Democrat Joe Biden’s grip on the White House race continued to strengthen as he steadily reduced Donald Trump’s initial lead in a couple of decisive states as the president’s campaign peppered the courts with legal complaints.
In an evening statement at the White House, 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. However, his campaign’s demands to challenge the count have gained little traction, with at least two rejected in Georgia and Michigan.
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Trump’s lead in Georgia had dropped to less than 700 votes Friday morning, while his lead in Pennsylvania dropped to about 18,000, according to the Associated Press. 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 pointed to that change in his fortunes as evidence of fraud, but it is common for vote totals to move in the days after elections as the vote counts roll in.
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 wave of complaints about voting 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.
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 poised for a runoff, 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 it also occupied Arizona next door. 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 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,” he tweeted. Republican Sen. Mitt Romney of Utah, a regular critic of Trump, said votes would be counted and wrongdoing would be investigated and handled by the courts. “Have faith in democracy, in our Constitution and in the American people,” he said in a statement.
‘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’s advisers are confident that he will win and were waiting for the results. 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.
Biden and Harris have met with advisers to take a hard look at the election results and delve into politics. On Thursday, they were briefed on the latest developments in the coronavirus pandemic and on the economy. He asked for patience in his short speech and did not answer questions.
“Democracy is sometimes complicated. Sometimes it also requires a little patience, ”he told the country in a short speech. “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.”
Trump’s legal battle is yielding mixed results. His team won a court order requiring Pennsylvania to separate the mail-in ballots of voters who were asked to provide proof of identification missing for an extended period to allow for such corrections, as well as an order to allow observers to zoom in for observe the mail ballot count in Philadelphia. The lawsuits in Georgia and Michigan were dismissed.
The Trump campaign also said it planned to sue in Nevada, claiming that some people voted even though they no longer met residency requirements. He also alleged fraud and held a combative press conference in Las Vegas where two Trump allies, Richard Grenell and Matt Schlapp, clashed with the media, declined to identify themselves and did not respond to questions after stating without proof that the election was fraudulent.
Unofficial results are expected in Pennsylvania and Georgia late Thursday or Friday. It’s unclear how long Arizona will take, while Nevada said most of its ballots will be processed on Sunday, but the final count will not take place before Nov. 12.
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