Trump casts his vote in New York

A polarized America went to the polls Tuesday to pick its 45th president, choosing to elect either Hillary Clinton as the nation’s first female commander in chief or billionaire businessman Donald Trump after a long and rancorous campaign that upended U.S. politics.

The winner will inherit an anxious nation, angry and distrustful of leaders in Washington. She or he will preside over an economy that is improving but still leaves many behind, and a military less extended abroad than eight years ago yet grappling with new terror threats.

Clinton entered Election Day with multiple paths to victory, while Trump must prevail in most of the battle battleground states to reach 270 Electoral College votes. Control of the Senate also is at stake; Democrats need to net four seats if Clinton wins the White House. Republicans expect to maintain their House majority.

Like millions of Americans, Clinton and Trump were casting their votes Tuesday morning. Clinton and her husband, former President Bill Clinton, arrived at their local polling station in Chappaqua, New York, shortly after 8 a.m. as a crowd of cheering supporters snapped photos. Trump was voting in Manhattan.

“The people of this country are incredible,” Trump said by telephone on Fox News. He said the campaign has changed him because he has seen “so many hopes and dreams that didn’t happen, that could have been helped with proper leadership.”

In an interview with ABC’s “Good Morning America,” Democratic vice presidential nominee Tim Kaine said Clinton can clinch victory if she wins any of the “checkmate” battleground states, especially North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Florida and Ohio in that category.

Pushing for high voter turnout, Kaine called the election a “history-making race” and said “democracy always works better when people participate.”

The candidates blitzed through the roughly dozen battleground states on Monday, accompanied by their families, political allies and celebrities.

In the campaign’s final hours, Clinton was buoyed by FBI Director James Comey’s weekend announcement that he would not recommend criminal charges against her following a new email review. The inquiry had sapped Clinton’s surging momentum at a crucial moment in the race and risked damaging Democrats running in down-ballot races.

Clinton never mentioned the FBI review Monday and appeared already to be preparing for the challenges awaiting her after Tuesday. She bemoaned the caustic election season that sparked so much division, saying she’d come to “regret deeply how angry the tone of the campaign became.”

 

News Day, November 8th

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