[ad_1]
WASHINGTON: Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden took a narrow lead over President Donald Trump in the states of Georgia and Pennsylvania on Friday (November 6), closing in on winning the White House in a nail-biting contest while a handful of states undecided continue. to count the votes.
Biden has a 253-214 lead in the state-by-state Electoral College vote determining the winner, according to most major television networks.
Winning Pennsylvania’s 20 electoral votes would place the former vice president above the 270 he needs to secure the presidency, while gaining just Georgia’s 16 electoral votes would put him on the cusp of victory.
Following Biden’s reported leads in Pennsylvania and Georgia, the Trump campaign said “this election is not over.”
“This election is not over,” said a statement from campaign general counsel Matt Morgan as he made further allegations of wrongdoing.
“The false projection of Joe Biden as a winner is based on results in four states that are far from final,” the statement said.
In Pennsylvania, Biden led Trump by 5,500 votes Friday morning, while in Georgia, he had opened a 1,097-vote lead.
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 seems narrower: He needs to hold on to both Pennsylvania and Georgia and also overtake Biden in Nevada or Arizona.
Biden was ahead of Trump by 1,097 votes in Georgia, where the count continued early Friday.
The change in Georgia came hours after Trump appeared at the White House to falsely claim that he was “stealing” the election. His campaign is pursuing a series of lawsuits in the battlefield states that legal experts described as unlikely to alter the outcome of the elections.
LIVE UPDATES: US Election Count Enters Day 3 As Biden, Trump Awaits Results From Remaining Key States
Trump’s lead had steadily diminished in Georgia, a southern state that has not voted for a Democratic presidential nominee since Bill Clinton took office in 1992, as officials worked with tens of thousands of uncounted votes, many of whom Democratic strongholds like Atlanta.
Georgia’s secretary of state reported late Thursday that about 14,000 ballots remained to be counted in the state.
The state will also have to examine the votes of military personnel and foreign residents, as well as provisional ballots cast on Election Day by voters who had problems with their registration or identification.
Biden has also been steadily reducing the lead of the Republican incumbent in Pennsylvania. His deficit there had reached 678,000 votes early Wednesday.
Biden also held slim leads in Arizona and Nevada. In Arizona, his lead fell to about 47,000 votes, and in Nevada he was ahead by about 11,500.
As the country held its breath for an outcome in the White House race, Georgia and Pennsylvania officials expressed optimism that they would finish counting on Friday, while Arizona and Nevada were still expected to take days to complete their vote totals. .
THE LIMITS OF TRUMP
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.
The close election has underscored the nation’s deep political divisions, and if he wins, Biden will likely face a difficult task of governing in deeply polarized Washington.
Republicans could retain control of the United States Senate pending the outcome of four indecisive Senate elections, including two in Georgia, and would likely block much of their legislative agenda, including expanding health care and fighting. against climate change.
READ: Biden says he will win the presidency, asks for patience while the votes are counted
The winner will face a pandemic that has killed more than 234,000 people in the United States and left millions more out of work, even as the country still grapples with the aftermath of months of race relations riots and brutality. police.
Trump made several tweets in the early hours of Friday morning, repeating some of the 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.
Twitter flagged the post as possibly misleading, something it has done with numerous Trump posts since Election Day.
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.
Meanwhile, the Trump campaign has filed lawsuits in several states, though judges in Georgia and Michigan were quick to dismiss the challenges there. Biden’s campaign senior legal advisor Bob Bauer called them part of a “broader disinformation campaign.”
“PREPARE AN ELECTION”
“They are trying to rig an election and we cannot allow that to happen,” said Trump, who spoke in the White House meeting room but did not answer 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.”
LEE: Trump says he ‘easily’ wins the US elections by ‘legal votes’
Trump supporters, some with firearms, escalated their demonstrations against the process Thursday night. In Arizona, Trump and Biden supporters briefly fought in front of the Maricopa County Elections Department in Phoenix.
In Philadelphia, police said they arrested a man and seized a gun as part of an investigation into an alleged plot to attack the city’s Pennsylvania Convention Center, where votes were being counted.
