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Democrat Joe Biden claimed Wednesday that he was winning the election on a razor’s edge in the United States, but President Donald Trump responded by predicting his own victory and accusing his opponent of trying to “steal” the vote.
Appearing before his supporters in his hometown of Wilmington, Delaware, after midnight, Biden said that “we believe we are on our way to winning this election.”
“Keep the faith guys, we’re going to win this.”
But Biden, 77, warned that due to the unprecedented use of postal voting during the coronavirus pandemic, getting final results “would take a while.”
Seconds later, Trump tweeted his rebuttal, saying: “We’re in a BIG time, but they’re trying to STEAL the election.”
The Republican president, who was watching the results roll in with White House staff, said he would deliver a public statement shortly.
“Big PROFIT!” tweeted.
The dramatic showdown, which stoked fears of electoral chaos, came after early results showed the two candidates largely withheld states already in their column, but without delivering the kind of knockout that could decide the final count quickly.
– Confusion of results –
Adding to the tension was confusion over key results reporting in the US media.
All night after the polls closed on Tuesday, the two men traded state for state: Trump retained the giant awards from Florida and Texas, while Biden took Virginia and easily won New Hampshire, where Hillary Clinton barely managed to win. four years ago in his eventual loss to Trump.
But as both sides held on to states that were expected to win, the number of remaining states that had yet to be declared decreased, pointing to an increasingly tight end and a growing potential for disputes to end in court .
At times, American media organizations analyzing the data and pronouncing the winners added to the sense of uncertainty.
There was a stir over the Fox News announcement that Biden had won the formerly Trump-controlled Arizona.
If confirmed, it would be a real change in the overall momentum of the race. However, no other US media made the call to Arizona and the Republican governor of the state, Doug Ducey, said it “is too early” to announce a result.
Hours passed before media groups could agree to call Florida for Trump. And the results in crucial North Carolina and Georgia remained unclear as of Wednesday, even with 95 percent and 85 percent of the vote counted respectively.
– No landslides –
What seemed likely was that the Americans would at least not see a landslide that Democrats had dreamed they could achieve if they could open with a victory in Florida.
Instead, analysts said tit-for-tat victories in states across the huge country could finally cut down on a final fight over just a handful of undecided states, especially Pennsylvania.
However, Pennsylvania and Georgia were among the states with the slowest vote counting, complicated this year by the large number of mail-in ballots. In many states, ballots postmarked by the election but later delivered by the postal service are still legal, so poll workers are likely to continue tabulating the results for several days.
Trump has long targeted those votes, which are more likely to come from Democrats. He falsely claims that they are illegal and that only votes counted on the day of the election can be valid.
“No votes can be cast after the closure of the Poles!” he tweeted on Tuesday, mistakenly writing “polls” and mischaracterizing the post-election arrival of such ballots.
Twitter flagged this tweet for violating its rules on misleading the public.
– Race for Congress-
Networks projected that Democrats would have maintained control of the House of Representatives, as expected, but their hopes of regaining the Senate met with headwinds.
Democrats took a Senate seat from Republicans in Colorado, and former Gov. John Hickenlooper was projected to win, but he was also expected to lose an especially vulnerable senator in Alabama.
A notable victory in the Senate went to Republican leader Mitch McConnell, who easily dodged a challenge in Kentucky.
And in Georgia, Republican Marjorie Taylor Greene, a political newcomer who has promoted the far-right conspiracy theory QAnon, won a seat in the United States House of Representatives, giving the widely discredited movement a voice. in Congress.
Outside the White House, a loud and peaceful protest in a square renamed by the Black Lives Matter movement turned heated as the night wore on, with skirmishes after one person appeared to drop a gas canister.
bur-sms-sct / ec
