“It ain’t over till every vote is counted”: US election proves closer than expected

If you were hoping to wake up this morning to a ‘blue wave’ in the 2020 US election (or even just a result), you’ll have been disappointed. The vote is shaping up to be much closer than pollsters and pundits thought. The outcome is too close to call and it could take days to see the final results. At the time of writing, Joe Biden has 238 electoral college votes while Donald Trump has 213 – they need 270 to win. Both candidates have now received more votes than either Trump or Hilary Clinton did in 2016.

But with millions of votes still to be counted Trump has already falsely declared a victory and said a “major fraud” has taken place, threatening to mount a legal challenge in the Supreme Court. In classic Trumpian style, after accusing the Democrats of “stealing” the election overnight, he claimed this morning: “We will win this and as far as I’m concerned, we already have won it.” Biden has labelled the statements from the President “outrageous” and said: “It ain’t over till every vote is counted.”

Labour has said the UK’s interests lie with a Biden victory. But, echoing comments made in a recent interview, Lisa Nandy argued this morning that the UK government has left the country in a “strategically weak position” if the Democrats win. Citing past comments such as the one Boris Johnson made about Barack Obama’s ancestry, the Shadow Foreign Secretary stressed the damage done to the relationship. She called for a “reset” in the approach to the US.

Today is a busy one. As well as the first PMQs since Johnson announced a second lockdown for England, we will see the Commons vote on those new Covid measures. Keir Starmer is backing the plan and the legislation is expected to pass easily. Education unions meanwhile are gearing up for action as their calls for schools to close have been ignored. Their demand puts them at odds with the leader who has insisted that “schools must stay open”. This afternoon will also see the return of the agriculture bill to the Commons – Shadow DEFRA Secretary Luke Pollard has written for LabourList this morning on the party’s pledge to back British farmers.