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Is There Any Way Trump Isn't The Next President?

by Abby Johnston

In one of the most stunning Election Day turns of events, Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton has lost the election to the controversial Republican candidate Donald Trump. Going into the election, political observers predicted that Clinton had the election on lock, but as she lost key battleground states one by one, her path to the election eventually closed for good. This has left much of the public, as well as those election tea leaf readers, in a state of shock. So you might be asking yourself at this point, is Trump really the next president?

In the primaries and throughout the general election, Trump's critics continually dismissed him as a frightening but ultimately unelectable candidate. That's what has made the results of the election so hard to swallow. Voters who were terrified of a potential Trump election pacified themselves by saying that, yes, while Trump is damaging to the election writ large, he wouldn't actually get the keys to the White House.

But here it is. He's got the results, and Trump, a former reality TV star, is now the president-elect. But is there any possibility, at all, that he possibly isn't? Well, there technically is, but it could be pretty messy.

BRYAN R. SMITH/AFP/Getty Images

Many cable networks forecast election before all of the votes are in. Basically, this means that, judging off of their own models, they are sure enough to call the state for a particular candidate. That hasn't always worked out so well in the past. In 2000 presidential race between Al Gore and George W. Bush, there was an astounding seesaw in which Gore was called, Bush was called, Gore was called, and the Bush was called again for the state. Ultimately, it landed before the Supreme Court after a few legal challenges, and the race ultimately went to Bush. But all of that is to say that the results that we see on Election Day aren't necessarily set in stone.

The similarities between the Gore and Bush and the Clinton and Trump races are certainly there. This is the closest races since that election. But the fact is that, even in that race, the final call in Florida ultimately was deemed to be the most credible election vote count. In this case, that seems to favor the fact that, yes, Trump is going to be our president for the next four years. At this point, it might be best just to accept that in the best way you can.