Democrat Joe Biden took narrow leads over Donald Trump in two critical Midwestern states with the presidential race on the line for a second day. Trump continued to complain that his victory was being stolen.
In Michigan, Biden led by 32,000 votes out of approximately 5 million cast and in Wisconsin, Biden led by 20,000 votes out of 3.2 million cast. Either one could determine the outcome of the election.
Biden’s campaign said they hope to declare victory Wednesday afternoon, earlier than many expected due to delayed counts on battlefields, including Pennsylvania. Biden plans to address Americans later on Wednesday, the campaign said.
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Election officials continued to count votes in various battle states as Democrats, whose expectations of a “blue wave” faded, hoped to rally enough for a victory and Republicans searched for a path for Trump to achieve victory.
At 11:30 a.m. New York time on Wednesday, Biden had 238 electoral votes, while Trump had 213, leaving both short of the 270 needed to secure immediate victories.
Trump tweeted throughout the morning casting doubt on the count of mail-in ballots, which were largely Democratic, after votes were counted in person on Election Day, which leaned toward Republicans.
“How is it that every time they count the landfills by mail they are so devastating in their percentage and power of destruction?” The president said on Twitter. Another tweet reflected on his clues “magically” disappearing in states run by Democratic governors.
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Bill Stepien, Trump’s campaign manager, insisted that the president was heading for re-election and that the campaign was grooming his lawyers to challenge the results in some states.
In a midnight White House speech, Trump threatened to ask the US Supreme Court to intervene to stop what he called the disenfranchisement of Republican voters, without offering evidence that any crime had been committed. .
“Frankly, we won this election,” Trump said, noting that he had an advantage in several states where the results were still uncertain. “So we will go to the Supreme Court of the United States. We want the voting to stop. “
It was not immediately clear what Trump was referring to, as states such as Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Georgia, North Carolina and Nevada counted votes cast legally. It’s routine for states to continue counting votes after Election Day, and Pennsylvania said the results likely won’t be finalized for several days.
Tech stocks led a rally in US stocks. The benchmark S&P 500 index rose for a third day after futures turned from a loss to a profit during the American morning. Since Democrats seemed less likely to seize a controlling majority in the Senate, Treasuries rose as traders bet a divided government would make it harder to pass new economic stimulus.
The unresolved outcome, due to an unusually large number of mail-in ballots due to the coronavirus, risks further stoking tensions in the US, beset by an economic recession and the raging virus.
A Biden victory in the battlefield state of Arizona, which Trump won in 2016, opened a series of avenues for obtaining a majority of Electoral College votes. If he won in Wisconsin, Michigan or Georgia, he would get the 270 votes needed to win.
“When all the votes are counted, we are confident that Vice President Joe Biden will be the next President of the United States,” said Biden Campaign Manager Jen O’Malley Dillon.
O’Malley Dillon said in a statement early Wednesday that Trump’s remarks were “outrageous, unprecedented and incorrect” and “a naked effort to take away the democratic rights of American citizens.”
The Associated Press, which many news organizations rely on for election calls, said in a statement that it “is not yet calling for the presidential race because none of the candidates has obtained the 270 Electoral College votes necessary to claim victory.”
Trump needs at least four of the following states to pass 270 electoral votes: Georgia, North Carolina, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. He won them all in 2016.
In Nevada, where the counting stopped until Thursday, Biden was clinging to a nearly 8,000-vote lead. In the popular vote nationwide, Biden leads by roughly 2 million.
As the results in the swing states began to shift favorably towards Biden, Trump again on Wednesday morning cast unsubstantiated doubt about the developments.
There were few surprises among the states where the PA announced winners, and the Republican and Democratic states generally lined up, despite expectations for several surprises. The only other Electoral College vote that has been reversed so far, other than Arizona, came from a Congressional district in Nebraska that backed Biden after favoring Trump in 2016.
Trump won Florida, a crucial award in the race for the White House that shut down Biden’s hopes of an early knockout in the election. The president also won Texas, which Democrats hoped could turn blue and completely reshape the electoral map.
Trump outperformed one of Florida’s most populous counties, Miami-Dade. After losing the county four years ago by 29 points, he lost by less than 8 to Biden.
The county is diverse, with large Cuban and Venezuelan populations that Trump has courted by increasing diplomatic and economic pressure on socialist regimes in those countries. He accused Biden of sharing the politics of the regimes.
Trump won Ohio and Biden won Minnesota, he claims each candidate had tried to take the other away but ended politically unchanged from 2016.
Ohio was the first of several battle states decided in the race.
Biden beat Minnesota despite Trump holding multiple campaign rallies in a state that narrowly lost to Hillary Clinton in 2016. But Biden’s strength in urban areas of the state kept him in the Democratic column.
Trump still has small advantages in North Carolina and Georgia, although there are votes pending on each. Trump won both states in 2016.
Additionally, Biden won the 2nd Congressional District of Nebraska, Minnesota, Hawaii, California, Oregon, Washington, Colorado, New York, Virginia, Illinois, Maryland, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Vermont, Rhode Island, New Mexico, Delaware, District of Columbia and New Hampshire, according to AP.
Trump won the other four Electoral College votes from Nebraska, Ohio, Florida, Texas, Iowa, Idaho, Kansas, Arkansas, Indiana, Kentucky, Tennessee, South Carolina, Alabama, Mississippi, West Virginia, North Dakota, South Dakota , Wyoming, Louisiana, Oklahoma and Missouri.
Nebraska is one of only two states, with Maine, to grant an Electoral College vote to the winner of each Congressional district. Trump won two districts and Biden won one. Trump won the state overall, giving him the two remaining Nebraska Electoral College votes.
Maine’s second congressional district stayed too close to call.
Even if Democrats still claim the White House, a wave of support that they hoped would also give them control of both houses of Congress could fall short.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, a Kentucky Republican, was re-elected, the AP said. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, was re-elected despite much outrage by a Democratic rival, and Senator Doug Jones, a Democrat from Alabama, was defeated by Republican Tommy Tuberville.
Former Colorado Governor John Hickenlooper, a Democrat, defeated Senator Cory Gardner, giving his party an advantage. Other disputed Senate seats remain undecided.
Biden is winning over Latino and African-American voters by similar numbers to Clinton’s four years ago, and he’s narrowing Trump’s margin among white voters, early AP exit polls show.
Trump had a 12-point lead among white voters in Tuesday’s election. Exit polls four years ago showed him with a 20-point advantage among those voters. Biden led among Latino voters with 30 points, black voters with 82 points and women with 12 points.
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