Month: November 2016

The few ongoing counts indicate with high certainty that Donald Trump won the US presidential election. He has chosen important and competitive states for himself, the so-called swing states.

These include Florida, Ohio, North Carolina and Iowa. Trump leads the electorate with 264: 215.

He is also ahead in Wisconsin and Michigan – states in the industrialized northeast, where the Republican is clearly doing better than predicted. Swing State Pennsylvania could also go to him, the AP agency sees him there as the winner. The favorite democrat Hillary Clinton lags behind in these crucial states.

Anyone who wants to move into the White House as the successor to Barack Obama 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 indirectly elected by the people. Each state has a certain number of votes in a 538-strong body of electoral men and women. The number depends on the population size of each state.

Trump has also won the votes of voters 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 tried everything to get citizens to their side in particularly hotly contested US states. Both again invested millions of dollars in TV commercials.

After midnight on election day, Clinton held another event with pop star Lady Gaga in Raleigh, North Carolina. She gave her followers a recommendation in case their children and grandchildren later asked what they had done in 2016 “when everything was at stake”. The answer was loud: “You voted for a stronger, fairer, better America – an America where we build bridges, not walls.”

Trump meanwhile completed his last day as a candidate in Grand Rapids, Michigan. “Today is our Independence Day,” he quoted a slightly modified quote from the Hollywood film “Independence Day” from 1996. “We are finally ending the chapter in the history books about the Clintons, their lives, their machinations, their corruption.”

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 had voted early.

The detailed election results can be found in the graphic:

“Donald Trump lived here? And in which house?” Surprise seizes the face of Michael Steele, 32, from Jamaica, but who has lived in the New York neighborhood of Queens since he was a child, when he knows that, a few blocks away from his home, is what was the childhood home of the man who today can become President of the United States.

The house itself is a symbol. Located in Jamaica Estates, one of the wealthiest areas of the neighborhood, it was built in the early 1940s. Outside your door you can read something surprising: a sale notice and an auction date, for October 19, which no longer fulfilled.

The official version says that the current owner delayed the date due to the expectation generated by the possibility of taking over Trump’s childhood home in the middle of the presidential campaign. However, the story that circulates in the local media is different: it indicates that the offers were around US $ 800 thousand. A high figure that reflects Trump’s wealthy background, but far from the estimated real value of the 445-square-meter property, at around $ 1.5 million.

The explanation that circulates is one that points to something that, from tomorrow, may be one of the unexpected edges of a more than surprising election: the damage that the Donald Trump brand can suffer after the elections. Or, from a more optimistic perspective for the magnate, how will he coexist with being President and having hotels, wines and products with his name highlighted in gold or neon letters.

The New York Times raised it in yesterday’s edition, in a detail that reflects that tension: the newspaper pointed out that Ivanka, Trump’s daughter and who has a line of women’s clothing and products, had asked her father not to advertise too much. an announcement she made calling to vote for him. The reason? Sales of its products began to decline since October, when a boycott was called against it.

Jamaica Estates

The neighborhood where Trump grew up is surrounded by parks and houses built to suit its inhabitants. The magnate’s childhood residence is the one that looks in worse condition, with shovels and cement bags on its sides, remembering that there are works and that the house is for sale.

The quiet monotony is only broken by the journalists who go around from time to time, waiting for someone to arrive. This is the case of a producer from a local New York channel who consults and motivates a person to take photos of the Republican candidate’s first mansion.

Beyond that, what is striking is that Trump, a lifelong New Yorker, has tried to mark a distance from his origins throughout his career. In several interviews he has said that his challenge was to move “from Queens to Manhattan”, alluding to the maximum symbol of his power in the city, the original Trump Tower, which has served as his campaign center during the year and a half of debates, primaries and elections.

Not that the family’s situation was bad. Trump moved with his family to a bigger house, less than 200 meters from his original home, when he was four years old, and there he spent the rest of his childhood. And the magnate has constantly hinted that his father helped him start his career with a “small loan” of a million dollars at the time, although other versions put it at close to seven million.

As a symbol of that status of the neighborhood, just next to the house there are two parked Mercedes Benz. And a house in the same neighborhood, smaller than Trump’s, recently sold for $ 3.5 million.

For now, the house awaits new owners. A tattered and faded United States flag stands in the middle of the front of the house, which has no visible symbol linking it to its former inhabitant.

And the last time Trump saw his home it was not in person. It was on the Jimmy Fallon show, one of the most popular late shows in America. He was already a candidate and the house was already for sale: both things were irresistible to Fallon, who while interviewing the Republican candidate showed him the image of the auction. And the reaction was a summary of what has been not only the magnate’s campaign, but his public life: “Oh, I had a very beautiful childhood there. What a shame to see it. I want to buy it.”

A promise that, despite the auction and despite the campaign, even Trump has not bothered to fulfill.

Sunday, Lucien Gainsbourg the son of Serge Gainsbourg posted a tender photo on Instagram. A photo in which the singer poses with his half-sister, Charlotte, in New York.

On November 8, or during the early voting which began at the end of September in thirty-seven out of fifty states, voters will be asked to vote for the future American president, but indirectly. It is in fact the 538 electors, elected State by State, who will lead, on December 19, to the election of the 45^e President of the United States.

• How many great voters are there?

The electoral college is made up of 538 electors. To be elected president, a candidate must obtain the votes of at least 270 of them.

Each state is assigned a number of electors equal to the number of its representatives in Congress: either two senators, regardless of its demographic weight, to which are added the elected members of the House of Representatives, whose number is determined according to his population.

Montana, Wyoming, the two Dakotas, Alaska, Delaware and Vermont, sparsely populated states, each represent three large voters in the electoral college; California, the country’s most populous state, has fifty-five, followed by Texas (thirty-eight), Florida and New York State (twenty-nine each). Three major voters also represent the Federal District of Washington.

But given the evolution of the American political map, a majority of States no longer present much, if not any, at stake for the candidates. The states of the South and the Great Plains of the Midwest are thus “red states”, acquired by the Republicans, those of the Northeast and the west coast are to be classified among the “blue states”, acquired by the Democrats.

• Who can become a great voter?

Clause 2 of Article II of the Constitution of the United States of America states that the president and the vice-president are chosen by the electorate, but does not specify the mode of nomination by the states. “No senator or representative, nor any person holding the United States a charge of confidence or profit, can be nominated as a voter”, is it specified.

In practice, each state has its own system of nominating grand voters, who are usually selected in appreciation of their service to the party or candidate. The site Politico notes that for the 2016 election, a wide variety of personalities were appointed by the political parties to become major voters at the end of the ballot on 8 November. Thus, the Republican Party has notably planned to appoint a radical activist against abortion in Missouri, while a certain Bill Clinton could be called upon to vote as a great voter, in the event of Hillary Clinton’s victory in the New York State.

• Who exactly are voters voting for?

On election day, “The first Tuesday following the first Monday in November”, that is to say on the 8th, the voters are called to blacken the box corresponding to the candidate for the presidency of their choice. In form, however, popular election actually allows for the selection of the major voters affiliated with a particular candidate. For example, if Hillary Clinton wins a majority of the vote in California, the state’s fifty-five top voters will be those previously selected by the Democratic Party.

In forty-eight of the fifty states, as well as in the federal district, the candidate who won the day wins all the votes of the voters at stake on the principle of “Winner Take All”. In Maine and Nebraska, the system differs and includes a dose of proportionality: one grand voter is chosen in each “congressional” district based on the popular vote result, then two grand voters are nominated based on the overall result in the State.

The election of the president as such takes place only “The first Monday following the second Wednesday in December”, that is December 19 this year. The big voters will meet in the capital of their state and vote directly for the president. The 538 voters are not coming together nationally. The counting of their votes will take place two weeks later in the Senate in Washington. The candidate will then be officially declared the winner. The inauguration of the new president will take place on January 20, 2017.

• Are the big voters obliged to respect the popular vote?

Twenty-four states have texts which oblige the electorate to follow the popular vote and vote for the candidate for whom they were elected. The measure was approved by the Supreme Court in 1952 (Ray vs Blair ruling). Since the electorate is nominated by the parties or the presidential candidates and has been sworn in, in most cases they demonstrate loyalty to the candidate and the party.

Cases of “betrayal” are rare: in the 2000 election, in protest against the District of Columbia’s low representation in the electoral college, Barbara Lett-Simmons chose not to vote, rather than voting for Al Gore . His refusal did not change the outcome of the election, George W. Bush having been elected with 271 votes. In 2004, a leading Minnesota voter, supposed to vote for John Kerry, mistakenly voted for John Edwards, the running mate chosen by… John Kerry.