Donald Trump captured crucial victories over Hillary Clinton Tuesday night in Florida, Ohio and North Carolina, showing remarkable strength in three of the nation's most fiercely fought battleground states in an unexpectedly tight race for the presidency.

Clinton carried Virginia, Colorado and California. Her campaign had expected easy victories there, but the states took on new urgency as Trump picked up votes elsewhere.

With a handful of other battleground states still undecided, neither candidate had cleared the 270 Electoral College votes needed to win the White House.

The uncertainty sent Dow futures and Asian markets tumbling, reflecting investor concern over what a Trump presidency might mean for the economy and trade. </s> Donald Trump has won the race for the White House after voters gambled on his promise to "Make America Great Again".

Hillary Clinton rang Mr Trump to concede defeat after the US presidential election went down to the wire.

At the end of one of the most divisive elections in modern US history, the Republican candidate sealed victory when he took key battleground states Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.

The Clinton camp initially refused to throw in the towel.

But TV networks reported around 7.40am UK time that Mrs Clinton had rung Mr Trump to concede defeat.

Trump's running mate Mike Pence told ecstatic Trump supporters at a rally in New York: " The American people have elected their new champion." </s> PALM BEACH, Fla./WASHINGTON - U.S. President-elect Donald Trump said without evidence in a tweet on Sunday that he won the popular vote in the Nov. 8 election "if you deduct the millions of people who voted illegally."

The allegation by Trump, who won the required votes in the Electoral College to secure the presidency, comes as Democratic rival Hillary Clinton's lead in the popular vote over Trump has surpassed 2 million votes and is expected to grow to more than 2.5 million as ballots in populous states such as California continue to be tallied.

Clinton's legal team said on Saturday it had agreed to participate in a recount of Wisconsin votes after the state's election board approved the effort requested by Green Party candidate Jill Stein, which Trump has called "ridiculous."

"In addition to winning the Electoral College in a landslide, I won the popular vote if you deduct the millions of people who voted illegally," the Republican Trump tweeted as reporters waited for him to leave his Mar-a-Lago golf resort in Florida to fly back to his residence in New York City.

The U.S. presidential race is decided by the Electoral College, based on a tally of wins from the state-by-state contests, rather than by the national vote. Trump has surpassed the 270 electoral votes needed to win the White House. The Electoral College results are expected to be finalized on Dec. 19. Trump takes office on Jan. 20.

"It would have been much easier for me to win the so-called popular vote than in the Electoral College in that I would only campaign in 3 or 4 states instead of the 15 states that I visited," Trump added in follow-up tweets.

Before the election, Trump made unsubstantiated allegations that the results of the election might be "rigged" against him.

Since the vote, his message has alternated between appealing for unity and railing against his opponents and the media.

In a video message released ahead of the U.S. Thanksgiving holiday on Thursday, Trump said he hoped it would be a time for Americans "to begin to heal our divisions" following a "long and bruising political campaign."

Trump has derided the fundraising effort by Stein to launch recounts in Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania as a "scam." Those states had voted Democratic in recent presidential elections but all broke narrowly for the Republican Trump in this month's election. The recounts are not expected to change the results of the election.

Stein, who won about 1 percent of the national vote, has said she wants a recount to guarantee the integrity of the U.S. voting system, a push that came after some experts raised the possibility that hacks could have affected the results.

Democratic President Barack Obama's administration has said there is no evidence of electoral tampering, but experts have said that the only way to verify the results are accurate is to conduct a recount. </s> Raleigh — Hillary Clinton unleashed top surrogates including campaigner-in-chief President Barack Obama to bolster her case on Thursday in the election’s home stretch, as rival Donald Trump deployed wife Melania to soften his image in crucial battleground states.

As a slew of polls showed the race tightening with just five days to go, the campaigns brought all hands on deck in a handful of states that will decide the rollercoaster election.

Obama shuttled into Florida for fiery rallies aimed at turning out the Democratic base for Clinton in a must-win state for her rival Trump, who is under pressure to snatch battleground states and even poach one or two Democratic strongholds if he is to prevail.

A CBS/New York Times nationwide survey showed Clinton’s lead shrinking to three points, at 45 percent against Trump’s 42 percent, a sign the bombastic mogul is winning over once-wary Republican voters.

After months of vitriolic and turbulent campaigning, political tribalism appears to be returning to the fore in the deeply divided nation ahead of Election Day on November 8.

“This will be a close race and you cannot take it for granted,” Obama warned supporters in Jacksonville, Florida, painting an apocalyptic vision of what Trump would mean for American democracy.

Clinton added to the portrayal, telling North Carolinians that “if Donald Trump were to win this election we would have a commander-in-chief who is completely out of his depth and whose ideas are incredibly dangerous”.

“Are we going to work together to build a stronger, fairer, better America?” Clinton asked. “Or are we going to fear the future and fear each other and hunker down and be paralysed by all of our prejudices?”

North Carolina, with its changing demographics, is critical for both camps, and Clinton and Trump were holding duelling rallies in the state on Thursday.

Their motorcades even passed one another on the tarmac at Raleigh-Durham’s airport. But the Democrats’ last stand will come in Philadelphia on the eve of the election for a joint rally binding America’s two most powerful political dynasties.

Clinton will be joined by her husband Bill Clinton, President Obama and 2016’s most potent campaigner, First Lady Michelle Obama.

For sure the state of Pennsylvania is a firewall for Clinton; a Trump win there would be a giant step toward him becoming the 45th president. But a rally in Philadelphia — the City of Brotherly Love — sends an unmistakable message: Trump is a threat to the republic. It was here that the United States Constitution came into being in 1787.

Melania Trump, the Slovenian-born former model who could become America’s first foreign-born first lady in two centuries, also chose Pennsylvania on Thursday for her first solo campaign appearance.

“He certainly knows how to shake things up, doesn’t he?” she said of her husband’s incendiary campaign.

Trump’s third wife insisted her husband, with whom she lives in opulence, was running to improve the lives of suffering workers, struggling parents and children.

She also made a bold play for the votes of suburban mothers, who could make all the difference in the tightly-contested state where Clinton’s lead has narrowed, by fretting that “children and teenagers can be fragile”.

Despite the Manhattan mogul’s boasts about sexual assault and allegations of groping by several women, white women are evenly split between the candidates, the CBS poll showed.

As the race goes down to the wire, profound Republican scepticism about Trump’s controversial candidacy appears to be ebbing. “I think Republicans are coming home,” Congressman Jason Chaffetz told CNN.

Similarly, Clinton’s FBI troubles appear to have dissuaded few Democrats, with only 8 percent saying it would make them less likely to vote for the former secretary of state.

But in new ads on Thursday, Trump hammered home the message that Clinton put America at risk by using a private email server while secretary of state, and that a renewed FBI probe into the scandal shows she is “unfit to serve” – language Clinton often uses to describe her rival.

With the campaign now in its final stages, each candidate is making closing arguments to voters, with Trump sticking to the teleprompter and avoiding his most explosive rhetoric.

“Nice and cool. Right? Stay on point, Donald, stay on point,” the 70-year-old billionaire said out loud during a rally in Florida. That prompted mockery from Clinton. “His campaign probably put that in the teleprompter,” she sneered.

While Trump has no room for error on the electoral map, Clinton has sought to expand into Republican territory, notably Arizona, where she attended a huge rally on Wednesday.

Her running mate Tim Kaine visited the border state on Thursday, making a play for Hispanic voters by delivering his remarks entirely in Spanish.

 Trump has ridden the aftershocks of the Great Recession and waves of antipathy toward the political elite to the brink of presidential power.

 Financial markets lurched this week as the race has tightened — trying to “price-in” a Trump victory that they had long thought impossible.

“Democrats are quite right to be nervous about the outcome,” said a team of political analysts at the University of Virginia.

But, they added, there was no “compelling argument” that the race favours Trump, or is even a toss-up. — AFP </s> Donald Trump was on the cusp of creating history as he inched closer to clinching the US presidency with a strong showing in battleground states helping him trump Hillary Clinton in the knife-edge race.



 Major US news networks projected Republican candidate Trump to have won the crucial battleground states of Florida, Ohio and North Carolina. Clinton, 69, who grabbed the traditional Democratic strongholds of California and Virginia, was now facing a tough challenge from the 70-year-old real estate billionaire, who joined politics only 18 months ago.



 "Trump moves closer to White House," said Politico as Trump's total of electoral college votes -- as per CNN projections -- touched 238, against Clinton's 215.



 To win the presidential election, a candidate needs 270 of the 538 electoral college votes.



 According to CNN, Trump won Florida (29 electoral college votes), Iowa (6) Georgia (16), Ohio (18), North Carolina (15), North Dakota (3), South Dakota (3), Nebraska (4), Kansas (6), Oklahoma (7), Texas (38), Wyoming (3), Indiana (11), Kentucky (8), Tennessee (11), Mississippi (6), Arkansas (6), Louisiana (8), West Virginia (5), Alabama (9), South Carolina (9), Montana (3), Idaho (5) and Missouri (10). Clinton emerged victorious in California (55), Nevada (6) Hawaii (4), Illinois (20), New York (29), New Jersey (14), Maryland (10), District of Columbia (3), Vermont (3), Massachusetts (11), Connecticut (7), Delaware (3), Colorado (9), New Mexico (5), Virginia (13), Oregon (7), Washington (12) and Rhode Island (4). Crucially, Trump was ahead in the vote count in the keys states of Pennsylvania (20 electoral votes) and Michigan (16).



 Results were also awaited from the states of Maine, New Hampshire, Wisconson, Minnesota, Utah, Arizona and Alaska. Trump, who ran an improbable and often ugly campaign against the establishment, was holding on to small but significant leads in a series of key states, upending months of polling that had given the advantage to Clinton and raised Republican hopes of seizing back the White House.



 "Reaction to the prospect of a Trump presidency rippled across the globe, with financial markets abroad falling as American television networks raised the prospect that Mrs Clinton might lose," The New York Times said.



 Virginia, won by Clinton, has a significant Indian- American population and is home to Democratic vice- presidential nominee, Senator Tim Kaine. In terms of overall vote percentage, Trump has so far received 48.5 per cent of the votes counted so far as against 47 per cent gained by Clinton.



 The incoming returns follow a frenzied day of voting across America marked by long lines and last-minute appeals for support from both campaigns. </s> Following what many would call a contentious election campaign by both Presidential candidates, Donald Trump has defeated Hillary Clinton and emerged victorious as the 45th President of the United States.

It was a rather shocking, yet nail-biting course to the final announcement, as most people up until election day were definitely expecting a Clinton win.

Mainstream media played a key role in influencing this perspective. While a massive number of mainstream organisations kept stating that polls support Clinton, little did we know that Americans were actually favouring Trump.

The above image actually proves how much support Trump has garnered over the year. There are some states such as New York, California, Oregon and Washington that generally vote Democratic and some states such as Kansas, Montana, Louisiana etc. that always vote Republican.

Therefore, support from 10-11 key states, also known as the ‘swing states’ generally play a key role in deciding the new leader of the country. These states would include Ohio, Florida, Iowa, North Carolina, Virginia, Nevada, Colorado and New Hampshire.

Trump’s surprise victory in Florida, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Wisconsin and North Carolina tipped the scale in his favour to a large extent.People from all over the world are even more stunned to learn that competition was neck to neck in the few ‘swing states’, which Clinton somehow managed to secure.

Following news of his triumph over these states, Clinton called Trump to concede the race. However, she won’t be presenting a concession speech tonight. Democratic Campaign Chairman John Podesta told followers, “Everybody should head home…Get some sleep. We’ll have more to say tomorrow. It’s been a long night and a long campaign… We can wait a little longer, can’t we”?

From the start of election day, mainstream media has steered its efforts on publishing and highlighting Clinton’s small victories. An accurate conjecture would suggest that it was an attempt to shift focus from Trump’s performance while creating an illusion of victory for Clinton.

As Trump’s future presidency became incontestable, mainstream media started flooding articles embedded with social media posts from despaired Clinton supporters. A lot of organisations used scare tactics by portraying Trump’s victory as a natural disaster that would lead America into a bleak and dangerous future.

While Trump has often been criticised for his abrasive comments, sexist behaviour and racial slurs, Clinton’s reputation took a lethal blow with the scandal on leaked emails, information released by Wikileaks, her alleged funding of ISIS and her actions as Secretary of State. The Guardian journalists made a salient point in their election reports when they said, “Donald Trump shattered expectations… with an election night victory that revealed deep anti-establishment anger among American voters”.

We have now witnessed the growing power of social media and alternate media in this day and age. While mainstream media defamed Trump and hardly discussed Clinton’s scandals, as they spent most of their resources rendering her as a messiah, it seems people found other sources to help justify their opinion.

This election has effectively proved how mainstream media misleads their audience in order to skew their opinions. Unfortunately, they will continue doing so instead of analysing what actually made Americans choose Trump over Clinton. In the next few months we will see the media trying to speculate the so-called ‘impending doom’. However, with the choice of candidates on hand, the ‘impending doom’ was always inevitable. </s> …Votes, does interviews and tweets on election day

Republican Presidential Candidate, Donald Trump has filed a lawsuit in Clark County, where Las Vegas is located, claiming that early voting was unfairly extended.

“Let me tell you, if I don’t win I will consider it a tremendous waste of time, energy and money,” Trump told Fox & Friends early Tuesday. The New York businessman later cast his vote at a school in Manhattan, joking with reporters: “Tough decision.”

Asked if he would concede the election should he lose, Trump responded, “We’ll see what happens.” Some voters at Trump’s polling place cheered his presence; others booed and yelled “phony” at the Republican candidate.

“I’m very excited,” he told reporters. “It’s a great opportunity. There’s tremendous enthusiasm you see it all over the country, all over the world. It’s a great feeling.” While pre-election surveys gave an edge to Democratic rival Hillary Clinton, Trump told Fox News “I think a lot of the polls are phony,” and predicted victory.

Trump, who at one point considered more campaigning on Election Day, planned to stay out sight most of Tuesday, making calls, conducting interviews, and using social media. A round of radio and television show call-ins is also on the schedule, aides said, as is a private reception at Trump Tower for friends and supporters.

In a last-day fundraising solicitation, Trump told supporters, “I’ll be on calls with our political director all day, determining which states need last-minute resources.”

Trump’s day ends with what aides are billing as a “victory party” at a Midtown hotel. Throughout the final weeks of the campaign, Trump warned about the prospect of a “rigged” election based on alleged voter fraud and biased news coverage. The Republican nominee has consistently declined to say whether he would honor the results of the election if he loses. </s> Donald Trump is the 45th president of the United States of America.

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In a stunning upset, Republican candidate Donald Trump has won the election and will be the 45th President of the United States.

Trump won a majority of electoral votes, at 276, as of 3:25 a.m. Wednesday, according to Politico.

After surpassing the critical 270 mark, Trump’s win was cemented. The Democratic candidate, Hillary Clinton conceded to his victory, according to the New York Times.

In his acceptance speech at the Midtown Hilton in Manhattan, Trump appeared to a roaring crowd that chanted “USA! USA! USA!” as he made his way on the stage.

Following Trump’s rise to the “magic 270,” Trump’s running mate Mike Pence announced to the crowd at the New York Hilton, “The American people have spoken and the American people have elected a new champion.”

Trump began his speech by saying, “Sorry to keep you waiting, complicated business.”

He continued by telling the crowd that Clinton called him to concede the results.

“I just received a call from Secretary Clinton, she congratulated us on our victory and I congratulated her and her family on a very hard fought campaign,” Trump said.

In a change of tone towards Clinton, Trump granted her compliments in her presidential campaign.

“Hillary has worked very long and very hard over a long period of time and we owe her a major debt of gratitude for her service to this country,” Trump said.

Trump also spoke to those who didn’t support him.

“I will be president for all Americans and that is very important to me,” Trump said.

During his speech, the President-elect emphasized the themes that have dominated his campaign: reclaiming and reforming the nation.

“We must reclaim our country’s destiny,” he said. “We will seek common ground, not hostility.”

Added Trump, “We will embark upon a national project of hope and renewal.”

Trump also addressed the history taking place, but not without emphasizing having “to do a great job.”

“While the campaign is over, our work on this movement is only the beginning,” he said.

Some St. John’s students expressed their disdain for Trump’s dominance in the race.

“I am saddened that a man who has advocated for sexual assault, propelled islamophobia, made racists remarks, and with no understanding of foreign policy has made it this far. It disgusts me,” sophomore Annamaria Basile said.

Junior Joel Vazquez said, “America has let me down in the worst way possible and has shown me once and for all that my life truly does not matter.”

The Torch also reached out to several students who said they were pro-Trump, however, none wished to go on the record to talk about their views.

“I think the election being this close says so much about the country because of the willingness people have to support a person that has no experience in the government and has proved countless times that he is not suitable to lead,” sophomore Sieta Leon said. “I understand that voting on both sides can result difficult but I don’t think people are seeing the magnitude of what him being elected means.” </s> besides winning the Electoral College "in a landslide" in the Nov. 8 election: "I won the popular vote if you deduct the millions of people who voted illegally."

The allegation, made without evidence, comes as Democratic rival Hillary Clinton's lead in the popular vote over Trump has surpassed 2 million votes and is expected to grow to more than 2.5 million as ballots in populous states such as California continue to be tallied.

Clinton's legal team said on Saturday it had agreed to participate in a recount of Wisconsin votes after the state's election board approved the effort requested by Green Party candidate Jill Stein, which Trump has called "ridiculous."

"In addition to winning the Electoral College in a landslide, I won the popular vote if you deduct the millions of people who voted illegally," Trump tweeted as reporters waited for him to leave his Mar-a-Lago golf resort in Florida to fly back to his residence in New York City.

The U.S. presidential race is decided by the Electoral College, based on a tally of wins from the state-by-state contests, rather than by the national vote. Trump has surpassed the 270 electoral votes needed to win the White House. The Electoral College results are expected to be finalized on Dec. 19.

Trump added he would have won the "so-called popular vote ... easily and convincingly" if the U.S. election was determined that way instead of by the Electoral College.

Before the election, Trump made unsubstantiated allegations that the results of the election might be "rigged" against him.

Since the vote, Trump's message has alternated between appealing for unity and railing against his opponents and the media.

In a video message released ahead of the U.S. Thanksgiving holiday on Thursday, Trump said he hoped it would be a time for Americans "to begin to heal our divisions" following a "long and bruising political campaign."

Trump has derided the fundraising effort by Stein to launch recounts in Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania as a "scam." Those states had voted Democratic in recent presidential elections but all broke narrowly for the Republican Trump in this month's election. The recounts are not expected to change the results of the election.

Stein, who won about 1 percent of the national vote, has said she wants a recount to guarantee the integrity of the U.S. voting system, a push that came after some experts raised the possibility that hacks could have affected the results.

Democratic President Barack Obama's administration has said there is no evidence of electoral tampering, but experts have said that the only way to verify the results are accurate is to conduct a recount.

Trump and Vice President-elect Mike Pence have a series of meetings in New York on Monday to interview potential Cabinet members and other advisers. Trump takes office on Jan. 20.
Donald Trump is forecast to win the United States presidential election as a result of victories of battleground states.