Counting in the US presidential election continued on Wednesday night, amid signs that Democratic candidate Joe Biden was edging towards victory and as Donald Trump launched legal proceedings in at least three states.
After a tense 24 hours that saw the race come down to tight contests in a handful of swing states, the election was still too close to call.
Mr Trump, seeking a second term in the White House, clocked up early victories in states including Florida, Ohio and Texas shortly after polls closed on Tuesday night. But Mr Biden outperformed the US president as absentee ballots began to be counted and focus turned to the three rust belt states that delivered victory for Mr Trump in 2016.
In a significant win for the Democratic candidate, Associated Press called the state of Wisconsin for Mr Biden. But the Trump campaign immediately filed a request for a recount in the state. It also filed a flurry of lawsuits - in Pennsylvania, Michigan and later Georgia, seeking to pause the vote count in those key battleground states.
Several networks also projected a win for Mr Biden in Michigan.
As counting looked set to continue for a third day, Mr Biden had significantly increased his possible routes to the 270 electoral college votes needed to win the election, while Mr Trump’s path to victory had narrowed. However, in tweets on Wednesday night, Mr Trump “claimed” the states of Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Georgia and Michigan.
Including Wisconsin, Mr Biden leads Mr Trump 253 to 213 in Electoral College votes, which are largely based on a state’s population.
‘We will be the winners’
Speaking in Delaware on Wednesday night, Mr Biden stopped short of declaring victory, but he predicted he would win the race once all the votes were counted. “I’m not here to declare that we’ve won, but I am here to declare that, when the vote is completed, we will be the winners.”
Noting the record number of Americans who voted, he said that he and running mate Kamala Harris were "on track to win more votes of any ticket in the history of this country". He continued: "Every vote must be counted. No one is going to take our democracy away from us – not now, not ever."
Mr Biden was speaking at the end of a day that began with Mr Trump declaring a premature victory, telling supporters in the White House in the early hours of Wednesday he had “already” won the race.
“We will win this and, as far as I’m concerned, we already have won it,” he said, pledging to go to the US supreme court to stop the vote count. “We want all voting to stop. We don’t want them to find any ballots at four o’ clock in the morning and add them to the list.”
He subsequently claimed, without evidence, in a series of tweets that his lead in states had “started to magically disappear as surprise ballot dumps were counted”. Some of his tweets were labelled by Twitter as possible misinformation.
Legal wranglings
Mr Trump's campaign had gone on the offensive on Wednesday, claiming that he had "won" Pennsylvania. Trump campaign adviser Jason Miller also criticised networks for calling the state of Arizona as a win for Mr Biden, claiming that Mr Trump would win the state by Friday. "By the end of this week it will be clear to the entire nation that President Trump and vice-president Mike Pence will be re-elected for another four years," he said.
As the US faced the prospect of protracted legal wranglings over the outcome of the election, there were isolated scenes of protests. In Philadelphia, thousands of people gathered at Independence Hall, the birthplace of the constitution, to demand that every vote be counted in the election. In Detroit, Michigan, there were tense encounters in the main convention hall where votes were being processed after Trump-supporting self-styled “election observers” entered the building.
Though Mr Biden looked on track to win the 270 electoral college votes needed to clinch the election, it was a disappointing night for Democrats in congressional races. House of Representatives speaker Nancy Pelosi looked set to see the party's majority in the chamber diminish as several members lost their seats, while Democrats failed to flip several Senate seats they had targeted, making the prospect of a Democrat-controlled Senate unlikely.
Similarly, Tuesday’s election did not deliver the repudiation of Mr Trump that many Democrats had hoped for. Instead, the president delivered a performance that, as in 2016, exceeded opinion poll projections.
