This combination of pictures created on November 4, 2020 shows Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden (left) in Wilmington, Delaware, and US President Donald Trump (right) in Washington, DC both pumping their fist during an election night speech early November 4, 2020. (MANDEL NGAN, ANGELA WEISS / AFP)
WILMINGTON, Del./WASHINGTON - Democrat Joe Biden held a narrow lead in Wisconsin on Wednesday after officials completed their vote count in the pivotal state, a major boost in his quest to win the US presidency from Donald Trump despite the Republican incumbent’s false claim of victory and unsubstantiated allegations of electoral fraud.
Biden also led in another critical Midwestern battleground state - Michigan - as he and Trump raced to get to the 270 electoral votes in the state-by-state Electoral College needed to win the White House. Trump won Wisconsin and Michigan in his 2016 election victory.
Biden also led in another critical Midwestern battleground state - Michigan - as he and Trump raced to get to the 270 electoral votes in the state-by-state Electoral College needed to win the White House. Trump won Wisconsin and Michigan in his 2016 election victory
Trump’s campaign said on Wednesday afternoon it had filed a lawsuit seeking to halt vote counting in Michigan and asserting that it had not been given enough access to counting sites to observe the opening of ballots. Biden was ahead by 45,000 votes out of more than 5 million ballots in Michigan.
Wisconsin officials finished their tally at around midday after an all-night effort, showing Biden with a lead of just over 20,000 votes, or 0.6 percent, according to Edison Research. The Trump campaign immediately said it would seek a recount, which is permitted under state law when the margin is below 1 percent.
A Biden victory in Wisconsin would significantly narrow Trump’s path to a second four-year term, though the outcome remained in doubt with Michigan and other closely contested states including Pennsylvania, Arizona, Nevada, Georgia and North Carolina still counting votes.
Voting concluded as scheduled on Tuesday night, but many states routinely take days to finish counting ballots.
Trump led in the two Southern states, Georgia and North Carolina, as well as in Pennsylvania, where more than 1 million ballots were yet to be processed. But if Trump loses Wisconsin, he would have to win all three as well as either Arizona or Nevada, where Biden was leading in the latest vote counts.
In dueling conference calls with reporters earlier on Wednesday, officials from each campaign insisted their candidate would prevail.
“If we count all legal ballots, we win,” Trump campaign manager Bill Stepien said, setting the stage for the post-election litigation over ballot counting.
Biden campaign manager Jennifer O’Malley Dillon told reporters the former vice president was on track to win the election, while senior legal adviser Bob Bauer said there were no grounds for Trump to invalidate lawfully cast ballots.
“We’re going to defend this vote, the vote by which Joe Biden has been elected to the presidency,” said Bauer, adding that the campaign’s legal team was prepared for any challenge.
Biden was expected to deliver an address later on Wednesday. The campaign also launched a new group, the Biden Fight Fund, to raise money for legal fights over the election.
Trump continued to make baseless attacks on the vote-counting process on Twitter on Wednesday, hours after he appeared at the White House and declared victory in an election that was far from decided. Both Facebook and Twitter flagged multiple posts from the president for promoting misleading claims.
“We were getting ready to win this election. Frankly, we did win this election,” Trump said before launching an extraordinary attack on the electoral process by a sitting president. “This is a major fraud on our nation. We want the law to be used in a proper manner. So we’ll be going to the US Supreme Court. We want all voting to stop.”
Trump provided no evidence to back up his claim of fraud and did not explain how he would fight the results at the Supreme Court, which does not hear direct challenges.
READ MORE: Trump, Biden scour battleground states for votes on last day
In the nationwide popular vote, Biden on Wednesday was comfortably ahead of Trump, with 2.6 million more votes. Trump won the 2016 election over Democrat Hillary Clinton after winning crucial battleground states even though she drew about 3 million more votes nationwide.
In the nationwide popular vote, Biden on Wednesday was comfortably ahead of Trump, with 2.6 million more votes
The election uncertainty only added to the anxiety many Americans were feeling following a vitriolic campaign that unfolded amid a pandemic that has killed more than 231,000 Americans and left millions more jobless. The country has also grappled with months of unrest involving protests over racism and police brutality.
Biden’s hopes of a decisive early victory were dashed on Tuesday evening when Trump won the battlegrounds of Florida, Ohio and Texas.
Biden led in Arizona, a battleground state with a high Latino population, which would make him only the second Democratic presidential candidate to win the state in 72 years. Trump won the state in 2016.
In Pennsylvania, Trump led by nearly 3 million votes, but officials said they were slowly working their way through millions of mail-in ballots, which were seen as likely to benefit Biden. Across the state, there were about twice as many ballots left to count in counties that backed Hillary Clinton in 2016 than in the counties won that year by Trump.
Among other undecided states, Nevada does not expect to update its vote count until Thursday, state officials said.
TEAMS OF LAWYERS
Trump has repeatedly said without evidence that widespread mail-in voting would lead to fraud, although US election experts say fraud is very rare.
Legal experts have said the election outcome could get bogged down in state-by-state litigation over a host of issues, including whether states can include late-arriving ballots that were mailed by Election Day. Both campaigns have marshaled teams of lawyers in preparation for any disputes.
Detroit election workers work on counting absentee ballots for the 2020 general election at TCF Center on November 4, 2020 in Detroit, Michigan.(JEFF KOWALSKY / AFP)
The Supreme Court previously allowed Pennsylvania to move forward with a plan to count ballots mailed by Election Day that arrive up to three days later, but some conservative justices suggested they would be willing to reconsider the matter. State officials planned to segregate those ballots as a precaution.
Ahead of the election, Trump had said he wanted his latest US Supreme Court appointee, Amy Coney Barrett, confirmed by the Senate in case the court had to hear any electoral dispute. Democrats had criticized the president for appearing to suggest he expected Barrett to rule in his favor.
The election will also decide which party controls the US Congress for the next two years, and the Democratic drive to win control of the Senate appeared to be falling short. Democrats had flipped two Republican-held seats while losing one of their own, and six other races remained undecided - Alaska, Maine, Michigan, North Carolina and two in Georgia.
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Edison Research’s national exit poll showed that while Biden led Trump among nonwhite voters, Trump received a slightly higher proportion of the nonwhite votes than he did in 2016. The poll showed that about 11 percent of African Americans, 31 percent of Hispanics and 30 percent of Asian Americans voted for Trump, up 3 percentage points from 2016 in all three groups.
US Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden and his wife Jill Biden wave to supporters, Nov 3, 2020, in Wilmington, Del. (ANDREW HARNIK/AP)
No early surprise
There were no early surprises as the two contenders split the US states already projected. Trump captured conservative states like Alabama, Indiana, Kentucky and Tennessee while Democratic-leaning Connecticut, Massachusetts, New York and Vermont went to Biden, according to projections by television networks and Edison Research.
“We feel good about where we are,” Biden said in his home state of Delaware. “We believe we’re on track to win this election.”
Trump’s strong performance in Florida was powered by his improved numbers with Latinos. His share of the vote in counties with large Latino populations was larger than it was in the 2016 election.
For months there had been complaints from Democratic Latino activists that Biden was ignoring Hispanic voters and lavishing attention instead on Black voters in big Midwestern cities. Opinion polls in key states showed Biden underperforming with Latinos in the weeks leading up to the election.
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Many younger Hispanics were ardent supporters of US Democratic Senator Bernie Sanders during the party’s primary campaign, but in opinion polls expressed little enthusiasm for Biden, viewing him as too moderate and out of touch.
In the Miami area, Latinos are predominantly Cuban Americans, where generations of families have fled communist rule in Cuba. Trump’s messaging about Biden being a socialist seemed to work with them and with Venezuelans there despite Biden’s denials.
Edison’s national exit poll also found that support for Trump declined by about 3 points among older white voters, compared with 2016.
The poll found Biden made significant gains in the suburbs.
A man watches results come in on a screen set up at an election night gathering at Independence Mall, Nov 3, 2020, in Philadelphia. (MICHAEL PEREZ/AP)
In 42 suburban counties spread across 13 states where most of the votes had been counted, Biden was doing about 5 percentage points better than Clinton did in 2016 and than Barack Obama did in 2012.
US stock futures jumped late on Tuesday as Trump’s showing improved, but were volatile and last up 0.25 percent at 1:50 am ET (0650 GMT).
“I think markets were jolted a little bit by how close the race now appears. We are seeing a little bit of a flight-to-safety response in some asset classes,” said Mona Mahajan, senior US investment strategist at Allianz Global Investors, New York.
Voters, many wearing masks and maintaining social-distancing to guard against the spread of the coronavirus, streamed into polling places across the country through election day, experiencing long lines in a few locales and short waits in many other places. There were no signs of disruptions or violence at polling sites, as some officials had feared.
Biden, the Democratic former vice president, put Trump’s handling of the pandemic at the center of his campaign and had held a consistent lead in national opinion polls over the Republican president.
Voters sit spread out as they fill out ballots while voting at the CenturyLink Field and Event Center, Nov 3, 2020, in Seattle. (TED S. WARREN/AP)
But a third of US voters listed the economy as the issue that mattered most to them when deciding their choice for president, while two out of 10 cited COVID-19, according to an Edison Research exit poll.
In the national exit poll, four out of 10 voters said they thought the effort to contain the virus was going “very badly.” In the battleground states of Florida and North Carolina, battleground states that could decide the election, five of 10 voters said the national response to the pandemic was going “somewhat or very badly.”
Trump is seeking another term in office after a chaotic four years marked by the coronavirus crisis, an economy battered by pandemic shutdowns, an impeachment drama, inquiries into Russian election interference, US racial tensions and contentious immigration policies.
Biden is looking to win the presidency on his third attempt after a five-decade political career including eight years as vice president under Trump’s predecessor, Barack Obama.
Biden has promised a renewed effort to fight the public health crisis, fix the economy and bridge America’s political divide. The country this year was also shaken by months of protests against racism and police brutality.
