US ELECTION RESULTS: HOW TRUMP WON .…Republicans Retain Control Of Congress

Donald Trump has pledged to be a president “for all Americans” after being elected president of the United States, capturing crucial victories over Hillary Clinton in a remarkable show of strength.

The president-elect addressed supporters at his victory party in New York City after his Democratic rival Hillary Clinton called him to concede.

The Republican confounded pre-election polls by taking a series of key battleground states, including Florida, Ohio, and North Carolina, before stunningly carrying Pennsylvania, a state that had not backed a Republican for president since 1988.

The celebrity businessman clinched victory after capturing Wisconsin’s 10 electoral votes, putting him over the 270 threshold.

Mr Trump will govern with a Congress fully under Republican control. The GOP fended off a Democratic challenge in the Senate and the party also extended its grip on the House.

Our final prediction had Hillary Clinton on 206 strong or leaning electoral college votes, while Trump was on 164. This left 168 up for grabs in swing states, meaning the race was well and truly open.

A candidate needs to secure 270 out of 538 electoral college votes in order to win the presidency. They claim these by winning individual states that each award a certain number of votes. States with more people have more electoral college votes.

Presidential results maps
The electoral map is important. Each state is worth a certain number of electoral college votes, so Trump and Clinton need to build a coalition of states to reach the magic number of 270.

We will fill our maps in as the results are announced.

Our chart below sizes each state by their number of electoral college votes, showing how the big states have the power to tilt the election.

Probable results on our maps are based on voting counts that are currently ongoing and are not final. We are showing the candidate that looks most likely to win that state.

The key states in the election
Swing states with a lot of electoral votes to distribute, such as Florida and Ohio, have been targetted a lot by Clinton and Trump in recent weeks. How they end up voting will have a lot of influence on the final result.

States like Arizona, Florida, North Carolina, Ohio and Virginia have the power to swing the election. So far, neither Trump nor Clinton has a significant lead in these crucial states.

Demographics could be of importance here. Polling has revealed a country divided down demographic lines . A country where men and whites tend to back Trump, while women and ethnic minorities flock to the Democrat’s candidate.

How these demographics are distributed among key states may be essential.

Trump has triumphed in Ohio. This reliable bellwether state is worth a very handy 18 electoral college votes but it’s claim to fame is that it is the only one to have backed the successful presidential candidate in every election since 1964.

As such its result is seen as being very significant when determining the outcome of the race nationwide, with polling in Ohio was showing Trump marginally ahead of Clinton at the start of November. Situated on the Great Lakes, it is the seventh most populous state in the country.

Minority ethnic voters hold less sway here, with 83 per cent of the population being white according to the 2010 census compared to 72 per cent across the US as a whole.

Trump has won Florida’s vote for the 2016 presidency, marginally ahead of Clinton. Florida has been one of the hardest to call swing states in this election with the margins between the two candidates in recent polling being too close to call.

A week before the big day, polls were showing that Trump had taken a slight lead in the battle to take the state’s 29 electoral college votes. Florida is at once the oldest and one of the most racially diverse in America, and its voting in the past five presidential races has followed the result of the country as a whole.

Both candidates have had multiple campaign stops here in recent weeks. The state played a pivotal role in the 2000 election, when out of more than 5.8 million votes Bush beat Gore by 537 votes to claim all of its electoral college votes.

Clinton has triumphed in Virginia. Although not quite the boost that a state the size of Florida would give, Virginia’s 13 electoral college votes will be very handy addition for Clinton. Prior to Obama’s victory in 2008, Virginia had been a red state for the past forty years.

Nowadays, one in five of its people are black or African American, part of an increasingly moderate population based in its urban areas.

This shifting of demographics meant that the state was expected to stay Democrat this time around, with polls showing Clinton eight points clear of Trump at the end of October. Situated on the Atlantic coast, Virginia was the first colonial possession established in British America.

North Carolina’s voters have chosen Trump as their preferred presidential candidate. This result will be a blow for Clinton as North Carolina has been one of the toughest states to call in this election. Its 15 electoral college votes means that it is a valuable prize in the race to that all important 270 mark.

North Carolina was highly coveted this year with the candidates making multiple campaign stops there in the fortnight leading up to election day.

While Obama won it in 2008 with the assistance of demographic shifts and liberal urban areas, Romney managed to claim it for the Republicans in 2012 – the only swing state Obama lost in the last presidential election. This southeastern state is the ninth most populous in America and has a lower white population, at 64 per cent, than the average state.

Which states did Trump swing from Obama?
There are at least three states that swung from Obama in 2012 to Trump in 2016: Florida, Ohio and Iowa. All of these were essential battlegrounds that both candidates canvassed hard.

Congressional elections
The Senate and the House of Representatives, the two chambers that comprise America’s legislature, also have elections . Both of these chambers are currently in Republican hands.

Senators will be elected in 34 states with the Democrats having a strong chance of taking a majority in the chamber provided Hillary Clinton is voted in as President.

The House of Representatives is held more firmly in Republican hands with their majority of 59 looking very difficult to overturn. All 435 seats in the House are up for re-election