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Washington:
Americans awoke on Wednesday not understanding who the following US president could be as votes had been nonetheless being counted in six key states that would swing the bitterly contested election to Republican incumbent Donald Trump or Democrat Joe Biden.
Fueling fears of a constitutional disaster, Trump prematurely declared victory in a single day and threatened to demand the intervention of the Supreme Court to cease vote-counting however it continued nonetheless.
“We did win this election,” the 74-year-old president advised cheering supporters within the East Room of the White House earlier than the ultimate vote tallies had been full. “This is a fraud on the American public.”
The Biden marketing campaign slammed Trump’s victory declare as “outrageous, unprecedented, and incorrect” and a “naked effort to take away the democratic rights of American citizens.”
“The counting will not stop. It will continue until every duly cast vote is counted,” it mentioned. “If the president makes good on his threat to go to court to try to prevent the proper tabulation of votes, we have legal teams standing by ready to deploy to resist that effort.”
The end result appeared to hinge on the outcomes from six states the place a winner has not but been declared — Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.
As of 9:00 am (1400 GMT), Biden had a slim lead in Michigan, Nevada and Wisconsin whereas Trump was forward in Georgia, North Carolina and Pennsylvania.
But state election officers cautioned that with tens of hundreds of ballots excellent in some states — tens of millions in others — the races may shift.
The tight White House race and recriminations evoked reminiscences of the 2000 election between Republican George W. Bush and Democrat Al Gore.
The Bush vs Gore race, which rested on a handful of votes in Florida, finally ended up within the Supreme Court, which halted a recount whereas Bush was forward.
A deluge of mail-in ballots due to the coronavirus pandemic has slowed down the vote rely in some states this yr, a number of of which solely started counting mail-in ballots on Tuesday.
Michigan officers, for instance, mentioned they hoped to have all the votes counted by the top of the day whereas in Pennsylvania officers mentioned it might be a number of extra days.
“If everything keeps up, we’ll have the total results in the next couple of days,” Al Schmidt, the City Commissioner of Philadelphia, the most important metropolis in Pennsylvania, advised CNN.
“But Pennsylvania allows votes to be received and counted up until Friday and three days after the election.
“So we won’t rely what we do not but have.”
Record turnout
The US Elections Project estimated total turnout at a record 160 million voters including more than 101.1 early voters, 65.2 million of whom voted by mail.
In an election that took cast under the shadow of the coronavirus pandemic that has claimed more than 230,000 lives in the United States, Trump appeared to have avoided a Democratic wave predicted by some polls.
But it remained unclear Wednesday morning which candidate would capture the 270 votes needed for victory in the Electoral College that determines the winner of the presidential race.
Trump took the podium at the White House after 2:00 am and declared that he would go to the Supreme Court because “we wish all voting to cease.”
Voting had already ended by the time Trump began speaking and he appeared to be calling for the nation’s highest court to stop vote counting.
Trump has railed for months against mail-in ballots, charging without evidence they could be fraudulent.
Biden had earlier warned that vote counting would take a while as he greeted his own backers at a socially distanced rally in his home state of Delaware.
“We imagine we’re on observe to win this election,” the 77-year-old former vice president and senator from Delaware said. “Keep the religion, guys, we’ll win this.”
Trump for the past four years has often been quick to say he is being treated unfairly but even a few of his fellow Republicans voiced unease at his dramatic intervention.
“Stop. Full cease. The votes might be counted and you’ll both win or lose. And America will settle for that. Patience is a advantage,” tweeted Adam Kinzinger, a Republican congressman who won reelection.
“I disagree with what he did tonight,” said former New Jersey governor Chris Christie, who helped Trump prepare for his first debate against Biden.
“There’s simply no foundation to make that argument tonight,” Christie told ABC News. “There simply is not.”
‘Constitutional crisis’?
Foreign countries also sounded the alarm, with German Defence Minister Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer warning Trump could create a “constitutional disaster.”
Biden is the first Democrat in 24 years to win Arizona, seizing on the southwestern state’s changing demographics and the popularity of astronaut Mark Kelly, who won a Senate seat held by a Republican.
But no other states immediately flipped and Trump won an early prize in Florida, where his hard line against Latin American leftists helped him make inroads among Cuban Americans.
Democratic hopes fizzled of turning around Texas, a Republican bastion indispensable for Trump, and Ohio.
Biden, as expected, comfortably won the biggest prize of all, California, as well as New York and easily kept Minnesota and New Hampshire, two states where Hillary Clinton in 2016 had only eked out victories over Trump.
Attention again turned to three states that elected Trump four years ago — Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin — with ballots still waiting to be counted from the Democratic stronghold cities of Detroit, Philadelphia and Milwaukee.
Biden said he was feeling “actual good” about Michigan and Wisconsin and voiced confidence about Pennsylvania, the place he was born.
Biden mentioned he was additionally aggressive in Georgia — a state that till just lately had not gave the impression to be in play — as election staff in its largest metropolis Atlanta halted counting for the night time after a pipe burst.
Pundits had been warning for weeks that this yr’s election outcomes would take time — and voiced fears Trump would trigger chaos and even violence by questioning the method.
While there have been no rapid reviews of unrest, shops have been boarded up all through the capital Washington.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV employees and is printed from a syndicated feed.)
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