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Donald Trump officially wins Michigan as vote recount looms

The president-elect has been irked by the fact he did not win the popular vote and that the Clinton campaign has joined efforts to recount the vote in swing states

Rachael Revesz
New York
Monday 28 November 2016 15:24 EST
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Michigan was too close to call - until 28 November
Michigan was too close to call - until 28 November (AP)

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President-elect Donald Trump has been declared the winner of Michigan, the final state to officially announce its election results from 8 November.

The result, which comes 20 days after the election, might give Mr Trump a boost as he was irked by Green party candidate Jill Stein’s efforts to request a vote recount in the three swing states of Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.

Mr Trump has now officially won all three states, which pushed him to victory in the electoral college.

Michigan has 16 electoral college votes. The victory pushed Mr Trump's final tally to 306 electoral votes, compared to Ms Clinton's 232 votes.

Only 270 electoral votes were needed to win the election.

Ms Clinton won a lead of two million votes in the popular count.

Her campaign broke its silence over the weekend, with campaign lawyer Marc Elias saying they would stand by Ms Stein as she has raised enough money - over $5 million - to request a recount in Wisconsin.

"Because we had not uncovered any actionable evidence of hacking or outside attempts to alter the voting technology, we had not planned to exercise this option ourselves, but now that a recount has been initiated in Wisconsin, we intend to participate in order to ensure the process proceeds in a manner that is fair to all sides," wrote Mr Elias in a Medium post.

He added there was foreign influence on the US election, for example Russian intelligence agenices spreading "fake news" to millions of viewers.

Mr Trump fired off a series of tweets hours before his win, saying he would have won the popular vote if he had campaigned harder in several states and if there had not been "millions of illegal voters".

Although the Clinton campaign and supporters are keen, as they say, for every vote to be counted, a voter recount is not likely to overturn the election result.

Mr Trump left his Mar-a-Lago resort on Monday sporting a new baseball cap with the number 45 stitched on the side - the 45th president of the United States.

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