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WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden gained more ground over President Donald Trump in the states of Georgia and Pennsylvania on Friday, closing in on the White House hours after Trump falsely claimed he was “stealing” the election.
Biden held a 253-214 lead in the state-by-state Electoral College vote determining the winner, according to most major television networks, and was slowly moving toward securing the 270 votes needed to win the Electoral College state by state. Been in four swinging indecisive states.
Biden, 77, would become the next president by winning Pennsylvania, or by winning two from the trio of Georgia, Nevada and Arizona. Trump’s most likely path seemed narrower: He needed to hold on to both Pennsylvania and Georgia and also overtake Biden in Nevada or Arizona.
In Pennsylvania, which has 20 electoral votes, Biden reduced Trump’s lead to just over 18,000 in the early hours of Friday, while his deficit in Georgia, which has 16 electoral votes, dropped to about 650.
Those numbers were expected to continue to move in Biden’s favor, with many of the ballots prominent from areas that typically vote Democratic, including the cities of Philadelphia and Atlanta.
Meanwhile, Biden saw his lead in Arizona drop to around 47,000 early Friday; he was still ahead in Nevada by just 12,000 votes.
As the country held its breath three days after Tuesday’s Election Day, Georgia and Pennsylvania officials expressed optimism that they would finish counting on Friday, while Arizona and Nevada were still expected to take days to finalize their totals of votes.
Trump, 74, has tried to portray the slow counting of mail-in ballots as fraudulent, which gained popularity due to fears of exposure to the coronavirus through in-person voting. As the tallies on those ballots have been counted, they have eroded the strong initial advantages the president had in states like Georgia and Pennsylvania.
Historically, states have taken time after Election Day to count all votes.
Trump released several tweets in the early hours of Friday morning, reiterating complaints he previously issued at the White House. “I easily WIN the US Presidency with LEGAL VOTES,” he said on Twitter, offering no proof that illegal votes were cast.
‘PREPARE AN ELECTION’
In an extraordinary assault on the democratic process, Trump appeared in the White House meeting room Thursday night and baselessly claimed that the election was being “stolen.”
Without offering proof, Trump lashed out at poll workers and harshly criticized pre-election polls that he said were designed to suppress voting because he favored Biden.
“They are trying to rig an election and we cannot allow that to happen,” said Trump, who spoke for about 15 minutes in the White House meeting room before leaving without answering questions. Several television networks were interrupted during their comments, and the presenters said they needed to correct their statements.
Biden, who earlier in the day asked for patience as the votes were counted, responded on Twitter: “No one is going to take away our democracy. Not now, not ever.”
Trump’s inflammatory comments followed a series of his Twitter posts earlier in the day calling for the vote counting to be stopped, though if voting were to stop at this point, he is currently following Biden in enough states to hand over the Democrat. The presidency.
Meanwhile, the Trump campaign followed a series of lawsuits in various states, although judges in Georgia and Michigan were quick to dismiss the challenges there. Legal experts said the cases had little chance of affecting the election result, and Biden’s campaign senior legal advisor Bob Bauer called them part of a “broader disinformation campaign.”
The closed election underscored the nation’s deep political divisions, while the slow counting of millions of mail-in ballots served as a reminder that the coronavirus continues to rage in the United States.
Biden, if he prevails, will nevertheless have failed to deliver the widespread repudiation of Trump that Democrats had hoped for, reflecting the deep support the president enjoys despite his tumultuous four years in office. Trump’s influence in the Republican Party will remain strong, even if he ultimately loses a close election.
The winner will face a pandemic that has killed more than 234,000 Americans and left millions more out of work, even as the country continues to grapple with the aftermath of months of race relations riots and police brutality.
Biden’s lead in the national popular vote surpassed 4 million Thursday night, although that does not influence the winner’s decision. Trump lost the popular vote by around 3 million to Democrat Hillary Clinton in 2016, when he secured an upset victory by winning key states in the Electoral College.
He is trying to avoid becoming the first sitting US president to lose a re-election bid since his Republican colleague George HW Bush in 1992.
Twitter and Facebook have flagged numerous Trump posts since Election Day as misleading.
However, Trump’s rhetoric had gained traction among some supporters. A Facebook group called “Stop the Steal” that pushed false claims of voter fraud gained hundreds of thousands of members Thursday before the social media giant pulled the page, citing calls for violence.
Supporters of both candidates also held small protests outside the voting centers on Thursday, although the demonstrations were largely peaceful.
(Reporting by Jeff Mason and Trevor Hunnicutt; Additional reporting by Lawrence Hurley, Julia Harte, Jason Lange, and Will Dunham in Washington, Mimi Dwyer in Phoenix, and Tom Hals in Delaware; Written by Joseph Ax and John Whitesides; Edited by Soyoung Kim, Daniel Wallis and Frances Kerry)
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