Donald Trump will become the 45th United
States (U.S) President after a stunning victory over Democrat Hillary Clinton.
Clinton won popular votes but Trump claimed
the vital Electoral College
Clinton amassed 59,299,381 votes nationally
as against Trump’s 59,135,740.
The counted votes so far have a margin of
163,641 votes, putting Clinton on track to become the fifth U.S. presidential
candidate to win the popular vote but lose the election, the News Agency of
Nigeria (NAN) reports.
Neither Clinton nor Trump got more than 50
per cent of the votes but as of 10am (American time) or 4pm (Nigeria), Clinton
stood at 47.7 per cent and Trump at 47.5 per cent.
However, Trump crossed the 270 Electoral
College vote threshold at 2:31 a.m. (8:31 p.m. Nigerian time) with a victory in
Wisconsin.
He had gathered at least 289 Electoral
College ballots to Secretary Clinton’s 218.
Votes were still being counted across the
country, but it appeared Clinton could win the popular vote.
President-elect Trump wins the Electoral College and the White House.
At 5 a.m. on the West Coast, the Associated
Press showed Clinton with 59.16 million votes nationally, compared to Trump’s
59 million votes.
If the trend remained as the remaining
precincts (polling stations) report their ballots, it would repeat the 2000
results, where Democrat Al Gore narrowly won the popular vote, but George W.
Bush won the Electoral College.
Bush received about 500,000 fewer votes
than Al Gore in Year 2000 but still won the election.
Other states with outstanding precincts
included Alaska, Arizona, Oregon, Michigan, Minnesota, New Hampshire and
Washington.
It will take time for the exact numbers to
be counted, but the New York Times projects Trump to lose the popular vote by
about 1.3 percentage points.
However, Trump is most likely to rack up
306 electoral voters, making up 14 per cent more than Clinton’s.
It is reported that this is only the fourth
time in American history that someone has won the Electoral College, but lost
the popular vote.
John Quincy Adams also lost the popular
vote in 1824, but since none of the four candidates received 50 per cent of the
electoral vote, the House of Representatives decided who would be president.
Only one president-elect has lost the
popular vote by a wider margin than Trump.
In 1876, Rutherford Hayes won a
controversial election that took months to settle, even though he lost the
popular vote to Samuel Tilden by three percentage points.
A former senior advisor and friend to
Hillary Clinton said she lost the election because of a global phenomenon.
Lissa Muscatine also told The World at One
that she would not “dismiss the role of our FBI director” and his investigation
into Clinton’s emails.
In his acceptance speech, Trump promised to
be The President of all.
Clinton, in her very moving concession
speech, said she hoped Tump would be a successful president.
Source:NAN
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Politics