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Updated 10 minutes ago
THE OCCUPANT OF the White House for the next four years is still undecided after a busy election night in the United States.
US President Donald Trump won the key states of Florida and Ohio and also held the majority of the states that won him the presidency in 2016.
However, while the victories mean that Trump appears to have passed some pre-election polls, the overall result is still unclear.
Democratic challenger Joe Biden has also held many of the states won by Hillary Clinton four years ago and the former vice president also won the state of Arizona, which Trump won in 2016.
As of now, Biden has 238 projected votes in the electoral college and Trump has 213, according to the Associated Press, with either candidate requiring 270 votes to win the presidency.
Counting continues in many states, but most have been projected by major US networks. However, some of the key battlefields have yet to be decided.
In addition to changing Arizona, Biden’s campaign will look for possible victories in the Rust Belt states of Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin that were key for Trump in 2016.
Votes have been counted in these states, but no projections have been made yet.
A senior election official in Michigan has said the state won’t have final results until Wednesday night Irish time, while it could be the Friday before Pennsylvania counts all of its votes.
Wisconsin is likely to have results sooner, perhaps before noon Irish time today, when the city of Milwaukee is expected to finish counting its votes.
Why is it taking so long?
Last night, the first counts began to take place after midnight Irish time, with much of the initial focus on Florida’s perennial battlefield.
While Biden outperformed Clinton in some parts of the state, in voter-rich areas in and around Miami, the Democratic vote declined in 2016.
Trump’s vote held up elsewhere and his victory in the state was clear for most of election night.
One of the questions before this Election Night was how the large number of votes cast before Election Day and by postal ballot would be counted alongside Election Day votes.
One of the places where this played out most clearly was in Ohio, where Biden appeared to be leading early in the count before his lead eroded as Trump’s voting areas entered.
In the key state of Pennsylvania, there are at least 270,000 mail-in ballots that won’t be counted until later today.
Biden talks to his followers in Delaware.
Source: Andrew Harnik / PA Images
Trump was unusually quiet on Twitter for most of the night, but tweeted shortly before 6 am to say that his opponents were trying to “steal the election.”
Twitter has censored Trump’s tweet to say it is “disputed and could be misleading.”
Later, Trump spoke from the White House in which he made unsubstantiated claims that the election was “a fraud.” Trump also said the count should stop in some states and said he would “go to the Supreme Court.”
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Biden also spoke to supporters in Delaware, saying “we’re going to win this,” but warning it would take patience for all votes to be counted.
“We knew this was going to continue, but who knew it was going to continue maybe tomorrow morning, maybe even longer,” Biden told fans.
“But look, we feel good about where we are. We really do. I’m here to tell you tonight that we believe we are on our way to winning this election. “
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