Donald Trump has reached 240 electoral votes this hour. Texas, with its 38 votes, is expected to push the president-elect across 270, making this all official, in the next hour.
Electoral votes continue to come in during the 1PM (ET) hour. Donald Trump is within 100 of the required 270, as no faithless electors have yet materialized.
Here's the updated schedule of what time (EST) the Electors of each state will convene on Monday, December 19th. During these meetings, in accordance with individual state rules, the Electors will cast their votes for president and vice-president. The meetings are usually held in a state's capital city.
The table now include the electoral votes for each state, colored red (Trump) or blue (Clinton) to reflect the popular vote winner. Italicized are those states that have laws that attempt to bind electors to vote as pledged. Interestingly, the total electoral votes in states with those laws is 151 for both Trump and Clinton.
Results Map
Our plan is to update this map as results become available.
For those interested, we've compiled a schedule of what time (EST) the Electors of each state will convene on Monday, December 19th. During this meeting, in accordance with individual state rules, the Electors will cast their actual votes for president and vice-president.
Most of this information was compiled from the National Association of Secretaries of State. Where a state's code does not specify a meeting time, we've looked for press releases or media accounts. A few states remain TBA; we'll try and update in the days ahead.
The meetings are usually held in a state's capital city.
As expected, Republican State Treasurer John Kennedy won the Louisiana Senate runoff Saturday, defeating Democrat Foster Campbell by over 20 points.
Democrats gained two seats in the 2016 elections, but the party was unable to wrest control of the body from the Republicans. It was a missed opportunity for 'Team Blue', as 24 of the 34 seats up in 2016 were held by Republicans. The situation is reversed in 2018, with 25 of the 33 races that year held by the Democrats. Playing that much defense, it will be very difficult for the party to make gains.
The new Senate will be comprised of 52 Republicans, 48 Democrats. Republicans have both seats in 20 states, Democrats in 18 states. There is a split in 12 states. Mike Pence will become president of the Senate on January 20th, giving Republicans the advantage in any tie votes.
There will be 7 new Senators sworn in this January:
California: Kamala Harris (D) won seat held by retiring Barbara Boxer (D)
Illinois: Tammy Duckworth (D) defeated incumbent Mark Kirk (R) Dem. Gain
Indiana: Todd Young (R) won seat held by retiring Dan Coats (R)
Louisiana: John Kennedy (R) won seat held by retiring David Vitter (R)
Maryland: Chris Van Hollen (D) won seat held by retiring Barbara Mikulski (D)
Nevada: Catherine Cortez Masto (D) won seat held by retiring Harry Reid (D)
New Hampshire: Maggie Hassan (D) defeated incumbent Kelly Ayotte (R) Dem. Gain
One final note: Donald Trump has nominated Jeff Sessions (R) of Alabama to be Attorney General, with North Dakota's Heidi Heitkamp (D) a lead contender for Secretary of Agriculture. If confirmed, those Senators would be replaced. Heitkamp would bring a Democratic voice into the Trump administration, but her replacement would likely be a Republican, adding one to the GOP majority.
The 538 electors will cast their votes for president on Monday, December 19th. We've had some requests for an interactive map that lets people game out the possibility of one or more 'faithless' electors in that vote. To that end, we've modified our historical interactive map code to create a preliminary 2016 version. This map lets you split any state, thus allowing for the introduction of faithless electors in one or more states.
A faithless elector is one who casts their vote contrary to the candidate for whom they have pledged to vote, or one who abstains from voting. For example, Trump won Texas and thus the Republican slate of 38 electors will vote on December 19th. If one of those voted for someone other than Trump - which now seems likely - they would be considered a faithless elector. Likewise, a Washington state elector has previously indicated that he cannot support Hillary Clinton.
There have been very few faithless presidential electors, fewer than 10 since 1900 and none since 2004. (There were some additional faithless VP electors in 1912). In modern times, most electors are party loyalists, with little incentive to 'go rogue'.
Despite the long-shot odds, there is a campaign to flip 37 or more Republican electors away from Donald Trump, which would bring him below the 270 needed to win and send the election to the House of Representatives. This effort is being spearheaded mainly by a group of Democratic electors, who would support the effort by voting for a Republican alternative to Trump, thus being faithless to Hillary Clinton in the process. Those leading this process are attempting to agree on a person who, with 37+ Republican electoral votes plus some number of Democratic electoral votes, would be positioned as an acceptable alternative for consideration by the Republican-controlled House.
