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Counting in the U.S. presidential election continued Wednesday night, amid signs that Democratic candidate Joe Biden was moving toward victory and as Donald Trump launched legal proceedings in at least three states.
After a tense 24 hours in which the race was reduced to close contests in a handful of swing states, the election was still too close to call.
Trump, seeking a second term in the White House, scored early victories in states such as Florida, Ohio and Texas shortly after the polls closed Tuesday night. But Biden surpassed the US President when absentee ballots began to be counted and attention turned to the three Rust Belt states that gave Trump victory in 2016.
In a significant victory for the Democratic nominee, the Associated Press called out the state of Wisconsin for Biden. But the Trump campaign immediately filed a request for a recount in the state. He also filed a series of lawsuits in Pennsylvania, Michigan, and then Georgia, seeking to stop the counting of votes in those key states on the battlefield.
Various networks also projected a victory for Biden in Michigan.
As it appeared the count would continue for a third day, Biden had significantly increased his possible routes to the 270 electoral college votes needed to win the election, while Trump’s path to victory had narrowed. However, in tweets Wednesday night, Trump “claimed” the states of Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Georgia and Michigan.
Including Wisconsin, Biden leads Trump from 253 to 213 in electoral college votes, which are largely based on a state’s population.
‘We will be the winners’
Speaking in Delaware on Wednesday night, Biden fell short of declaring victory, but predicted he would win the race once all the votes were counted. “I am not here to declare that we have won, but I am here to declare that when the voting is complete, we will be the winners.”
Noting the record number of Americans who voted, he said he and his running mate Kamala Harris were “on track to win the most votes of any ballot in the history of this country.” He continued: “Every vote must be counted. No one is going to take away our democracy, not now, not ever ”.
Biden spoke at the end of a day that began with Trump declaring a premature victory, telling supporters in the White House in the early hours of Wednesday that he had “already” won the race.
“We will win this and, as far as I am concerned, we have already won it,” he said, vowing to go to the US Supreme Court to stop the vote counting. “We want all voting to stop. We don’t want them to find ballots at four in the morning and add them to the list. “
He later claimed, without proof, in a series of tweets that his leadership in the states had “begun to magically disappear as the surprise ballot dumps were counted.” Some of his tweets were tagged by Twitter as possible misinformation.
Legal disputes
The Trump campaign went on the offensive Wednesday, claiming it had “won” Pennsylvania. Trump’s campaign adviser Jason Miller also criticized networks for calling the state of Arizona a victory for Biden, claiming that Trump would win the state on Friday. “By the end of this week, it will be clear to the entire nation that President Trump and Vice President Mike Pence will be re-elected for another four years,” he said.
As the US faced the prospect of protracted legal disputes over the election outcome, there were isolated scenes of protests. In Philadelphia, thousands of people gathered at Independence Hall, the birthplace of the constitution, to demand that every vote be counted in the election. In Detroit, Michigan, there were tense gatherings in the main convention hall where votes were being processed after self-described “election observers” who supported Trump entered the building.
Although Biden seemed set to win the 270 electoral college votes needed to secure the election, it was a disappointing night for Democrats in the congressional races. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi seemed poised to see the majority of the party in the House diminish as several members lost their seats, while Democrats failed to change several Senate seats they had targeted, which that made the prospect of a Democratic-controlled Senate unlikely.
Similarly, Tuesday’s election did not generate the Trump repudiation that many Democrats expected. Instead, the president delivered a performance that, as in 2016, exceeded the projections of opinion polls.
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