US Election Results: Trump Sues As Road To Victory Over Biden Narrows

Donald Trump and Joe Biden each claim to be ahead in the US presidential election, even as the final outcome hangs in the balance and both sides prepare to take legal action.

The Trump campaign is contesting the counts in key states of Nevada, Wisconsin, Georgia, Pennsylvania and Michigan.

The BBC projects that Biden won Michigan and Wisconsin. No results have yet emerged in Pennsylvania.

Winning all three Rust Belt states would give Biden victory.

The Democratic nominee also currently leads in Nevada and Arizona, while the gap between him and Trump is closing as the count continues in Georgia.

Biden stopped short of declaring victory, but said he was confident he was on track to beat his Republican rival.

Overall turnout in Tuesday’s election was projected to be the highest in 120 years at 66.9%, according to the U.S. Election Project.

Biden had the support of 70.5 million voters, the most won by any presidential candidate. Trump has obtained 67.2 million votes, four million more than he obtained in 2016.

The bitter election race was dominated by the coronavirus pandemic, which hit a new record of 103,000 daily cases in the US on Wednesday, according to the Covid Tracking Project.

But the economy, which has been badly hit by the pandemic, was the biggest issue for voters, exit poll data showed.

On Wednesday afternoon, Biden told reporters in Wilmington, Delaware: “When the count is over, we think we will be the winners.”

“I will rule as the American president. The presidency itself is not a partisan institution.”

He and his running mate, Kamala Harris, launched a power transition website, which says his team “will continue to prepare at full speed so that the Biden-Harris Administration can get down to business from day one.”

Biden also said he felt “very good” about Pennsylvania, although President Trump’s campaign said he was “declaring victory” in the state on the recount of “all legal ballots.”

Trump has tried, without proof, to cast doubt on the validity of votes counted after Election Day and sent by mail.

Jason Miller, Trump’s campaign aide, said: “By the end of this week, it will be clear to the entire nation that President Trump and Vice President Pence will be elected for another four years.”

Biden has 253 votes in the Electoral College, giving him the race advantage to rack up the 270 needed to win the White House. Trump has 214.

In US elections, voters decide contests at the state level rather than at a single national level. Each US state gets a certain number of votes in polling stations partly based on its population, with a total of 538 up for grabs.

Now Trump is projected to lose Wisconsin (10 electoral college votes), must win Georgia (16 votes), North Carolina (15), Pennsylvania (20) and Arizona (11) or Nevada (6) to prevail.

On Thursday morning, an election official in Georgia said there were about 60,000 votes left to count in the state. “We anticipate getting through this process today,” said a spokesman for the Georgia Secretary of State, without giving a specific timeline. “All ballots will be counted.”

The gap between Trump and Biden has narrowed to about 18,000 votes in the state, the latest estimates suggest.

In Arizona, Biden led by about 80,000 votes, with more results expected on Thursday. CBS has categorized it as a “likely” victory for the Democrat. Trump supporters gathered in front of a vote counting center in Maricopa County (which includes Phoenix, the state’s largest city), where officials promised to “continue our work”.

An update on the count is not expected in Nevada, where Biden is slightly ahead, until Thursday afternoon, while in Philadelphia, the count is not expected to end for several days.

The BBC has been projecting results based on its own data. The latest estimates in the remaining six states that have yet to be projected are:

The Trump campaign has launched a series of lawsuits demanding the counting cease. But in states like Arizona and Nevada, where Trump is marginally behind, his supporters are demanding that the count continue.

The campaign filed a lawsuit in Michigan to stop counting there because it claimed it had been denied “meaningful access” to observe the opening of the ballots and the count.

In Detroit, Michigan, police were called Wednesday afternoon to guard the gates of a vote counting facility, as some protesters outside demanded access to monitor the process. According to the Detroit Free Press, there were already about 200 people watching the vote inside the building.

The Trump campaign also filed two lawsuits in Pennsylvania to halt vote counting “until there is meaningful transparency.” Election officials have asked for patience, and state governor Tom Wolf said “the delay we are seeing is a sign that the system is working.”

The president has a three point lead in Keystone state, but many thousands of votes remain to be counted.

Trump has also taken legal action against Georgia to stop the vote counting there. His campaign said a Republican election watcher in the southern state had witnessed 53 late absentee ballots illegally added to a vote stack in Chatham County.

And in Wisconsin, the Trump campaign said the president would formally request a recount, citing “irregularities in various Wisconsin counties.”

Incomplete results indicate that the margin between Trump and Biden in Wisconsin is less than one percentage point, allowing a candidate to seek a recount.

As it stands, Biden is ahead by more than 20,000 votes. Election experts say the counts typically change the counts by just a few hundred.

On Thursday, the Nevada Republican Party confirmed Trump’s campaign plan to file a lawsuit alleging voting irregularities in the state. The lawsuit will allege that about 10,000 votes were cast by people who no longer live in the state.

In 2016, Trump’s victories in Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania sealed his victory and landed him in the White House.

In the early hours of Wednesday, the president claimed that he had won the election despite many uncounted votes. The speech drew strong criticism from both Democrats and Republicans.

Trump also said he was prepared to take the election to the Supreme Court, and his campaign calls on Republican donors to help fund the legal challenges. Such challenges start at the state level, but could eventually lead to the highest court in the US.

Republican National Committee Chair Ronna McDaniel said: “The fight is not over. We are in it.”

Biden’s running mate Kamala Harris tweeted asking supporters to contribute $ 5 to help pay for litigation that could “go on for weeks.”

Biden’s campaign chief legal counsel Bob Bauer said there was no reason for Trump to invalidate the legal ballots.

Biden’s hopes for a decisive early victory on Election night were dashed when Trump defied pollsters’ predictions with superior performance on key battlefields.

The president occupied several major states, including Texas, Ohio, and Iowa.

He also comfortably won his adoptive state of Florida, the night’s closest battlefield, despite two visits there by Biden’s ally and former boss, former President Barack Obama.

But Biden defended himself against his rival’s attempts to take over New Hampshire and Minnesota.

Democrats had dreamed of a blue election wave sweeping through a Republican party in Congress. But those hopes were dashed.

His chances of winning control of the Senate appeared to be dwindling as the dust settled since Election Day. Democrats won two seats in Colorado and Arizona, but lost another in Alabama.

A Senate race in North Carolina remained undecided, and another in Georgia headed for a runoff in January.

Republicans currently control the chamber 53-47.

There was another unexpected setback for Democrats in the House of Representatives elections. The party hoped to win 15 seats in the lower house of Congress, which it currently controls.

Instead, they face a slim majority after seven of their rulers lost and the party failed to beat a single Republican.

One of the incoming Republican lawmakers, in Georgia, has been described as a supporter of the fringe pro-Trump QAnon conspiracy theory.