michigan. Trump held a narrow lead in North Carolina and a larger one in Ohio, though there are votes outstanding in both states. Trump won both in 2016.

Biden is ahead in Arizona, a state Trump won in 2016, but many votes remain to be counted.

The early results gave Biden a 209-118 lead in the Electoral College. The first candidate to reach 270 will claim the presidency.

Biden won California, Oregon, Washington, Colorado, New York, Virginia, Illinois, Maryland, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Vermont, Rhode Island, New Mexico, Delaware, District of Columbia and New Hampshire, according to the AP.

Trump won Idaho, Kansas, Arkansas, Indiana, Kentucky, Tennessee, South Carolina, Alabama, Mississippi, West Virginia, North Dakota, Nebraska, South Dakota, Wyoming, Louisiana, Oklahoma and Missouri.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, a Kentucky Republican, was re-elected, the AP said. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, the Senate Judiciary Committee chairman, was re-elected, and former Colorado Governor John Hickenlooper, a Democrat, defeated Senator Cory Gardner. Senator Doug Jones, an Alabama Democrat, was defeated by Republican Tommy Tuberville.

Biden is winning over Latino and African-American voters in numbers similar to Hillary Clinton four years ago, and is narrowing Trump’s margin among White voters, early exit polls from the AP show.

Trump had a six-point lead among White voters in Tuesday’s election. Network exit polls four years ago showed him with a 20-point advantage among those voters. Biden led among Latino voters by a 2-to-1 ratio, and Black voters 13-to-1.

Trump and Biden have little more to do than wait as officials tally the votes, including millions of pivotal mail-in ballots that could take days to count. Some Trump supporters posted on Twitter that they were headed to the White House for an election-night party.

A final outcome in the race may not be known until much later in the night, or possibly in days or weeks, if vote counts are close.

The odds of a second Trump presidency were trading at more than 79 per cent on the Betfair exchange, and U.S. equity tech futures surged more than 3.5 per cent as investors speculated that they may avoid a contested election.

Trump and Biden both projected confidence throughout Election Day, pointing to long lines at some polling stations as signs they were poised to win. While there were reports of high voter turnout in states including Texas, Florida and Arizona, there were few signs of disturbances that many had feared.

In Charlotte, North Carolina, police arrested a man who was legally carrying an unconcealed firearm after he returned to a polling station authorities said he’d been banned from. The New York Police Department said it will deploy thousands of officers on street patrol Tuesday night to dissuade violence. “Don’t even try it,” Chief of Department Terence Monahan said.

Biden entered Election Day in a strong position, leading nationally by 7.2 percentage points as well as in most swing states, according to the RealClearPolitics polling average. But the Election Day vote was expected to favor Trump in large part because Democrats encouraged their supporters to cast early ballots.

Despite Biden’s advantage, some Democrats are spooked that Trump could defy polls and win, just as he did in 2016. But Biden’s lead over Trump in national polls is greater than Clinton’s was on Election Day in 2016. RealClearPolitics had her ahead of Trump nationally by 3.2 percentage points.

Biden also has held consistent leads in some key swing states he needs to win, while in 2016 some of those states were infrequently polled and assumed to be a slam dunk for Democrats.

On Tuesday, Trump predicted a “big red wave” among Republicans who cast their ballots in person rather than vote early or by mail as many Democrats had done.

“I think we’re going to have a great night,” Trump told reporters when he stopped in at his campaign headquarters in Arlington, Virginia, before returning to the White House to await polling results and work the phones.

Voting takes place amid a deadly wave of the coronavirus pandemic, leading to millions of votes being cast by mail — a shift that could delay an official tally in some battleground states for days. In Pennsylvania, for example, election officials could not begin processing early ballots until Tuesday, and it’s unclear how long it will take officials to tally them.

Early turnout information suggested that Republicans had erased Democrats’ lead in mail-in and early voting in Florida, a key state.

Michael Bloomberg, the founder and majority owner of Bloomberg LP, the owner of Bloomberg News, provided $100m in support of Biden and his running mate Kamala Harris in Florida, half of that from his Independence USA PAC.

“If there’s something to talk about tonight I’ll talk about it,” Biden said Tuesday afternoon at a campaign stop in Wilmington, Delaware. “If not, I’ll wait till the votes are counted the next day.”

The Biden campaign sees multiple paths to victory, while Trump has a narrower route that includes recapturing Pennsylvania while protecting the other states he won in 2016. A win for Biden in those states would all but guarantee him a victory. But the former vice president could also unseat Trump if he picks up traditional GOP bastions in the Sun Belt, like Georgia or Arizona.

While Trump made only one stop outside the White House on Tuesday, Biden returned to his childhood hometown of Scranton before heading to Philadelphia. Biden said he wanted to restore “basic decency and honor” and unite a country he said has fractured under the Trump administration.

“I can say Texas, Arizona, a few of them are looking really very strong,” Trump said in Arlington. “I think if anything, we’re going to do very well.”