Presidential Election Blog: Warwick University politics expert gives his views
Dr Trevor McCrisken is an expert on US politics at Warwick University and these are his views on the Presidential Election.
It’s actually not unusual for the election vote count to go on for several days after election day. The difference this time is that there are so many states where it is still too close to call. Usually by a couple of days into the counts you do have a clear idea of which candidate will win which states once sufficient numbers of votes are properly counted and certified. This year it’s much more difficult to call because of the time it’s taking to get through some of these really quite substantial numbers of ballots, postal votes especially, in some of the crucial states - so we don’t yet have either candidate at the magical 270 Electoral College votes.
It could still be either Trump or Biden, but it does look as though, once all the votes have been counted – and these are legitimate vote counts, no matter what the president might say - that we are going to see Biden emerge as a narrow victor in this election.The Trump campaign’s legal challenges could delay some of the states declaring their final results, but not significantly change the outcome – in Wisconsin, for example, a 2016 recount only changed the result by 161 votes. In places like Arizona and Nevada, where Trump is trailing, he’s actually pushing hard for all the votes to be counted. So he wants to have it both ways. That inconsistency could create problems for his challenges.It’s a complex situation but there are tried and tested processes in place, they will play out over the course of the next few days, possibly the next few weeks, but constitutionally there has to be a new presidential term starting on Jan 20th 2021, so either President Trump or President Biden will come into office on that day.
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