US election: Why don’t we know the results yet and what happens next?

We are still no closer to knowing if the USA has to endure four more years of Donald Trump or if Joe Biden will be taking his place on the Whitehouse throne.

This is because not enough of the votes have been counted yet. And, with the time it takes to count all the mail-in ballots it could take a few days before the next president of the United States is announced.

And, if Trump goes through on his threat of involving lawyers, then the election may even stretch out over a few more weeks.

What’s the hold up?

To become the president of the USA, you need to win the majority in a system called the electoral college, not the popular vote. This means that each state gets a number of votes roughly in proportion to their population. These are the votes that are counted.

If you win a state then you win their votes. There are 538 state votes up for grabs and whichever candidate wins 270 of them wins the election.

At the moment the states that each candidate has expected to win are looking pretty sound. However, in the swing states, the race is still very close. In these states, the postal votes haven’t even started to be counted yet and those votes could change the whole outcome of the election.

States such as Florida, Arizona, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Michigan could be the deciders in who is elected to be the next president. So far Florida is leaning towards Trump while Arizona is looking to support Biden and postal votes in Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Michigan are yet to be counted. However, as the name ‘swing state’ suggests, the results could go either way.

So far Trumphas already made false claims that he has basically won the election and has stated that the rest of the votes shouldn’t be counted causing Biden’s campaign to blast the current president for repressing the public’s right to vote. Trump flailed:

Frankly, we did win this election. We want all voting to stop. We don't want them to find any ballots at four in the morning and add them to the list.

Meanwhile,Biden is also confident that blue will prevail but he has urged his supporters to stay patient.

What happens now?

We may have to wait a few more days yet for the election results while all the remaining votes are counted.

Donald Trump has also threatened to put legal challenges in place if the vote looks too close. These procedures may even stretch the election out by a few weeks.