'It took several days to count every ballot in 2020' - Obama

Former US President Barack Obama has warned that the results of the US presidential election are unlikely to be known today.

🤔Why does it take several days to count the votes???

📌Subscribe to @SputnikInt

Detailed breakdown: What are the exit polls saying as 2024 results begin rolling in?

US pollsters are having their biggest night of the year, with exit polling asking Americans not who they voted for, but the issues bringing them to polling places. Here’s what major polls are saying:

🔸Edison Research, conducting exit polling for ABC, CBS, CNN and NBC, found 43% of respondents ‘dissatisfied’ about how things are going in the country, with 29% downright ‘angry’, 19% ‘satisfied’ and just 7% ‘enthusiastic’.

🔸58% disapprove of Joe Biden, compared to 41% who approve (that’s compared to Trump’s 50% approval in exit polling from 2020). 45% said they’re worse off financially now than four years ago, compared to 25% who say they’re better off.

🔸The economy and the state of democracy are top concerns in 2024, according to Edison’s polling, with 35% citing the latter, and 31% the former, as the issues that matter most. 14% listed abortion, while 11% listed immigration. Only 4% listed foreign policy.

🔸Broken down by candidate, 58% of Harris voters listed the state of democracy as their top issue, compared to 13% of Trump voters. 49% of Trump voters listed the economy as their top issue, compared to 12% of Harris voters.

🔸7 in 10 voters admitted to fears of election-related ‘violence’, with 94% of voters for both candidates saying they’d feel ‘scared’ or ‘concerned’ if the other candidate won. Two thirds feel democracy is under threat.

🔸88% of Harris voters expressed confidence in the fairness of results, compared to just 47% of Trump voters.

🔸Broken down by race, 49% of white voters, 42% of Latinos and 14% of blacks showed a ‘favorable’ opinion of Trump in 2024, with his performance slipping among whites (from 57% in 2020), but rising with Latinos and blacks (38% and 10% compared to four years ago, respectively).

🔸Fox News does its own exit polling. It shows that 70% of respondents think the country is on the wrong track, with 63% ranking economic conditions “not so good” or “poor.” 39% ranked the economy and jobs their number one issues, compared to 20% who listed immigration and 11% abortion.

📌Subscribe to @SputnikInt

Trump win may ease global tensions, Harris victory could escalate conflicts, Mexican analyst warns

The outcome of the US presidential election will be a decisive factor among others influencing the country's actions regarding various geopolitical issues, such as the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Mexican international relations expert Rubén Ramos Muñoz tells Sputnik.

“The [candidates’] positions are very different. Speaking of the Republican candidate, I believe that his foreign policy would be less aggressive, and he would aim for conflicts, both in Ukraine and the Middle East, to end as soon as possible,” he states. However, in the case of current Vice President Kamala Harris, representing the Democratic Party, the situation would be different, in his view.

“This should concern the international community because if she becomes president, tensions might increase rather than decrease in both the Middle East and Ukraine. Clearly, this would not be a positive signal for people, as the scale of conflicts could grow, putting not only the population of those regions at risk but the entire world,” the expert emphasizes.

📌Subscribe to @SputnikInt

📊 Edison Research has released exit poll data for key battleground states:

▪️ In Pennsylvania, 47% of voters support Trump, the same as in 2020, while 46% back Harris, which is lower than Biden’s support in 2020.

▪️ In North Carolina, 48% of voters favor Harris, compared to Biden's 50% in 2020. Trump has 43% support, 4 percentage points less than in 2020.

▪️ In Arizona, voter support is evenly split, with 46% backing both Harris and Trump.

▪️ In Michigan, 45% of voters support Trump, while 48% favor Harris.

▪️ In Georgia, 49% support Harris, 1 percentage point less than Biden’s figure in 2020, while 46% back Trump, the same as in 2020.

▪️ In Nevada, 44% of voters favor Harris, 8 percentage points less than Biden in 2020. Trump has 47% support, which is 1 percentage point lower than in the last election.

▪️ In Wisconsin, 44% back Trump, 1 percentage point higher than in 2020, while 47% support Harris, 3 percentage points lower than Biden's 2020 figure.

📌Subscribe to @SputnikInt

From blowing budgets on booze to based Founding Father name-calling: funny facts about past US elections

Part 👉 Part 2

The 2024 race has seen its share of funny and meme-worthy moments, from Biden and Trump arguing about their golf game at a debate to the former president riding around in a garbage truck in front of media after his supporters were called “garbage.” But on the whole, 2024 has been pretty tame by historical standards of funny and bizarre politics.

🔸When George Washington, the US’s first president, launched his political career for a seat in the Virginia House of Burgesses in 1758, when America was still under British rule, he spent his whole campaign budget of £40 – equivalent to over $11,600 today, plying voters with beer, wine, rum, cider and brandy. It helped him, and Washington held the seat until the start of the American Revolution in 1775.

If you think Harris and Trump calling each other “fascist,” “dumb as a rock” or “lazy as hell” is bad, you haven’t seen what candidates and their surrogates were saying about each other 200 years ago. In 1800, a newspaper editor ally of Thomas Jefferson called John Adams a “hideous hermaphroditical character, which has neither the force and firmness of a man, nor the gentleness and sensibility of a woman.”

🔸Adams gave as good as he got, dubbing Alexander Hamilton a “bastard brat of a Scotch peddler.” Hamilton was later killed a duel by Jefferson’s vice president, Aaron Burr, in 1804.

🔸In the 1828 election, surrogates for John Adams’ son, John Quincy Adams, accused Andrew Jackson of adultery, murder and (justifiably) war crimes against Native Americans in election pamphlets after Jackson called Adams a beacon of quid pro quo corruption.

👉 Part 2

📌Subscribe to @SputnikInt

From blowing budgets on booze to based Founding Father name-calling: funny facts about past US elections

Part 2👉 Part 1

🔸In 1860, Broughton’s Monthly Planet Reader and Astrological Journal featured the astrological charts for presidential candidates, including Abraham Lincoln, and sought to link their prospects for success or failure as president by studying their horoscopes.

Ulysses S. Grant, who served as president between 1869 and 1877, was the only president to ever be arrested, with a policeman in Washington, DC pulling him over and taking him into custody in 1872 for racing his horse and buggy down the streets of an aristocratic quarter of the city and ignoring repeated warnings to stop. Grant took the arrest in stride, dutifully heading down to the local police station, but failed to show up for a court appearance the next day, for which he was fined $20 (about $515 today).

🔸The 1884 election featured a bit of phrenology – the pseudoscience which suggests that a person’s skull shape is linked to cognitive ability. Candidates Grover Cleveland and James Blaine’s skulls were analyzed in a pamphlet to determine “the capacity of one [Blaine] and the incapacity of the other [Cleveland].” The smear (one of several like it in the race) failed, and Cleveland was elected president.

🔸In the 1920 election, independent socialist and trade unionist and presidential candidate Eugene Debs was forced to run his campaign from prison, as he was sentenced in 1918 for an anti-war speech in Ohio. Despite his incarceration, Debs won over 900,000 votes (3.4% of the total).

👉Part 1

📌Subscribe to @SputnikInt

❗️With over 19% of the votes counted in Florida, Trump is currently leading with 51.96%, while Harris trails with 47.28%.

📌Subscribe to @SputnikInt

❗️Trump is leading in the swing state of Georgia with 54.38%, while Harris follows with 45.44%, with less that 1% of the votes counted.

📌Subscribe to @SputnikInt

❗️Trump is so far leading Harris in the electoral vote count in the US presidential election, having secured 19 votes to her 3.

📌Subscribe to @SputnikInt

❗️In Virginia, with less than 1% of the votes counted, Trump is currently leading with 56.38%, while Harris stands at 42.34%.

📌Subscribe to @SputnikInt

❗️In Vermont, with almost 2% of the votes counted, Harris is leading with 57.9%, while Trump trails at 39.3%.

📌Subscribe to @SputnikInt

❗️Harris is leading in New Hampshire with 51.2%, while Trump trails at 47.6% with more than 2% of the votes counted.

📌Subscribe to @SputnikInt

📹CNN anchor on the possibility of Kamala Harris winning

In light of survey results, according to which 72% of Americans are dissatisfied or angry with the country's leadership, it would be a "miracle" if Kamala Harris wins, Chris Wallace said:

"It would be a miracle that Kamala Harris could win with that kind of headwind [...] If she is able to overcome those numbers and still win this election, then she has done a remarkable job of somehow separating herself that she's part of the solution and not part of the problem," he said.

📌Subscribe to @SputnikInt