US Elections | Joe Biden within striking distance, but Donald Trump unlikely to concede

Hollywood knows a good thriller. Halloween is over, but yet the thriller chills for both the Donald Trump and Joe Biden campaign hit a crescendo on the night of November 3.

America went to bed on a cliffhanger, rather a state of political purgatory, with the election in the balance, and left it into the hands of the electoral college. No one likes the electoral college. Even the winning candidates will tell you that they don’t like the system. Never mind the world’s most powerful country still swears by it.

Though Biden has a slender lead over Trump, 253 to 214, Trump is leading in the key swing states of Pennsylvania, North Carolina, and Georgia.

Trump had won the ‘swingiest’ of swing states in Ohio and Florida. To put this into perspective, the last Republican to win the White House and not Florida was Calvin Coolidge back in 1923-1924. It’s the state that single-handedly decided the 2000 election between George W Bush and Al Gore.

If I could analogize Ohio to a state in India’s election context, it would be Uttar Pradesh, in terms of political heft. No Republican has ever won the presidency without winning Ohio.

Trump’s unexpected win in 2016 was contingent on breaking the ‘blue wall’ states of the Midwest. The scenario, this time around, was simple for the 45th President. Trump had to win all the states that he had amassed in 2016, while Biden had to win all the states that his democratic predecessor, Hilary Clinton had won, along with the holy triumvirate of Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin, which Trump scored in a stunning upset. Biden appears to have bagged Michigan and Wisconsin, Pennsylvania remains.

In addition to which, Trump had won Iowa as well, while Biden performed well in the sunbelt states, leading in key battleground of Arizona.

Biden needs the six electoral votes from Nevada, where he is leading. Michigan with 16 votes and Wisconsin with 10 votes, would make a total of 32 electoral votes, thus dropping him on the holy grail of 270 votes. Throw in Maine and its four electoral votes, and we get to 274. Michigan and Wisconsin are now as good as done for Biden.

Meanwhile, Trump’s path to 270 was and is nebulous. Trump on 214 electoral votes, with slender but prominent leads in key swing states of Pennsylvania (20 votes), North Carolina (15 votes) and Georgia (16 votes), could get to 265 votes. Alaska was pending, but that’s only three votes. Trump needs a Hail Mary.

Furthermore, Pennsylvania is slipping away as the Biden campaign believes that as the mail-in ballots are being counted, the margins would reduce and Pennsylvania could in fact turn blue.

As evinced in Michigan, mail-in ballots or early voters, largely tend to be suburban votes, are largely Democratic. States are first counting on the day votes, while mail-in-ballots are being counted after the polls closed. In Michigan, plenty of mail-in-ballots came from the suburbs, as did in Pennsylvania, the ballots came from Democratic strongholds in and around Pittsburg and Philadelphia. Traditionally, it’s the Democrats that tend to vote early, Republicans largely on polling day.

The Trump campaign has wasted no time in questioning the efficacy of the mail-in-ballots and sought legal remedy filing claims in three states: Pennsylvania, Georgia and Michigan, and have asked for the counting to stop, as several Trump supporters descended on voting centers in Detroit and Phoenix to stop the count.

The Trump campaign is also seeking to file a case pertaining to the Pennsylvania count, and wanting to escalate it to the Supreme Court on the grounds that ballots received up to three days after the election cannot be counted.

The Biden campaign too has lawyered up anticipating such tactics and looks set with its riposte. One thing is sure: Trump won’t concede easily. It’s well evinced that this will be a protracted saga, where 21 battleground counties across a handful of states will be keeping 330 million people and nearly 200 countries around the world on a knife’s edge.

The US has seen this before. Bush v Gore in 2000 with the Florida recount extended for days, beyond thanksgiving and into December. The Trump campaign has stated that they would ask for a recount in Wisconsin, and likely to do so in Arizona, and maybe Michigan.

If Trump does indeed take Pennsylvania, Georgia and North Carolina, he will still find himself short by six electoral votes. That’s Nevada for you. It’s a bit ironic that Las Vegas, which boasts of Trump Hotel on the iconic Strip in the city, is a place, where Trump can buy anything, anything he wants. Yet, what he would give to buy Nevada and its six electoral votes. Even more ironic, Trump’s education was from Wharton, at the University of Pennsylvania. However, the state might just be about to teach him the hardest lesson of them all.