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Somerset County, long a Republican stronghold in New Jersey, is on the verge of the unthinkable just a few years ago being under complete Democrat leadership at the county level.

As of Thursday afternoon, county freeholder candidates Doug Singleterry of North Plainfield and Paul Drake, a former Hillsborough committeeman, are in the lead over their Republican opponents by more than 15,000 votes, with about 80% of votes counted.

In the race for county surrogate, Democrat Tina Jalloh has the lead over Republican opponent Frank Bruno, 75,720 votes to Brunos 59,551 votes.

And although the countys board of elections is still counting ballots, the Republican candidates are aware the race is essentially finished.

Theres no path to victory for the county-level Republican candidates in Somerset County, said Tim Howes, chairman of the countys GOP. We have conceded the election.

All three wins would mean Democrats are in control of every elected office in Somerset County. Before 2017, no Democrat had won a county office since 1979, and before 2019, there were no Democrats on the freeholder board.

Four years ago when Steve Peter won the clerks office, we made it a goal to expand our contributions to the county government and represent the growing diversity that is Somerset County, Peg Schaffer, the countys Democratic chair, said in a release.

Tina, Doug and Paul join an already great team who will lead our county through this century and beyond, she said.

This political shift represents a tide turn in Somerset County politics.

Since the 2004 presidential election, fewer Somerset County residents have voted for the Republican nominee in each consecutive election, according to data from the states division of elections.

In the 2004 race between John Kerry and former president George W. Bush, 72,508 residents in the county voted for Bush. The number of votes for the Republican nominee has consistently decreased in the county, with a most recent total of 65,505 votes for Donald Trump in 2016.

As of Thursday, with all the votes not yet counted and certified, only 51,400 county residents have voted for Donald Trump in the 2020 election.

But despite the Republican losses at the county level, Howes said he believes there is a path forward for the GOP.

Our county-level candidates did significantly outperform President Trump in Somerset County, Howes said. So despite the loss, it does appear there are thousands of Somerset County residents who remember what these Republican candidates have done for Somerset County.

He noted the countys GOP is still watching the local races across Somerset County, which they believe the Republicans will continue to hold their leads in some municipalities.

Former New Jersey Gov. Christine Todd Whitman, a Republican who served two terms on the Somerset County freeholder board in the 1980s, said the recent political shift in Somerset mirrors a national trend.

Republicans have been losing ground across the country as the party has moved continuously to the right," Whitman said.

Somerset County has had Democratic freeholders before, in my first race my teammate and I ran against one, so that is not a total game changer, she added. "Until Republicans become a more open and welcoming party, however, they will continue to lose ground.

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NJ Advance Media staff writer Kelly Heyboer contributed to this report. Brianna Kudisch may be reached at bkudisch@njadvancemedia.com.

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Democrats on verge of taking control of N.J. county where Republicans once reigned supreme - NJ.com

The state of Georgia is playing an unusual power-broker role in the knife-edge balance-of-power struggle playing out between Democrats and Republicans over the US Senate following Tuesday's elections. Georgia's two Senate seats, unusually, were both up for election this year, and both races are headed for run-off elections on January 5 after no candidate in either race managed to win a majority of the votes.

As election results stand as of Friday, the Democrats and the Republicans will each hold 48 seats in the 100-member Senate. Two other races in addition to Georgia are still outstanding, but both are widely expected to be won by Republicans.

With the Georgia runoff set for January 5, that will leave the question of which party will control the Senate unanswered until after the rest of the new Congress is sworn in on January 3.

Republican Senator David Perdue was up for re-election, according to the regular six-year Senate cycle. He was first elected in 2014 and is now in a tight contest against Democrat Jon Ossoff, an investigative journalist and media executive.

Each fell short of the 50%-plus-one-vote threshold, with Perdue getting 49.8 per cent of the vote and Ossoff 47.9 per cent, and they will face each other in a run-off, according to Edison Research on Friday.

Georgia's other senator, Republican Kelly Loeffler, was appointed in 2019 to succeed Johnny Isakson, who retired. Her seat was up for grabs in a special election that drew 21 candidates, including Republican US Representative Doug Collins.

Democrat Raphael Warnock emerged with the greatest share of the vote, at 32.7 per cent, with Loeffler drawing 26 per cent and Collins 20.1 per cent. The winner of the runoff election in that race will serve only two years, filling out the remainder of the six-year term that Isakson had been elected to in 2016.

Several US states including Georgia require runoff elections for primary contests that produce no clear winner.

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But Georgia became one of the few states to apply runoffs to general elections, after a gubernatorial race in 1966 failed to produce a clear winner and a state legislature dominated by Democrats chose their own candidate over a Republican who had won a slightly larger plurality of voters.

Democrats failed to generate the "blue wave" of voters they hoped for on November 3 but won enough Senate races to pick up a 48th seat in the 100-member Senate. Republicans look likely to keep 50 seats before the Georgia runoffs, if Republicans are re-elected in the races in North Carolina and Alaska that have not yet been called. The Republican candidates are leading in the vote counts in both of those states.

Democrats would face long odds in winning both Senate seats in traditionally Republican-leaning Georgia, but if they do succeed and Joe Biden wins the White House, that would give a Vice President Kamala Harris a 51st tie-breaking vote.

That would be a huge prize for Democrats, because otherwise a Republican-controlled Senate would have the power to block most of Biden's policy priorities. It sets the stage for an intense two months of campaigning as money, political operatives and the news media pour into Georgia.

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How Georgia seats could tip scales in the Senate - The Standard

Research shows U.S. adversaries like Russia are pedaling fake health propaganda on sites like Twitter and Facebook.

By Julian Cardillo 14Nov. 3, 2020

Disinformation about vaccines is on the rise on social media and leading to decreases in vaccination rates over time, according to a new study co-authored by Brandeis politics professor Steven Wilson. Now, hes calling on countries like the U.S. to step up the fight against bogus health-related propaganda showing up online.

The study, titled Social media and vaccine hesitancy, which Wilson compiled with global health professor Charles Wiysonge of Stellenbosch University in South Africa, says much of the vaccine talk on sites like Twitter and Facebook consists of fake information pedaled by bots and promulgated by foreign adversaries like Russia.

The situation is leading to an increase in vaccine hesitancy, which the study notes is not only on the World Health Organizations list of top 10 threats to global health overall, but also promises to be a major factor as governments roll out a COVID-19 vaccine.

Wilson, an expert on Russia and digital politics, said his involvement in this research project began in February after the WHO started bringing together scholars to study connections between health and democracy.

We were honestly surprised at what we found, Wilson said. Normally, with findings this statistically significant, we start to wonder if there were variables we forgot to control forresults are never this cut and dry.

Wilson and Wiysonge surveyed social media data and vaccination rates globally. Next, they tabulated their findings on a five-point scale.

Their findings show that mean vaccination rates drop 12 percent per decade with every one-point upward shift on the disinformation scale.

They also modeled the connection between foreign disinformation and negative social media activity about vaccinations. Wilson and Wiysonges surveys showed a 15 percent increase in negative vaccine tweets for the median country based on the substantive effect of foreign disinformation.

Wilson said the study sheds light on foreign disinformation about vaccines generally, and does not exclusively blame Russia. However, the study cites other research that states Russian bots and troll farms are pushing anti-vaccination messages on a large scale on Western social media in conjunction with Russias foreign broadcast network.

Someone needs to be doing something about Russia, Wilson said. There is ample research that Russia is pushing anti-vaccinationpropaganda in various places around the world, and that disinformation is affecting health outcomes consistently.

Another approach to stopping the anti-vaccination talk online is for governments to hold social media companies accountable by mandating them to remove false anti-vaccination content, regardless of whether its from genuine domestic actors or a foreign propaganda operation.

Though he doesnt agree with the argument, Wilson acknowledges there may not be the political will to take that step out of fear of infringing on freedom of speech.

Its not censorship if what youre doing is removing lies, Wilson said. Its not censorship when youre not allowing people to yell FIRE! in a crowded theater.

Youre perfectly free to make a health decision even when its to your detriment, but its not always about you, he added. If a significant population is making the wrong choices, its not so cut and dry. You want people making these determinations with correct information in the first place.

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Social media is feeding the anti-vaccination movement | BrandeisNOW - Brandeis University

US Presidential Election results 2020: Joseph R Biden Jr has won the US Presidential race by beating incumbent Donald Trump. Biden will be the 46th US President. The projections by the US media -- NYT, CNN, BBC and FOX News -- came after Biden took an unassailable lead in Pennsylvania, a key state with 20 electoral votes. Now, Biden looks set to win 306 electoral votes, exactly as many as Trump had won in 2016 and way more than the 270 required for US Presidency. Prior to the projection, Trump tweeted that he'd won the polls by a big margin. A few hours ago, Biden, in an address to the nation, reached out to the Republicans and said, "We may be opponents, but we're not enemies.""We have to remember the purpose of our politics isnt totally unrelenting warfare," he added. His statement comes in stark contrast with that of the incumbent President Donald Trump who has been warning Biden not to claim presidency 'wrongfully' and has accused him of 'stealing election'.

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US election results LIVE: Election far from over, warns Trump on Biden win - Business Standard

Donald Trump has taken to Twitter to declare the Republican Party will easily win the race to the White House. Once again he claimed illegal votes were being counted, without any evidence it was occurring. He also hit out at the social media site for being "out of control" after a number of his Tweets were hidden from view and branded "misleading about the election" by the site's moderators.

The incumbent President said: "Twitter is out of control, made possible through the government gift of Section 230!"

Trump wrote several other Tweets this morning, where he repeated his claim that he was winning the election.

He said: "I easily WIN the Presidency of the United States with LEGAL VOTES CAST.

"The OBSERVERS were not allowed, in any way, shape, or form, to do their job and therefore, votes accepted during this period must be determined to be ILLEGAL VOTES. US Supreme Court should decide!"

A third Tweet read: "So now the Democrats are working to gain control of the US Senate through their actions on John James, David Perdue, and more. Would End the Filibuster, Life, 2A, and would Pack and Rotate the Court. Presidency becomes even more important. We will win!"

Trump led a press conference last night, where he repeatedly claimed, without evidence, that according to a count of "legal votes" he would be this election's presumptive winner.

There is no basis for this claim.

The votes are still being counted in a number of states and these are legitimate mail-in ballots, not illegal votes, as Trump has suggested.

JUST IN:Nigel Farage blasts Joe Biden with brutal dead voter conspiracy theory

They are being counted last because that is standard procedure in several states.

Over the course of the Presidential campaign Trump encouraged his supporters to vote in person and avoid mail-in ballots.

Biden by contrast, urged voters to mail-in their ballots, which is why the Democrat candidate is seeing a surge in votes in states still counting ballots.

The difference in voting behaviour for the two parties does not come as a surprise, as political insiders have expected for months that Democrats would vote disproportionately by mail, while Republicans would vote disproportionately in person.

In response to Trump's press conference, Biden tweeted: "No one is going to take our democracy away from us. Not now, not ever.

"America has come too far, fought too many battles, and endured too much to let that happen."

Speaking at the Queen Theater in Wilmington, Delaware, earlier on Thursday, the Democratic nominee urged calm and said: In America, the vote is sacred. Each ballot must be counted."

In the meantime, I ask everyone to stay calm.

The winner of the US Presidential election is yet to be announced, but Biden is currently leading with six states still to declare their results.

To win the race a candidate needs to reach 270 electoral college votes, Biden currently stands on 253 while Trump trails on 214.

The key states yet to announce their results includePennsylvania, Georgia, Arizona and Nevada.

It is not yet clear a final result will be in as the millions of postal votes are delaying the counts.

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Trump says Twitter 'out of control' after tweets claiming he's won election removed - Daily Express