US Election Results: Biden Predicts Victory Over Trump As Counts Advance

Joe Biden has said again that he is confident of victory as he moves closer to beating Donald Trump after Tuesday’s US presidential election.

The Democratic challenger now has 253 of the 270 Electoral College votes needed to take over the White House under the United States state-by-state voting system.

Biden leads the vote counting on the battlefields of Georgia, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Arizona.

A Biden victory would see Trump leave office in January after four years.

As the count enters its fifth day, it is still unclear when the contest will end.

Officials are counting a record number of votes by mail due to the coronavirus pandemic, causing the longest delay in the outcome of a presidential election in 20 years.

“We’re going to win this race,” Biden told his fans in Wilmington, Delaware, on Friday night, in a confident tone. He was joined by his running mate, California Sen. Kamala Harris.

He said he was on his way to winning more than 300 votes in the Electoral College and noted that more people had voted for his campaign – more than 74 million people – than any US presidential candidate in history.

Biden said the Americans had given him a mandate to address the coronavirus pandemic, the struggling economy, climate change and systemic racism. On Friday, for the third day in a row, the United States set a new record for new Covid-19 cases, with more than 127,000 infections.

The Democrat, who ran as the unity candidate after a close campaign, said it was time to “get the virulence out of our politics” and “be civil to one another.”

“We may be opponents, but we are not enemies, we are Americans,” said Biden, who did not name his Republican opponent, Trump.

Biden’s appearance had originally been planned as a victory speech, but he opted instead to give a general update on the status of the race, as American television networks refrained from declaring him the winner.

The Democrat said he expected to address the nation again on Saturday.

Joe Biden delivered a celebratory speech rather than a victory speech, but he touched on all the familiar themes that are sure to come up when he addresses the nation as president-elect.

He’s been remarkably consistent throughout the season, that’s part of his appeal in these chaotic times. He praised the election results so far as a broad mandate for change, though they are not the outright repudiation of President Trump that Democrats hoped for. He once again presented himself as a leader who believes in America, who could unify the bitterly divided country: “the purpose of politics is not total and relentless war,” he said.

At the same time, he nodded at his own impatience for an outcome and presented a stark contrast to President Trump’s false claims about voter fraud. Watching the ballot count is “slow and paralyzing,” he said, but they represent people who “exercise the fundamental right to have their voices heard.

Biden, who ran twice previously for the White House, in 1988 and 2008, without success, would be the oldest president to take office at the age of 78.

If he is declared the winner this weekend, his team is expected to begin their transition process on Monday. The New York Times reports that Biden could announce the first top officials of his possible administration next week.

The Secret Service has sent reinforcements to Delaware to reinforce Biden’s security detail. The Federal Aviation Administration has restricted flights over Wilmington airspace.

However, there is no indication that Trump will give in to his opponent anytime soon.

“Joe Biden should not unfairly claim the office of president,” he tweeted Friday afternoon. “I could make that claim too. The legal proceedings are just beginning!”

Trump has been making unsubstantiated claims of voter fraud, prompting some fellow Republicans to talk that the rhetoric should be tempered.

Since at least 1896, every defeated presidential candidate has awarded defeat to the winner. But there is no law or constitutional requirement to do so.

However, the constitution states that a newly elected president will automatically take office at noon on January 20 after an election.

President Trump is angry and disappointed that more of his allies are not joining his side on television or on the streets, according to White House officials Friday.

On Saturday, he wrote a series of tweets in which he made unsubstantiated allegations of illegality in the voting process, all of which were labeled as disputed and potentially misleading by Twitter.

He has been watching television, making phone calls to campaign offices in the field, and dividing his time between the Oval Office and the residence.

Several aides did not show up for work on Friday, and the White House was described as “very empty” with gloomy humor.

In addition to the bad news, it was reported late Friday that White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, 61, had tested positive for coronavirus.

The president has indicated to the senior advisers that he will continue with the legal challenges to the results, although there is still no firm strategy for such litigation.

A senior external adviser to the president described his mood on Friday as “somewhere between sullen and hopeful.” The source added that Trump “was the last to think he could win in 2016,” even though his top advisers told him he would.

Biden leads Trump by more than 4 million votes out of a record 145 million cast. But the results of the US presidential election are decided state by state in the Electoral College, and the contest is much closer on key battlefields.

Biden has 253 votes in the electoral college, while Trump has 214. To win the White House, a candidate needs 270.

In Pennsylvania, where Biden was born, he is ahead by nearly 29,000 votes, with 99% counted. If you take that status along with your 20 Electoral College votes, you will win the election.

Officials issued a statement on Friday saying the “overwhelming majority” of absentee and mail votes had already been counted, and provisional ballots were now beginning to be counted. However, they did not say when the count will be completed.

The Rust Belt state voted Democratic in six consecutive races for the White House before switching to Trump in 2016.

In Georgia, Biden currently leads with more than 7,000 votes and 99% of the ballots were counted. Georgia’s secretary of state said there would be a recount because the margin was too small.

Georgia (16 electoral votes) is a traditionally Republican state and has not been won by a Democrat in a presidential race since 1992.

Biden leads by more than 22,000 votes in Nevada (six electoral votes) and by less than 30,000 in Arizona (11 electoral votes).

Trump leads North Carolina (15 electoral votes) by more than 76,000 votes.