Kamala Harris has conceded defeat to Donald Trump in the US presidential election. It was an emphatic victory for the man who lost the presidency four years ago. He not only flipped the blue wall states of Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania – the president elect is also well placed to win the popular vote, the first time a Republican has done so since 2004. ABC’s election analyst Casey Briggs breaks down the data.
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00:00These are the figures at the moment, with two states still in doubt.
00:06Donald Trump has 295 electoral college votes, Kamala Harris just 226.
00:12Let's talk about the states that have flipped.
00:14The state of Georgia, which Joe Biden won on a very narrow margin four years ago, has
00:18gone red.
00:20And these three states, now they used to often be referred to as the blue wall, they were
00:24reliably voting for Democrats, they were a firewall that helped support Democratic candidates
00:30for President.
00:31Donald Trump has won them in this election, all three of them.
00:34He knocked down the blue wall in 2016, Joe Biden managed to rebuild it in 2020, and he's
00:40run a bulldozer through those three states once again, and we're seeing swings toward
00:45the Republicans.
00:47And there are, as we're saying, two states still in doubt.
00:49One of them is Arizona, where Donald Trump leads, the other one is Nevada, where Donald
00:53Trump also leads by about five percentage points, and Kamala Harris is in a bit of trouble
00:58there as well, because the results in Nevada often are really driven by what happens in
01:04Clark County, the single biggest county.
01:06Kamala Harris is winning there by about a percentage point, but the problem for her
01:10is that Joe Biden won that by nine points, more than nine points.
01:14This is a county Democrats have to run up the score in, run up the margin in quite significantly
01:20to offset the losses elsewhere.
01:22So there's a battle ahead for Kamala Harris if she wants to have any hope of claiming
01:27either of these states.
01:28At the moment, they are both trending Donald Trump's way, and that means Donald Trump has
01:33a viable path toward 312 Electoral College votes.
01:40We've seen swings in those battleground states, we've seen swings everywhere, Gemma, and some
01:44of the biggest swings are in some of the safer states.
01:47We are watching an election where young people have swung toward the Republicans, communities
01:53of colour, black people, black men in particular, and Hispanic communities are swinging toward
01:58the Republicans.
01:59And it raises some really deep questions for the Democratic Party, who has relied on some
02:05of those coalitions to get them into power over a very long period of time, and it shows
02:11some great opportunities for the Republican Party and for Donald Trump, who has managed
02:15to make significant inroads in those communities, because some of the swings we're seeing in
02:20some of, you know, blue states, blue states like New York, Kamala Harris is winning by
02:25nearly 12 points, she will win that state, there's no question there, but Joe Biden won
02:30it by more than 20 points.
02:32We're seeing big swings in big blue states that are painting a picture of alignment in
02:38politics, a realignment of coalitions and groups that the Democrats used to be able
02:43to rely on, well, not quite so much anymore.
02:46Casey, where is the popular vote at at the moment?
02:51Because of states like California and New York and Florida swinging toward Donald Trump
02:55as well, this is where the popular vote is at the moment.
02:57It is not final, it's going to take a bit of time, days or longer for us to know the
03:01final results here, but Donald Trump has 5 million more votes nationally at the moment
03:06than Donald Trump, that is 3.4% or so ahead.
03:10And that gap, it may well close a bit as states like California continue to count,
03:14but Donald Trump is very well placed at this point to win the national popular vote.
03:20If he does so, which we think he's well placed to do, if he does that he'll be the first
03:24Republican since 2004, in two decades, to win a national popular vote at a presidential
03:31election.
03:32George W Bush was the last one to do it in 2004, the first time he won office he didn't
03:36win the national popular vote, and of course when Donald Trump won in 2016, Hillary Clinton
03:41beat him on the national vote by 3 million.
03:44One of the reasons that that's possible is because of those big states, they've swung
03:47more toward Donald Trump than other states, there are less inefficient, wasted votes from
03:53Democrats running up the score in states that the Democrats are already winning.
03:57But the problem for the Kamala Harris campaign is the bigger swings in the blue states have
04:02not been able to be offset in all by the swing states, and she hasn't been able to hold
04:06on to the votes where it matters.
04:08Casey, you did touch on this a moment ago, but can you tell us the demographics that
04:12did come through for Donald Trump?
04:14Yeah, you can see that when you look at the results, and when you look at exit polling
04:17there are three real standouts, young people, Hispanic communities, and if you want to look
04:21at the figures in Florida that's a great example of that, Donald Trump is 13 points ahead with
04:26nearly all the vote counted, he won it by 3 points, so a 10 point shift in four years.
04:32And then the county I'll draw your attention to is Miami-Dade, where Donald Trump has won
04:37that by nearly 12 percentage points, let's draw a circle around that, that is the city
04:42of Miami, Miami Beach, and areas near there, quite a big county, remember Donald Trump
04:49won by nearly 12 points four years ago, Joe Biden won it by 7, a massive swing in that
04:56community and this is a community with a lot of Hispanic voters in it, he's also won,
05:03Trump this time has also won Osceola County, where a very high proportion of Puerto Ricans
05:10live, so that's one big trend we're seeing, and then let's go back to New York and just
05:14show you the Bronx, this is the Bronx, young, racially diverse community, Kamala Harris
05:20not surprisingly is well ahead by 45 points, Joe Biden won it by 67, a very big shift in
05:27just one election toward the Republicans there, young men, young black men especially have
05:34seen some of the biggest swings toward Donald Trump in this election.