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By Reuters 
1 hour ago
By Trevor Hunnicutt and Jeff Mason
Wilmington, Delaware / Washington – President Donald Trump falsely claimed victory over Democratic rival Joe Biden on Wednesday with millions of votes still to be counted in a close race for the White House that will not be resolved until a handful of states complete the recount. of votes in the next hours or days.
Shortly after Biden said he was confident of winning the contest once the votes were counted, Trump appeared at the White House to declare victory and said his lawyers would take his case to the United States Supreme Court, without specifying what they would claim. .
“We were preparing to win this election. Frankly, we won this election,” Trump said. “This is a huge fraud in our nation. We want the law to be used properly. So we will go to the Supreme Court of the United States. We want all voting to stop.”
Polls have closed and voting has stopped across the country, but election laws in U.S. states require all votes to be counted, and many states typically take days to finish counting legal ballots. There were still more votes to be counted this year than in the past, as people voted early by mail and in person due to the coronavirus pandemic.
Earlier in the evening, Trump won the battlefields of Florida, Ohio and Texas, dashing Biden’s hopes of a decisive early victory, but Biden said he was confident he was on his way to winning the White House by taking three key states. by Rust Belt.
Biden, 77, was looking at the so-called “blue wall” states of Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania that sent Trump, 74, to the White House in 2016 for possible breakthroughs once those states finish counting votes. in the next few hours or days.
“We feel good about where we are,” Biden said in his home state of Delaware, shouting over a roar of supporters in cars honking their horns in approval. “We believe that we are on the way to winning this election.”
Winning those three states would be enough to give Biden an Electoral College victory. Fox News projected that Biden would win Arizona, another state that voted for Trump in 2016, giving him more options to reach 270 votes in the Electoral College.
Biden leads 220-213 over Trump in the fight for the 270 Electoral College votes needed to win the White House, according to Edison Research.
Even without Pennsylvania, Biden’s victories in Arizona, Michigan, and Wisconsin, along with his projected victory in a Congressional district in Nebraska, which distributes electoral votes by district, would place him in the White House, as long as he also has the states. in which Trump lost in 2016.
“We are in a BIG time, but they are trying to STEAL the election. We will never let them do that. No votes can be cast after the polls close!” Trump said on Twitter before his appearance at the White House, that he was quick to label the tweet as possibly misleading.
“It is not my place nor the place of Donald Trump to declare the winner of this election. It is the place of the voters,” Biden said on Twitter in response to the president.
Trump has repeatedly and without evidence suggested that an increase in vote-by-mail will lead to an increase in fraud, although election experts say fraud is rare and ballots by mail are a long-standing feature in American elections.
In Pennsylvania, Democratic Gov. Tom Wolf said the state had yet to count more than a million mail ballots. He called Trump’s comments a partisan attack. According to Edison Research, more than 2.4 million early votes were cast in the state, of which nearly 1.6 million were from Democrats and about 555,000 from Republicans.
Supporters of both candidates called the election a referendum on Trump and his tumultuous first term. The winner will lead a nation strained by a pandemic that has killed more than 231,000 people and left millions more unemployed, racial tensions and political polarization that have only worsened during a virulent campaign.
Trump monitored the election results with members of his family in the living room of the White House residence. Walking in and out of the room were First Lady Melania Trump, her son-in-law Jared Kushner and their daughter Ivanka, among others. “It’s calm, creepy,” said a source familiar with the scene.
Cheers broke out in the East Room of the White House, where 200 Trump supporters drank and ate chicken wings, sliders and cookies when Fox News called Florida for Trump, a source in the room said.
“The place just blew up,” said the source, who said the mood was “extraordinarily positive” and “cautiously optimistic.” “Everyone started cheering.” Florida was a must-have state for any Trump path to victory.
Voters also had to decide which political party controls the United States Congress for the next two years, with Democrats trying to regain a majority in the Senate and favored to maintain control of the House of Representatives.
A Democratic campaign to win control of the Senate appeared to falter, with Democrats winning just one Republican-held seat while six other elections remained undecided early Wednesday. All six were in Alaska, Maine, Michigan, North Carolina, and two were in Georgia.
NO EARLY SURPRISES
There were no early surprises as the two contenders split the already projected US states. Trump captured conservative states like Alabama, Indiana, Kentucky and Tennessee, while Democratic-leaning Connecticut, Massachusetts, New York and Vermont went to Biden, according to projections from the television networks and Edison Research.
Trump’s strong performance in Florida was driven by his best numbers with Latinos. Their participation in the votes in counties with large Latino populations was higher than in the 2016 election.
For months there were complaints from Latino Democratic activists that Biden was ignoring Hispanic voters and lavishing attention instead on black voters in large Midwestern cities. Opinion polls in key states showed that Biden performed poorly with Latinos in the weeks leading up to the election.
Many younger Hispanics were ardent supporters of Democratic Senator Bernie Sanders during the party’s primary campaign, but in opinion polls they expressed little enthusiasm for Biden, considering him too moderate and disconnected.
In the Miami area, Latinos are predominantly Cuban-American, where generations of families have fled the communist government in Cuba. Trump’s message that Biden is a socialist seemed to work with them and with the Venezuelans there despite Biden’s denials.
Edison’s national exit poll showed that while Biden led Trump among non-white voters, Trump received a slightly higher proportion of non-white votes than in 2016. The poll showed that about 11% of African-Americans, 31 % of Hispanics and 30% of Asian Americans voted for Trump, 3 percentage points more than in 2016 in all three groups.
Edison’s national exit poll also found that support for Trump decreased by about 3 points among older white voters, compared to 2016.
The survey found that Biden made significant progress in the suburbs.
In 42 suburban counties spread across 13 states where the majority of votes had been counted, Biden was getting about 5 percentage points better than Clinton in 2016 and Barack Obama in 2012.
US stock futures rose late Tuesday as Trump’s performance improved, but were volatile, lasting 0.25% at 1:50 am ET (0650 GMT).
“I think the markets shook a bit because of how close the race seems now. We are seeing a small flight-to-safety response in some asset classes, ”said Mona Mahajan, senior US investment strategist at Allianz Global Investors, New York.
On the betting website Smarkets, the odds reflected a 74% chance that Trump would win, up from 33% earlier in the day.
Voters, many wearing masks and maintaining social distancing to protect against the spread of the coronavirus, flocked to polling places across the country during the day, experiencing long lines in some locations and short waits in many other locations. There were no signs of disruptions or violence at polling places, as some officials feared.
Biden, the former Democratic vice president, placed Trump’s handling of the pandemic at the center of his campaign and had maintained a consistent lead in national opinion polls over the Republican president.
But a third of American voters listed the economy as the issue that mattered most to them when deciding their election for president, while two in 10 cited Covid-19, according to an exit poll by Edison Research on Tuesday.
In the national exit poll, four in 10 voters said they thought the effort to contain the virus was “very bad.” In the battleground states of Florida and North Carolina, which could decide the election, five out of 10 voters said the national response to the pandemic was “somewhat or very badly.”
Trump seeks another term in office after four chaotic years marked by the coronavirus crisis, an economy hit by pandemic stoppages, an impeachment drama, investigations into Russian electoral interference, America’s racial tensions and political controversies in the United States. immigration.
Biden is seeking to win the presidency in his third attempt after a five-decade political career, including eight years as vice president under Trump’s predecessor, Barack Obama.
Biden has promised a renewed effort to combat the public health crisis, fix the economy, and bridge America’s political divide. This year, the country was also rocked by months of protests against racism and police brutality.
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