Michigan proclaims Trump election winner after vote count

The US state of Michigan, where the vote count after the November 8 election took nearly three weeks officially proclaimed Republican Donald Trump the winner over Democrat Hillary Clinton by slightly more than 10,000 votes.

The state awards its 16 electoral votes to Trump, giving him a total of 306 of the 538 available, well above the 270 threshold a candidate needs to win the presidency, Efe news agency reported.

In raw votes, Trump garnered 2,279,543 valid votes, to Clinton's 2,268,839.

This gives the Republican an edge of just 10,704 votes and one of the tightest percentage margins -- just 0.2 per cent -- for a state in a presidential election in the past 75 years.

With his victory in Michigan, Trump appears to have convincingly won the White House in the Electoral College, although an official vote by the electors remains to be taken on December 19 and Clinton has a lead of more than two million in the nationwide popular vote.

Trump is also the first Republican to win the state of Michigan in a presidential contest since 1988, confirming his historic dominance in the Midwest, where he also won in Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.

The magnate also won in Iowa and Ohio, two Midwestern swing states which are typically crucial in determining which party will win the White House.

The official result in the Michigan balloting comes after the Green Party, headed by its presidential candidate Jill Stein, managed to force a vote recount in Wisconsin and has promised to do the same in Pennsylvania and Michigan.

The recount request was motivated by doubts expressed by several scientists regarding the vote tallies after detecting coincidences in Trump's lead in counties where electronic voting machines were used.

According to them, this suggests election fraud or hacking of the voting machines, although the recounts will not change the overall election results.

--IANS

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