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People Are Wondering If Trump Can Legitimately Win

by Maya Parthasarathy

The presidential campaign is almost over, but Election Day is the most crucial time. Currently, Donald Trump is leading over Hillary Clinton in terms of electoral votes, but many western states have yet to count votes, or even close their polls yet. Still, the question remains, will Trump win the presidency?

At this moment, it's hard to say. Clinton and Trump are both disliked on record-breaking levels, USA Today reported. Both candidates have similarly unfavorable ratings among registered voters, with Clinton at 59 percent and Trump at 60 percent, according to ABC News. And as far as battleground states, the results in many are currently too close to call, NBC News reported.

Still, though Trump and Clinton were neck and neck in Ohio, Trump just won the state. This is an important win for the Trump campaign, considering no Republican has ever won the presidency without winning Ohio's electoral votes, Heavy reported. With Trump's winning of this important swing state, Nate Silver's FiveThirtyEight projects Trump's chances of winning the election to be 55 percent as of 10:25 p.m. ET. Seeing as President Obama won Ohio twice during his presidential campaigns, it doesn't bode well for Clinton.

Still, considering that the western states have yet to report their votes, and Democrats traditionally lead in electoral vote-heavy states like California, it looks like it will be hours yet until the election results are declared. So there's no reason to panic yet if Trump isn't your candidate of choice. Just by 10:40 p.m. ET, FiveThirtyEight was giving Clinton a 52 percent chance of winning the presidency, following the news of Clinton's projected win of Colorado.

Clinton also narrowly won Virginia, further narrowing Trump's electoral vote lead over her. Trump will have to win almost all of the battle states of Florida, Pennsylvania, and North Carolina to defeat Clinton's projected lead in traditionally Democratic-voting states like California and New York. As of 10:49 p.m. ET the two are less than a percentage point apart in Florida with Trump in the lead, and the results are close in the other two states as well. President Obama won Florida by 0.9 points in 2012, so Florida is once again a deeply divided state in terms of voting.

There's no doubt that the 2016 presidential election has been a wild ride from start to finish, and the finish is definitely a nail-biter. It seems like we'll have to wait until the bitter end to see whether Trump ends up as our 45th president.

More to come ...