US Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden won the battleground prizes of Michigan and Wisconsin on Wednesday, according to the media, reclaiming a key part of the “blue wall” that slipped away from Democrats four years ago and dramatically narrowing President Donald Trump’s pathway to reelection
Two days after Election Day, neither candidate had amassed the votes needed to win the White House. But Biden’s victories in the Great Lakes states left him at 264, meaning he was one battleground state away — any would do — from becoming president-elect.
By flipping yet another critical battleground state that Trump won four years ago, Biden placed himself in a comfortable lead, with only 6 electoral votes shy of the presidency.
Meanwhile, the incumbent president, Trump, vowed to ask the Supreme Court to weigh in on the inconclusive election.Trump's campaign also filed lawsuits in Pennsylvania — which is yet undecided — and Michigan, laying the groundwork for contesting the outcome in the battleground states that could determine whether he gets another four years in the White House. The campaign also announced it had requested a recount in Wisconsin, which went to Biden with less than a percentage point.
It was still unclear when or how quickly a winner could be determined. Hundreds of thousands of votes were outstanding in Pennsylvania, while Georgia, Nevada, North Carolina and Alaska also remain to be called.
Pennsylvania Governor Tom Wolf tweeted that his state had over 1 million ballots to be counted and that he “promised Pennsylvanians that we would count every vote and that’s what we’re going to do.”
Trump suggested those ballots shouldn’t be counted. But Biden, briefly appearing in front of supporters in Delaware, urged patience, saying the election “ain’t over until every vote is counted, every ballot is counted".
“It’s not my place or Donald Trump’s place to declare who’s won this election,” Biden said. “That’s the decision of the American people.”
Trump in an early-morning declaration from the White House had called for outstanding ballots not to be counted.
Several states allow mailed-in votes to be accepted after Election Day, as long as they were postmarked by Tuesday. That includes Pennsylvania, where ballots postmarked by Nov 3 can be accepted if they arrive up to three days after the election.
Michigan
Biden carried Michigan and its 16 electoral votes. The flip from red back to blue was a huge blow to Trump, whose victories in Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania in 2016 sent him to the White House.
Biden’s campaign had particularly focused on turning out Black voters in Detroit, who failed to show up for Hillary Clinton in the numbers that Barack Obama received during his two presidential bids.
Despite needing to win Michigan, Trump took frequent swipes at the state’s Democratic governor, Gretchen Whitmer, who was the target of an alleged kidnapping plot that was foiled by federal law enforcement. Chants of “Lock her up!” toward Whitmer echoed at Trump’s rally, and he railed against the governor on Twitter for her cautious approach to the coronavirus pandemic.
Wisconsin
Biden defeated President Trump in battleground Wisconsin, securing the state’s 10 electoral votes and reclaiming a key part of the blue wall that slipped away from Democrats four years ago.
The Associated Press called Wisconsin for Biden after election officials in the state said all outstanding ballots had been counted, save for a few hundred in one township and an expected small number of provisional ballots.
Trump’s campaign has requested a recount. Statewide recounts in Wisconsin have historically changed the vote tally by only a few hundred votes; Biden leads by .624 percentage points out of nearly 3.3 million ballots counted.
In 2016, Trump won Wisconsin by fewer than 23,000 votes, a breakthrough that along with wins in Michigan and Pennsylvania helped hand him his first term in the White House. Democrats were determined to reclaim Wisconsin, a state that before Trump hadn’t gone for a Republican since Ronald Reagan in 1984.
Arizona
Democrat Joe Biden won Arizona and its 11 electoral votes, serving a huge blow to Trump’s chances for reelection. Arizona has backed a Democratic presidential candidate only once in the last 72 years.
Biden’s campaign had focused on Arizona as part of its expanded battleground map through the Sun Belt, citing demographic changes, new residents and realignment away from Republicans among key suburban voters.
Arizona is among the more than half a dozen states that will help determine which candidate gets the 270 electoral votes to capture the White House.
Democratic challenger Joe Biden opened up narrow leads in Wisconsin and Michigan on Wednesday morning, according to Edison Research, as the two Midwestern battleground states that the Republican president won in 2016 continued to count mail-in ballots that surged amid the coronavirus pandemic.
Together with Nevada, another state where Biden held a small advantage with votes still left to be tallied, those states would deliver Biden the 270 votes needed in the state-by-state Electoral College to win the White House. But Trump still had a path to victory with those states officially undecided.
Opinion polls had given Biden a strong lead nationwide for months, but had shown tighter races in battleground states, and the vote did not produce the overwhelming verdict against Trump that Democrats had wanted.
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.
Biden, 77, said in the early hours he was confident of winning once the votes are counted, and urged patience. “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.
“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.”
We are up BIG, but they are trying to STEAL the Election. We will never let them do it. Votes cannot be cast after the Polls are closed
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.
Joe Biden's White House campaign slammed President Donald Trump's threat to try to stop the election vote count as "outrageous" early Wednesday, saying its legal team was ready to prevent such an "unprecedented" act.
"The president's statement tonight about trying to shut down the counting of duly cast ballots was outrageous, unprecedented, and incorrect," Biden campaign manager Jen O'Malley Dillon said in a statement as the election remained undecided.
"Never before in our history has a president of the United States sought to strip Americans of their voice in a national election."
The comments came shortly after Trump delivered an extraordinary speech from the White House, in which he claimed that "we did win this election" despite neither candidate reaching the electoral vote threshold for victory.
"We want all voting to stop," Trump said, appearing to mean halting the counting of mail-in ballots, which can be legally accepted by state election boards after Tuesday's election -- provided they were postmarked in time.
Last night I was leading, often solidly, in many key States, in almost all instances Democrat run & controlled. Then, one by one, they started to magically disappear as surprise ballot dumps were counted. VERY STRANGE, and the “pollsters” got it completely & historically wrong
President Trump’s aides pored over election maps in the White House West Wing and cheered their candidate in the East Room as Election Day results in critical states such as Florida and Ohio came in favoring the Republican leader.
But their cautious confidence took on irritation when Arizona, a state that backed Trump in 2016, was called by Fox News for Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden, said sources familiar with the situation who asked not to be named.
The president, who earlier in the day visited staff at his campaign headquarters in nearby Virginia, watched election returns with his family in the upstairs living room of the White House residence.
“He’s calm, chilling,” said a source familiar with the scene. “He’s in the hunt.”
We won't rest until everyone's vote is counted. Tune in as my campaign manager @jomalleydillon and campaign adviser Bob Bauer give an update on where the race stands.
Voting concluded as scheduled on Tuesday night, but many states routinely take days to finish counting ballots. Huge numbers of people voted by mail because of the pandemic, making it likely the count will take longer than usual.
The close election underscored the political polarisation in the United States. The next president will take on a pandemic that has killed more than 231,000 Americans and left millions more jobless at a time not only of gaping political divisions but of racial tensions and differences between urban and rural Americans.
The trio of “blue wall” states that unexpectedly sent Trump to the White House in 2016 - Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin - remained too close to call. Officials in Nevada said they would not update the count until Thursday
Two Southern states, Georgia and North Carolina, were also still in play; Trump held leads in both. A win for Biden in either one would narrow Trump’s chances considerably.
Biden’s victory in Arizona, which had previously voted for a Democratic presidential candidate only once in 72 years, so far remained the only state to flip from the 2016 results.
Trump’s most likely path requires him to win Pennsylvania as well as at least one Midwestern battleground and both Southern states.
Officials in Michigan and Georgia said on Wednesday they expected the states to complete their counts by day’s end. At the moment, Biden leads 224 to 213 over Trump in the Electoral College vote count, according to Edison Research, aiming to reach the needed 270 electoral votes, which are based in part on a state’s population.
World leaders were in limbo as they waited for clearer results, with most avoiding weighing in amid the uncertainty.
In global markets, investors moved to price a greater chance of US policy gridlock.
 won the race in United States Election, Trump lost ){kind=link}