Trump has just clinched the entire 38 electoral votes in Texas by defeating Biden in popular votes cast.
By winning the state of Texas, the Republicans has shattered Biden’s hope of being the first Democrat to win the state since 1974.
Until Tuesday, election polling has consistently put Texas up for grabs, with Democrats standing a good chance.
Donald Trump, also won Florida, the nation’s most prized battleground state.
The two men were locked in tight races across the country, with Trump also claiming the battlegrounds of Ohio and Iowa while Biden won Minnesota and Iowa, two modest prizes the president had hoped to steal.
Races were too early to call in some of other fiercely contested and critical states on the map, including North Carolina, Georgia and Pennsylvania. The president, by early Wednesday, had retained many states he won in 2016 and, as long predicted, the race in part seemed to rest on the three northern industrial states where Trump most surprised the Democrats four year ago Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania.
Millions of voters braved their worries about the virus — and some long lines — to turn out in person, joining 102 million fellow Americans who voted days or weeks earlier, a record number that represented 73% of the total vote in the 2016 presidential election.
Early results in several key battleground states were in flux as election officials processed a historically large number of mail-in votes. Democrats typically outperform Republicans in mail voting, while the GOP looks to make up ground in Election Day turnout. That means the early margins between the candidates could be influenced by which type of votes — early or Election Day — were being reported by the states.
Florida was the biggest, fiercely contested battleground on the map, with both campaigns battling over its 29 Electoral College votes.
Trump adopted Florida as his new home state, wooed its Latino community, particularly Cuban-Americans, and held rallies there incessantly. For his part, Biden deployed his top surrogate — President Barack Obama — there twice in the campaign’s closing days and benefitted from a $100 million pledge in the state from Michael Bloomberg.
