Florida, other key battleground states too close to call
As polls close across the United States, Ed
O’Keefe, Elise Viebeck and Chris Cillizza bring you results, reactions,
candidate speeches and analysis live from the Washington Post newsroom.
(The Washington Post)
As the polls closed Tuesday, anxious Americans awaited an indication
of who would prevail at the end of a historically bitter presidential
contest -- whether Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton would hold on to
her narrow pre-election lead or Republican Donald Trump would secure a
stunning upset.
By 9 p.m. Eastern time, voting had ended in more than three dozen states that together represent 429 electoral votes.
Trump
was showing surprising strength in the early battleground states,
especially in Florida – where he held a lead of more than 100,000 votes
with 90 percent of precincts reporting. That state remained too close to
call.
Clinton was projected to win Connecticut, the District of
Columbia, Delaware, Illinois, Massachusetts, Maryland, New Jersey, New
York, Rhode Island and Vermont, giving her 104 electoral votes,
according to the Associated Press.
Trump locked down Alabama,
Arkansas, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Oklahoma,
South Carolina, South Dakota, North Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, West
Virginia and Wyoming, racking up 133 electoral votes.
Voting also ended in the key swing states of Arizona, Colorado,
Florida, Georgia, Michigan, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Ohio,
Pennsylvania, Virginia and Wisconsin. But those pivotal states were too
close to immediately call.
As the night went on, a razor-thin
race emerged in Florida -- a must-win state for Trump. Clinton and her
allies had helped spur record turnout among Democrats and Latino voters
in early voting, but Trump rapidly made up ground on Tuesday with record
turnout in exurban communities and GOP-leaning counties.
Clinton
is hoping to outperform President Obama in Virginia’s northern suburbs
outside Washington, D.C., where a growing immigrant population has
helped Democrats expand their hold. Obama won Virginia by 6.3 percent in
2008 and 3.9 percent in 2012 -- the first Democratic president since
Franklin D. Roosevelt to prevail twice in the state.
Both
candidates have fiercely contested North Carolina and its 15 electoral
votes, considered one of the pivotal states that Trump needs for
victory. In 2008, Barack Obama narrowly edged out GOP nominee John
McCain in North Carolina, but Mitt Romney wrested it back for the
Republicans in the 2012 race.
Trump has also been banking on
winning Ohio and its 18 electoral votes. The bellwether state has
backing the losing presidential candidate only once since 1944. The GOP
nominee appealed directly to the sense of economic grievance in the
Buckeye State, which has been buffeted by a declining manufacturing
industry.
During the day on Tuesday, there were reports of long lines at some
polling places, and scattered reports of intimidation by people outside.
The loudest complaints came from Trump’s campaign.
In
Nevada, it filed a lawsuit arguing that polls were improperly kept open
late during early voting in Clark County, home of Las Vegas. The county
said it was following the law, by allowing those who were in line at
the time polls closed to continue and vote. A judge in the case seemed
skeptical of the Trump campaign’s claims, and denied its request to
preserve evidence in the case.
In a possibly worrisome sign for
the GOP, Trump campaign manager Kellyanne Conway told NBC’s Chuck Todd
about 6:15 p.m. that Trump “didn’t have the full support of the
Republican infrastructure.”
Trump was monitoring the returns
early Tuesday evening from his apartment in Trump Tower, according to
former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani. The GOP nominee, he said in an
interview, was “watching everything even though I’m telling him not to.”
“He’s
calm. We’re all cautiously optimistic,” Giuliani said when asked to
describe the mood within Trump’s home. “We think it’s going to be very,
very close. We know there is a populism across the country that’s
powerful and he has been lifted by it.”
Earlier Tuesday, Trump himself tweeted out what he said was a CNN headline: “Utah officials report voting machine problems across entire country.”
CNN reporters quickly replied that Trump’s message contained a key typo: the problems in Utah had been reported across a county,
not the entire United States. Washington County — in the southwest
corner of the state — had experienced some problems with voting machines
on Tuesday morning. They used paper ballots in the meantime, and had
the problem with the machines fixed by noon.
As
of early evening on the East Coast, preliminary exit polls reflected
one of the dominant themes of the campaign: the deep unpopularity of
both candidates. Majorities of voters in early exit polling said they
have an unfavorable view of Trump and Clinton, with Trump’s negatives
somewhat higher.
Indeed, at the end of a bitter, sharply
personal campaign, some voters were eschewing both contenders. That
included former President George W. Bush and his wife Laura Bush, who
did not cast a ballot for either major-party presidential nominee this
year.
“They didn’t vote for Hillary; they didn’t vote for Trump,” spokesman Freddy Ford wrote in an email to The Texas Tribune.
Preliminary
exit polls indicated that turnout shares among Republicans, Democrats
and independents would be comparable to 2012. Democrats had a narrow
advantage at the polls in the past two Obama elections, edging
Republicans by roughly six percentage points.
Leaders
of both parties braced for election results that will be shaped by the
nation’s changing demographics as well as an unconventional presidential
race.
Democrats expressed confidence that increased voting by
Hispanics as well as strong participation by African Americans, Asian
Americans and young voters would provide Hillary Clinton with the margin
of victory in several states. Republicans, however, said Donald Trump’s
appeal among working class whites would allow him to wrest the
Democratic-leaning Rust Belt away from her.
Early voting totals
are up in seven of 10 key swing states, most of all in Florida, where it
rose 36 percent over 2012. Much of that rise was driven by Latinos in
counties such as Miami-Dade and Broward, which helps account for why
Democrats have an 88,000-vote edge in the state’s early voting count.
In
North Carolina, early voting increased 17 percent compared to four
years ago, with an 86 percent increase among Hispanics and a 74 percent
increase among Asian-Americans.
Republican National Committee
officials said in a phone call with reporters Tuesday that they were not
concerned that high levels of Latino turnout in Florida boded badly for
their candidates, saying the party had made large gains in voter
registration in the state. They noted that in Ohio, counties such as
Cuyahoga, Franklin and Hamilton that supported President Obama in 2012
saw a drop in early voting, while counties such as Warren, Miami and
Greene that backed Mitt Romney saw an increase.
“We feel very confident about winning today,” said Jason Miller, Trump’s senior communications adviser.
But
Democratic strategist Simon Rosenberg, who heads the think tank NDN,
said Republicans and many political pundits have failed to grasp “how
much the U.S. population is changing.”
He noted the number of
eligible Hispanic voters has increased from 18 million to 27 million
since 2008, and the number of millennial voters has risen from 35
million to 70 million during that period. Since those two voting blocs
currently favor Democrats, Rosenberg said, the change poses “an
existential threat” to Republicans “if they do not start to create a
solution to these demographic trend lines.”
Longtime conservative
activist Richard Viguerie said in an interview he was not worried about
these population shifts because the GOP could prevail if it appealed to
African Americans and Hispanics on issues such as school choice,
opposition to abortion and criminal justice reform.
“The
Republican establishment has not been focused on issues that appeal to
the minorities,” Viguerie said, adding the party would shift right after
the election. “Basically, the establishment Republicans have
self-destructed. They have written themselves out of leadership going
forward.”
In a sign of how Democrats are courting African
Americans, for example, Michelle Obama taped 15 separate radio shows
Tuesday, most of which primarily reach black audiences. Two of the ones
she did — the “Willie Moore Jr. Show” and “The Tom Joyner Show”--were
ones that the president called into last week.
On Tuesday, Obama
taped six radio interviews from the White House, talking to hosts whose
listeners live in Florida, Michigan, Ohio and Pennsylvania. He also
walked through the White House colonnade and pointed at the cameras held
by members of the White House press corps. “Go vote,” he instructed
their viewers. “It’s up to you.”
As Americans cast their votes Tuesday, the nation’s demographic schisms were visible.
In
Manassas, Va., where there is both a sizable immigrant population and
support for Trump, James Bowers, 72, said working-class Americans like
himself have seen their personal liberties erode with a Democrat in the
White House.
“These
eight years are the worst eight years I’ve seen in my life,” Bowers
said. “It’s become a dictatorship, and if Hillary wins, she’ll continue
that dictatorship.”
But 43-year-old Yesenia Luna, the daughter of
an immigrant from El Salvador, said she voted for Clinton because “we
have to be the difference for all the other Latinos in this country.”
Some voters said they hoped that the election could change a dynamic that has frustrated Americans from both parties.
Steve
Glanz, 42, was registered Republican and had supported Ohio Gov. John
Kasich over Donald Trump in Pennsylvania’s April primary. But once
inside his south Philadelphia polling place, he voted for Clinton and
for the Democrats’ Senate challenger, Katie McGinty.
“I voted
basically straight Democrat,” he said. “We need to get some Supreme
Court justices confirmed at some point. Having the Senate belong to the
same party as the president would help that. If they keep letting the
justices die off, once it’s under five members, they can’t even render
decisions.”
But many Republicans still expect their party to
continue to probe Clinton’s use of a private email server and possible
conflicts of interest raised by her role at the Clinton Foundation,
which could complicate her relationship with Congress if she wins the
White House.
Lori Schwabenbauer, 54, voted in Chester County,
Pa., then drove into Philadelphia to celebrate her birthday. She is a
Republican, and Trump and Sen. Pat Toomey received her vote, but she was
expecting a Clinton win. Asked whether she would want Republicans to
continue probing Clinton’s scandals if she won, Schwabenbauer gave a
qualified yes.
“I don’t think anyone’s above the law,” she said, “but I don’t want her to be jailed just because I don’t like her.”
And
Trump, who was joined by his wife Melania and daughter Ivanka as he
voted a few blocks from Trump Tower, refused to say for certain Tuesday
whether he would concede the race if TV networks and others call it for
Clinton.
“We’ll see what happens,” said Trump, who was booed by
some voters as he entered Manhattan’s P.S. 59. He added the early
returns were “very good.”
But on Tuesday afternoon Trump called
into the Fox News Channel for the second time of the day, and complained
about the nation’s political and media establishment. “It’s largely a
rigged system,” he said.
RNC officials noted that they had
increased get-out-the-vote operation nationwide, having deployed 5,250
paid organizers and 2,350 trained fellows around the country. That
represents a massive increase over the 876 staffers that the party and
then-nominee Mitt Romney’s campaign jointly had in 2012.
Clinton
campaign spokeswoman Lily Adams, meanwhile, emailed reporters to say
that “more than 10,000 volunteers were on the doors for our first 8AM
shift in battleground states with thousands more on the phones.”
By early afternoon Tuesday, voters across the country were
making their choices, with long lines in many polling stations. In
North Hollywood, Calif., some voters brought beach chairs to stake out a
place in line before dawn. At one polling station in Detroit, people
waited up to 90 minutes to reach the ballot booth.
At Stonewall Middle School in Manassas, nearly 170 people were lined up when voting began at 6 a.m.
“I’m
a determined voter,” said 37-year-old Michael Barnes, an account
executive for Freddie Mac who showed up at 5 a.m. and backed a straight
Democratic ticket. “I’m feeling relieved that I’ve at least done my
part.”
For Laurie Jarman, an office manager in Fairfax County, it was antipathy for Clinton that drove her vote.
“I
don’t know that I trust him, either, but I feel that Hillary will be
worse,” said Jarman, 46, who arrived at Stonewall Middle School about
half-an-hour after Barnes.
After voting in Richmond, Clinton’s running mate Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.)
said that if he and Clinton were “fortunate enough to win this
evening,” they would work to heal the deep rifts in the country that
this year’s race had exposed.
“In the tone of the things that we
say, in the team that we put together, and the policies that we promote,
we have to show that we want to govern for all, not just those who
voted for us,” he said.
Clinton, who spent much of the rest of the day at home
before heading to a Manhattan hotel to await returns, was greeted by
chants of “Madam President!” as she walked outside.
“It is the
most humbling feeling because I know how much responsibility goes with
this and so many people are counting on the outcome of this election,
what it means for our country,” she told reporters, when asked what it
felt like to cast her ballot.