President Donald Trump sought to declare victory even with millions of votes remaining to be counted in key states on the battlefield, saying in a White House speech Wednesday that he would go to the Supreme Court to call for a “stop to all vote “, alleging fraud.
“Frankly, we won this election,” he said, when he was nowhere near the 270 electoral college votes he needed to win. Joe Biden, the Democratic nominee, was leading with 225 votes to Trump’s 213 on the Associate Press tracker at the time of writing.
The president had won Florida, Iowa and Ohio as voting had continued into early Wednesday morning and Biden expressed confidence in electing Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania and said he was “on his way” to winning the election.
Neither of them had changed states yet, although Biden was closer to him, having maintained a consistent lead in Arizona, a Republican-leaning state that Trump had won in 2016. Fox News called him up for Biden and then backed off under the Trump campaign fire. for jumping the gun. But an angry Trump mentioned it at length in his controversial White House speech.
“We feel good about where we are,” Biden had previously said. “We really do. I’m here to tell you tonight that we believe we are on our way to winning this election. “
He added: “We feel great about Wisconsin and Michigan. And by the way, it will take time to count the votes, but we’re going to win Pennsylvania. “
Around the same time, Trump first tried to insert his false claims and complaints into the election process with a tweet, which was flagged by Twitter as disputed or misleading content, that he was “going big time” and wrongly claimed that “they are trying to STEAL”. the chose”.
Trump and Biden were locked in close fights in the battlefield states as vote counting progressed hesitantly in some battlefield states due to high volumes of early votes, especially those sent by mail.
But Trump did not lose overwhelmingly as some experts had predicted, and Biden did not close the contest early as some had said he could.
Trump had chosen Florida, Iowa and Ohio among the battle states he won in 2016 and led in North Carolina. It also clung to Texas and Georgia, the solidly Republican states Democrats hoped to turn around in a late campaign boost.
Trump was also leading in Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania, the three Democratic states, the Blue Wall states, which he had switched in 2016 to win the presidency. But his tracks in these states were expected to change as a large number of early votes remained to be counted, especially mail-in ballots.
Michigan officials have said they won’t be ready to make an official announcement of the result until Wednesday night. Pennsylvania also might not have a result to announce until then.
Just as Biden had made a play for Georgia and Texas to some extent and failed, Trump had made a bet on New Hampshire and Minnesota, both states won by Hillary Clinton in 2016, and they failed. Biden beat them both.
But Trump seemed to have held his own so far despite trailing Biden in the polls for much of the race, and managed to mobilize his supporters with a frantic campaign pace in the final days when he participated in multiple rallies across various states. everyday.
Jason Miller, a high-ranking member of Trump’s re-election campaign, told reporters in a conference call early Tuesday: “We feel very, very good about our ground game, we feel very good about where we are leaving”.
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