A decisive win was the one thing all Americans wanted today. Instead, they get more uncertainty and anxiety in a year that has already delivered too much of both, writes Philip Williams.

Americans have been living on a knife edge. And now they are going to bed more anxious and uncertain than when they woke up.
All over the country, people had huddled together hoping and praying their old male candidate of choice would prevail.
As the electorate, so polarised, made a choice that would determine the nation’s future, the country held its breath. Then came the slow realisation that they will have to keep holding it.
That was until Trump delivered his late-night address.
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“We did win this election So our goal now is to ensure the integrity for the good of this nation, this is a very big moment, this is a major fraud on our nation,” he said.
“We want the law to be used in a proper manner. So we’ll be going to the US Supreme Court.
“We want all voting to stop. We don’t want them to find any ballots at 4:00 in the morning and add them to the list, OK?”
Where Americans find themselves now is in uncharted territory.
By declaring victory, Trump has placed the country in a very serious, very fraught situation.
The President has accused the Democrats of voter fraud, saying there was still voting happening after polls closed. That would be illegal but there is no evidence of that.
There are, however, millions of mail-in ballots that need to be counted.
And as they are projected to favour Democrats, then the President’s assertions that they too are a “fraud” add to his narrative that the election has been subverted.
US election: what’s happening now
“Millions and millions of people voted for us tonight and a very sad group of people are trying to disenfranchise that group and we won’t stand for it,” the President said, adding, “Frankly we did win this election.”
To emphasise that rather stunning claim, he added: “This is a fraud on the American public. This fraud on the American public. This is an embarrassment to our country.”
There had been suspicion for some time that it could come to this. For Trump, the reality show presidency required a second season.
And if he didn’t get it, it was a fix. And the Supreme Court may have to sort it out, with the help of his newly minted Supreme Court nominee, Justice Amy Coney Barrett.
What the President’s supporters do will depend on what else Trump says. His language can either inflame or defuse.
It’s up to him.
How will America move forward when the lines of division are so deep?
But this is not a country where politics is something happening on TV in the background.
Trump supporter Gloria Knox says she “wants America back”.(ABC News: Timothy Stevens)
Party affiliation can be a person’s identity. The outcome of every election is a battle for the soul of the nation.
Before the President pre-emptively declared himself the winner, his supporters and detractors were hunkered down in their tribes.
Republicans, fearful that the America they cherish would be destroyed by the “socialist” Joe Biden, dressed to celebrate four more years at Trump’s high-end hotel in Washington DC.
Among the many watching outside the hotel were Allen and Connie Tafoly, who had come to Washington DC from their Arizona home to celebrate their wedding anniversary, and the re-election of their President.
“[Either we’ll be a] democratic representative republic or a communist country, that’s what’s at stake here,” Mr Tafoly warned.
Now many across America are confronting a different reality than what they had hoped for. The landslide victory for either candidate did not appear.
The polls, once again, appeared to have missed the mark.
Americans of all political affiliations nervously watched the results come in on election night.(AP: David Goldman)
What a close election shows us is that the division that has become more pronounced in America will likely be set to continue for some time to come.
How America moves forward when the lines of division are so deep will be a considerable challenge facing the next president, whoever that may be.
Certainly, Trump has been able to transform the political discourse in a way that few other leaders have been able to do.
He has been highly successful in selling the message to his faithful that a vote for Biden is a tick for corruption, cronyism and communism.
Millions believe that’s the reality of a President Biden, and there are even more extreme ideas about him to be found on YouTube and far-right websites.
US election essentials
In reply, the Democrats have cast Trump as a danger not only to his own people but the entire world.
Many millions of Americans believe democracy itself is under threat if Trump gets a return invitation to the White House.
They fear the nation’s institutions will be further politicised and controlled by a man who cares simply for his own vain glories.
Many had feared this very outcome
While many come to grips with what could be a long few weeks, others will begin to pour over the last four years.
Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden told supporters they must be patient for an election result.(AP: Paul Sancya)
Not that long ago, political scientists surveyed in a Brookings Institution report found Trump to be America’s most polarising president by a wide margin.
Trump’s pursuit of “fractious policies,” including seeking to implement a travel ban and dismantling Obamacare, were cited as being the reasons behind the ranking.
But if this was supposed to be a referendum on that division, then it appears many are sticking with Trump.
According to the founder and editor-in-chief of FiveThirtyEight, Nate Silver, as “polarisation goes up, American politics becomes more stable in terms of people’s preferences because the decisions are clearer for them”.
“I certainly think the hypothesis that polarisation begets more stable public opinion is pretty sound,” he told Vox.
“It has been tested in a pretty good way this year. Although one other prediction of polarised politics is that you get narrower outcomes. So you have more close elections.”
That certainly appears to be the case so far.
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Then there is the very real possibility of a Supreme Court battle and controversy over mail-in ballots playing out for the next few weeks.
“We should be concerned by anyone who tries to declare victory on election night before the ballots are in,” Professor Nate Persily, co-director of the Stanford-MIT Healthy Elections Project, previously told the ABC.
“We need to give election officials the space they need in order to process all the ballots.”
Many watching the President’s remarks will be very concerned about how this plays out.
Tensions are already high after a year of protests over racial inequality and America’s long battle with COVID-19.
Americans are exhausted. A contested election was an outcome that many had seen as possible, but almost everyone feared.
Whatever happens next, Trump and Biden appear ready for a fight.
Antony Green on what would happen in a scenario of electoral college deadlock.