This past week, November 5th, was the highly anticipated U.S. Election Day. The Associated Press called the race in favor of Former President Donald Trump, who ran against Vice President Kamala Harris. The key battleground state, Pennsylvania, was won over by the Republican candidate by approximately 200,000 votes. A large amount of votes have yet to be counted, so while the presidential race has been called, those votes still matter in the races for the Senate and House of Representatives.
The Senate is controlled by Republicans and the House is heavily leaning towards another republican majority. Another major point of contention was the ballot measures for Florida, each needing a super majority to pass with over 60 percent of the votes. 2 out of the 6 passed, creating a constitutional right to fish and adjusting home property tax exemption for inflation. The two most controversial ballot measures were Propositions 3 and 4, the third to legalize recreational marijuana and the fourth enacting a constitutional right to abortion. Proposition 4 only needed 2.8 percent more of the votes for it to pass, many are calling for the act to be passed anyway by Governor Ron DeSantis. Abortion was on the ballot for ten states, South Dakota and Nebraska are the other two states which failed to pass.
Currently, the Former President has almost 75 million votes to Harris’ 71 million. It is unlikely that Harris will win the popular vote, which will make this the first time Republicans have won a popular vote in 20 years. Another point on the ballots this year was the Governor races for several states, where Democrats won 3 out of the 11, bringing the ratio to 23 to GOP’s 27. Harris underperformed in almost every county, especially in contrast to Biden’s numbers from the last election.
