US President Donald Trump has said he is prepared to accept the results of the midterm elections whatever they turn out to be, as counting continued on Wednesday and Democrats picked up early Senate victories.
Hiru News reported at 9.42 a.m. Colombo time, citing the New York Times via foreign media, that Trump said he was “completely ready” to accept the outcome. The President also said he was willing to work with the Democratic Party. In Hiru’s Sinhala rendering, he said: “We are working together with the Democratic Party. We hope to work with them. In many cases we may be able to reach some agreement.”
That wording reaches this desk through two translations — an English remark relayed by the New York Times and then rendered into Sinhala — and should be read as the substance of what Trump said rather than as his verbatim phrasing.
A shift from his position last week
The stated willingness to accept the result is a change in emphasis from Trump’s public position in the closing stage of the campaign. On 27 October, Al Jazeera reported that when he was asked whether he would respect the final outcome, he answered: “I will if there are honest elections.” He had also repeated unfounded claims of widespread voter fraud. No condition of that kind appears in the remarks reported on Wednesday.
Early results
Democratic Senator Jon Ossoff held his Georgia seat, defeating Republican Congressman Mike Collins. With 56 per cent of the vote counted, Ossoff led 63 per cent to 29 per cent on an Associated Press projection, Al Jazeera reported. Ossoff characterised the night as delivering “sweeping and decisive victories” for his party.
Al Jazeera’s running results coverage also reported Democrats winning Senate seats in Texas and South Carolina. All 435 seats in the House of Representatives and 35 of the 100 Senate seats were contested. Republicans went into the vote holding the Senate 53–47 and a narrow House majority.
What voters said mattered
A large voter survey put the economy only narrowly ahead of concerns about American democracy itself. Citing the BBC, Hiru News reported that in a survey of more than 79,000 people, 39 per cent named the economy the single most important issue and 32 per cent named the state of democracy.
The survey, formally called the Voter Poll, is conducted by the research firm SSRS for a consortium of news organisations. It draws on a sample designed to represent American voters, was carried out in the period before the election, and breaks its findings down by age, gender, education level and other demographic characteristics.
The finding is related to, but not the same as, the exit-poll result this desk reported on Tuesday, in which about nine in ten voters called living costs a major factor in their vote. That measured how many voters weighed the issue at all; the Voter Poll figure measures how many ranked it first.
Not reported
Neither Hiru filing gives the date or field dates of the Voter Poll, its margin of error, or the names of the news organisations in the consortium. Neither reports where or in what setting Trump made his remarks, and neither carries any reaction from Democratic leaders. No projection of overall control of either chamber had been reported at the time of writing.
