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Illustrative image | sources: Democratic candidate Joe Biden (Photo: EPA-EFE / MICHAEL REYNOLDS) / US President Donald J. Trump. (Photo: EPA-EFE / SHAWN THEW)
Democrat Joe Biden has taken the lead in Pennsylvania over President Donald Trump, putting him on the cusp of victory in the presidential race.
Joe Biden has a small 6,826 vote lead in the key battlefield state. He also narrowly edged out Trump in Georgia, a state that last selected a Democratic presidential candidate in 1992.
Pennsylvania has 20 electoral votes, which means that if Biden wins the state, he will have more than the 270 Electoral College votes needed to claim the White House. Votes remain to be counted in both states, and also in Arizona and Nevada, where Biden maintains the lead, and more unofficial results were expected throughout the day on Friday.
Decision Desk HQ, an election data firm, has projected that Biden will win Pennsylvania and therefore the presidency. Bloomberg News does not use Decision Desk HQ projections to determine election winners. The Associated Press and the television networks have yet to call the state or the final result.
The Trump campaign immediately rejected that call.
“This race is not over,” said Matt Morgan, Trump’s campaign attorney. He said the call was based on flawed projections in four states that he said had voting irregularities. “Biden relies on these states for his false claim on the White House, but once the election is final, President Trump will be re-elected.”
However, Biden’s campaign dismissed attacks on the results and the implication that Trump might not budge.
“As we said on July 19, the American people will decide this election. And the United States government is perfectly capable of escorting intruders out of the White House, “said campaign spokesman Andrew Bates.
Speaking Friday morning on CNBC, Trump’s top economic adviser Larry Kudlow said he expects a “peaceful transfer of power” if Biden wins. “We are governed by the rule of law and so will this president,” he said.
With the result very fine, Georgia’s secretary of state said Friday that there would be a recount of the total presidential votes there.
The Trump campaign promises legal challenges that could yield results. In a statement at the White House late Thursday, Trump said the election is being stolen from him, even though there is no evidence of widespread electoral irregularities.
“If you count the legal votes, I win easily. If they count the illegal votes, they can try to steal the election from us, ”said a dejected Trump, reciting a litany of problems with vote counting in key states. Some Republicans have spoken out against the president’s statements.
However, his campaign’s demands to challenge the count have gained little traction, with at least two rejected in Georgia and Michigan.
Every state has counted a wave of mail-in ballots, skewing Democrats. Biden also expanded his leadership in Nevada.
Biden urged his supporters to be patient as the votes are counted and expressed his confidence during brief comments Thursday. “We have no doubt, when the count is up, Senator Harris and I will be declared the winners,” he said in an appearance late in the afternoon, referring to his running mate Kamala Harris.
In many ways, the week has played out the way many observers predicted, with Trump racking up clues in key states in the votes counted on Election Night, while Biden has added to his totals with the mail-in votes counted later. that eroded Trump’s advantage. Trump has flagged that change in his fortunes as evidence of fraud, but it is common for vote totals to move in the days after elections as vote counts progress.
Additionally, Trump spent so much time before the election telegraphing his claim that votes should only be counted on Election Day and his threat to question the results that he gave legal experts an opportunity to educate voters ahead of time.
Public polls showing leads for Biden in states like Florida, Wisconsin and Ohio, Trump said, had created “the illusion of momentum for Biden and diminished the ability of the Republican Party to raise funds.” Biden has fallen short in polls that showed him winning Florida and Ohio, two states he lost, but he also dramatically outperformed Trump in fundraising.
Trump’s aides had spent the day in and out of campaign headquarters in Northern Virginia as his team filed a series of complaints about vote monitoring in Pennsylvania and ineligible voting in Nevada. One case in Georgia involving 53 ballots was thrown out.
Trump allies
Close allies fanned out to Pennsylvania, Georgia, Arizona and Nevada to hold press conferences and make allegations of a rigged system, with little or no evidence. The legal challenges were largely aimed at slowing or stopping the vote count, and were generally unsuccessful.
But some Republicans spoke out against Trump’s unsubstantiated claims.
“I saw the president’s speech last night and it was very hard to watch,” Sen. Pat Toomey, a Republican from Pennsylvania, said on NBC. “The president’s accusations of grand-scale election fraud and theft are simply not substantiated. I am not aware of any major crime here. “
As Trump’s legal fortune plunged, Biden’s political fortunes improved and he continues to have more than one path to the presidency, with some scenarios relying on Arizona.
The Associated Press and Fox News called the state and its 11 electoral votes for Biden, but other prominent news outlets have said Arizona is too close to call him, prompting two different estimates from the Electoral College. AP has Biden leading the race for electoral votes with 264-214, while CNN has the tally of 253-213, with Arizona in sight.
A new batch of ballots from Maricopa County late Thursday brought Trump 10,576 votes closer to Biden in that state.
Trump won 57% of the new votes in Maricopa County, putting him on track to tie Biden for state if he can match those numbers in future remarks. AP and Fox News have stuck to their projections.
Biden now leads Arizona by 1.6 percentage points. Next results from Maricopa, Arizona’s largest county, are expected at 11 a.m. ET Friday morning.
If Biden wins Arizona, any of the three states, Nevada, Pennsylvania or Georgia, would put him above the threshold of victory, and Pennsylvania, with 20 electoral votes, would do so regardless of Arizona.
Both Senate races in Georgia are also set to go to the second round, after Senator David Perdue fell below the 50% threshold Thursday afternoon. He will likely face Jon Ossoff in a January runoff.
Earl of Nevada
In Nevada, Biden’s lead widened to 11,400, from 7,600 earlier in the day. The state has only six votes in the Electoral College, but it would secure the presidency for Biden if he also occupied neighboring Arizona. About 190,000 ballots must be counted, primarily in the county that includes Las Vegas, according to Nevada Secretary of State Barbara Cegavske.
As of Thursday night, Trump had not appeared publicly since early Wednesday morning, until well into election night, when he said he thought he had won the election. Later on Wednesday, he declared victory in Pennsylvania and Michigan. He has been declared the loser in Michigan and the count continues in Pennsylvania.
Since election night, Trump has been in the White House and has met or spoken with a circle of close advisers, including Hope Hicks; Dan Scavino; his sons Donald Jr., Eric and Ivanka; as well as Chief of Staff Mark Meadows and Vice President Mike Pence, according to people familiar with the matter. He has also spoken with Republican governors in two states where the election outcome remains unclear, Arizona and Georgia, the people said.
As frustration and disappointment simmered in Trump’s circles, it was his son’s turn to call on other Republicans to speak up.
“The utter inaction of virtually all ‘2024 GOP hopefuls’ is quite surprising,” tweeted Donald Trump Jr. “They have a perfect platform to show that they are willing and able to fight, but instead they will flinch from the media mafia. ” Arkansas Senator Tom Cotton and former United Nations Ambassador Nikki Haley quickly launched tweets in support of Trump.
However, Trump’s comments also provoked a cautious pushback. Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan said “there is no defense for the president’s comments tonight that undermine our Democratic process.”
Representative Adam Kinzinger, a Republican from Illinois, said he wanted all legal votes to be counted, but that people should bring hard evidence to court.
“STOP spreading discredited misinformation … This is freaking out,” Kinzinger tweeted.
‘Total war’
Donald Trump Jr. also tweeted that his father’s best option was to “go to all-out war for this election to expose all the fraud.” Twitter was quick to flag that tweet as misleading, as it has with several of the president’s tweets since the polls closed.
Biden is confident that he will win and asks for patience. Winning Pennsylvania would be particularly meaningful for Biden, who lived in the state until he was 10 years old and was sometimes called the state’s third senator because the Philadelphia media market reaches out to Delaware, which he represented in the Senate.
“Democracy is sometimes complicated. Sometimes it takes a little patience, too, ”Biden said in a short speech Thursday. “But that patience has been rewarded now for more than 240 years with a system of government that has been the envy of the world.”
By Josh Wingrove, Jennifer Epstein and Jordan Fabian with the assistance of Saleha Mohsin, Laura Davison, Mark Niquette and Gregory Korte
