US Elections 2020: Biden leads with 238 electoral votes, Trump at 213
US Elections 2020: Biden at 238 electoral votes, Trump at 213
WASHINGTON (Web Desk) - President Donald Trump and Democratic challenger Joe Biden are battling it out for the White House, with polls closed across the United States Tuesday -- and a long night of waiting for results in key battlegrounds on the cards.
So far, Biden has grabbed 238 electoral votes and Trump a maximum of 213.
The results are flowing in, with US media projecting wins for the Republican incumbent so far in Texas, Florida, Indiana, Alabama, Kentucky, Missouri, Montana, lowa, Ohio, Idaho, Utah, Kansas, Arkansas, South Carolina, Louisiana, North and South Dakota, Oklahoma, Mississippi, West Virginia, Wyoming and Tennessee.
Biden has captured his home state Delaware and big prizes California, New York, Minnesota, Hawaii, Oregon, Washington, New Hampshire, New Mexico, Arizona, Connecticut, District of Columbia, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, Rhode Island, Vermont, Virginia and Colorado.
However, Alaska, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin have not yet announced the results.
The magic number is 270 out of 538. Observers expect the hotly contested race for the White House to come down to a handful of key battleground states that have yet to be called.
Trump says will go to Supreme Court to dispute election count
President Donald Trump on Wednesday claimed he had won the US election, despite the final results not yet being given, and said he would go the Supreme Court to dispute the counting of votes.
"We did win this election," Trump said in an extraordinary speech from the ceremonial East Room of the White House. "This is a fraud on the American public."
The Republican, who according to initial results is in a neck-and-neck race with Democrat Joe Biden, said he would go to court and "we want all voting to stop."
He appeared to mean stopping the counting of mail-in ballots which can be legally accepted by state election boards after Tuesday’s election, provided they were sent in time.
Earlier, President Donald Trump said he expected a "big win" and accused Democrats of trying to "steal" the election after rival Joe Biden predicted victory.
"We are up BIG, but they are trying to STEAL the Election," Trump wrote on Twitter moments after Biden told supporters he expected to win.
Biden believes he is ‘on track’ to win US election
Democrat Joe Biden said early Wednesday he believes he is "on track" to defeating US President Donald Trump, and called for Americans to have patience with vote-counting as several swing states remain up in the air.
"We believe we are on track to win this election," Biden told supporters in nationally broadcast remarks delivered in his home city of Wilmington, Delaware, adding: "It ain’t over until every vote is counted."
The 77-year-old former vice president also said he was "confident" about the state of Arizona, a battleground that Trump won in 2016 but which Biden was substantially leading in with about 77 percent of ballots counted.
Pandemic Strains
The winner - who may not be determined for days - will lead a nation strained by a pandemic that has killed more than 231,000 people and left millions more jobless, racial tensions and political polarization that has only worsened during a vitriolic campaign.
Biden, the Democratic former vice president, put Trump’s handling of the pandemic at the center of his campaign and has held a consistent lead in national opinion polls over the Republican president.
But a third of U.S. 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 on Tuesday.
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.”
The poll found that nine out of 10 voters had already decided on their choice before October, and nine out of 10 voters said they were confident their state would accurately count votes.
The poll found signs Trump was losing support among his core base of supporters in Georgia.
More than 100 million voted early in US election
Ahead of Election Day, just over 100 million voters cast early ballots either by mail or in person, according to the U.S. Elections Project at the University of Florida, driven by concerns about crowded polling places during the pandemic as well as extraordinary enthusiasm.
The total has broken records and prompted some experts to predict the highest voting rates since 1908 and that the vote total could reach 160 million, topping the 138 million cast in 2016.
In anticipation of possible protests, some buildings and stores were boarded up in cities including Washington, Los Angeles and New York. Federal authorities erected a new fence around the White House perimeter.
--with input from Reuters and AFP
