President Trump won a series of key battlegrounds early on Wednesday morning, including Florida, Ohio and Iowa, as Joseph R. Biden Jr. expressed confidence he would ultimately prevail across key Northern states and Arizona as the presidential contest turned into a state-by-state slog that could drag deeper into the week.

“We believe we are on track to win this election,” Mr. Biden said in a brief speech after 12:30 a.m. Eastern, saying he was “optimistic” about the outcome once all the votes were counted.

No full states had yet flipped from their 2016 results as of 1 a.m., but several key states had huge portions of ballots still to be counted. Mr. Biden did flip a single Electoral College vote that Mr. Trump had won in 2016, carrying Nebraska’s 2nd Congressional District, which includes Omaha.

So far, Mr. Trump was holding off Mr. Biden in two Southern states that the former vice president had hoped to snatch back from the Republican column: Georgia and North Carolina. These were not must-win states for Mr. Biden, but he spent heavily in both states and visited them in the final stretch of the campaign. Mr. Biden lost Texas, a long-shot hope that some Democrats invested in late in hopes of earning a landslide repudiation of Mr. Trump that did not arrive.

Georgia has not gone Democratic since 1992. But while Mr. Trump held a narrow lead, much of the remaining vote to be counted appeared to be in the greater Atlanta area, where Mr. Biden performed strongest.

Shortly after Mr. Biden spoke, Mr. Trump responded on Twitter, misleadingly saying he was “up big” and claiming without evidence that “they are trying to STEAL the election.” Twitter immediately marked it as content that was “disputed and might be misleading.”

The most encouraging sign on the map for Mr. Biden was in Arizona, where he was leading in a state that Mr. Trump won in 2016. He won New Hampshire and Minnesota, two states that Hillary Clinton had only narrowly carried four years ago and that Mr. Trump had once hoped to flip in 2020.

“We’re going to win this,” Mr. Biden said, urging “patience.”

Mr. Biden’s win in Nebraska’s 2nd District was only one of the 270 Electoral College votes that he needs. But it could prove important. It opened a potential pathway to the White House without winning Pennsylvania, if Mr. Biden carried all the states that Mrs. Clinton did and added Michigan, Arizona and Wisconsin, plus Nebraska’s lone vote.

In a briefing for donors on Tuesday night, Biden campaign officials acknowledged underperforming among Cuban-Americans in the Miami area, but saw positive signs with their strength in some suburbs in Ohio that they said could be predictive across the Midwest, according to two people familiar with the matter.

Campaign officials signaled that Biden’s team was preparing to wait for votes to be counted in three Northern battlegrounds that Mr. Trump carried in 2016 — Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin — where it still feels bullish.

North Carolina and Arizona could still be called relatively quickly, but vote-counting in Michigan and Wisconsin is not expected to be completed on Tuesday. And Pennsylvania won’t start counting its early votes until tomorrow; that could draw on through the end of the week.

Source: New York Times

Early results from the US presidential election, pitting Donald Trump against Joe Biden, show a tight race in the potentially pivotal race of Florida.

With more than 80% of votes counted in Florida, Mr Trump, the Republican incumbent, was neck-and-neck with Mr Biden, the Democratic challenger.

It is too early to project who won in several other key states – Georgia, Pennsylvania, Ohio and North Carolina.

The vote caps a long and bitter campaign amid the coronavirus pandemic.

More than 100 million people had already cast their ballots in early voting.

The US appears on course for its highest turnout in a century. The first projections are expected shortly from states which are solidly Democratic or Republican.

Control of Congress is also at stake. As well as the White House, Republicans are vying to hang on to a Senate majority.

The House of Representatives is expected to stay in Democratic hands.

What are the results so far?

After polling stations closed across the US East Coast, Pennsylvania, Georgia, North Carolina and Ohio looked as though they could go either way in the White House race.

Both Florida and Pennsylvania are considered must-wins for Mr Trump if he is to be re-elected to a second term in office.

No surprises have emerged yet in the other states.

The BBC projects Mr Trump has won Indiana, Kentucky, Tennessee, Oklahoma and West Virginia, all as expected.

The BBC projects Mr Biden will win his home state of Delaware, along with Vermont, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey and Washington DC.

CBS News, the BBC’s US partner, says South Carolina is leaning Mr Trump’s way, while Virginia is leaning Mr Biden’s way.

Voting ends on the US West Coast at 23:00 EST.

Mr Trump, who is watching the returns from the White House, is expected to address the nation later on Tuesday evening.

Projections are based on a mixture of exit poll data and, in most cases, actual votes counted – and are only made where there is a high degree of certainty.

National polls give a firm lead to Mr Biden, but it is a closer race in the states that could decide the outcome.

According to Anthony Zurcher BBC North American Reporter, Polls in the eastern half of the US are closing fast now. While Florida appears to be trending toward Donald Trump – on the back of better-than-expected performance among Hispanics in South Florida – attention will shift towards other battleground states.

Joe Biden has taken an early lead in Ohio, although the counties that have been reporting are Democratic ones. However, if he can do better than Hillary Clinton, who lost the state, it could give clues as to how he’ll perform in the nearby states that were much closer – Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin, in particular.

Georgia continues to look like a tossup, as does North Carolina. Both are pretty much must-wins for Trump. And Texas looms on the horizon. While Florida is the big electoral prize that has been a fixation for Democrats for decades, if Texas moves to the left, it could herald an even more earth-shattering electoral realignment.

In the US election, voters decide state-level contests rather than an overall, single, national one.

Appearing in his home state of Delaware, Mr Biden said he was “hopeful” and highlighted the “overwhelming turnout particularly of young people, of women”.

A senior Biden adviser told CBS News – the BBC’s US partner – that the Biden team “feel good”. Florida was in the balance, but Democratic numbers were strong in a swathe of swing states, including Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Georgia and Arizona.

Speaking in Virginia, Mr Trump said he expected “a great night”.

An exit poll conducted by Edison Research and just published by Reuters suggests that four out of 10 voters nationally think the handling of the coronavirus pandemic in the US is “going very badly”.

A third of voters cited the economy as the issue that most concerned them, according to the poll.

Both candidates have been using election day as an opportunity to drive home the messages they have been hammering to voters for the last few weeks.

The two rivals have radically different policies on key issues. They have clashed bitterly during the campaign over how to handle the Covid-19 pandemic, and how to best handle the economy during this difficult period.

Mr Biden has accused Mr Trump of a haphazard response to the pandemic that he says has needlessly cost too many lives. But Mr Trump has downplayed the impact of Covid-19, saying the country is “rounding the corner”.

Mr Trump’s term has also been marked by contentious immigration policies.

Earlier on Tuesday, Mr Trump, sounding a little hoarse, spoke to Fox News by phone, saying he felt good about his chances of victory and predicting he would win “big” in key states such as Florida and Arizona.

“I think we have a really solid chance of winning,” he said. Asked when he would declare victory, he added: “When there’s victory. If there’s victory… there’s no reason to play games.”

Mr Biden also visited his childhood home in Scranton in Pennsylvania – a key swing state – and addressed a crowd in the town, saying: “We’ve got to restore the backbone to this country. The middle class built this country – Wall Street didn’t.”

Source: BBC News

US President Donald Trump and his Democratic challenger Joe Biden have spent the final hours of the White House race delivering their closing pitch to voters in critical states.

Mr Biden campaigned in Pennsylvania and Ohio, as Mr Trump toured the voting battlegrounds of Wisconsin, Michigan, North Carolina and Pennsylvania.

National polls suggest a firm lead for Mr Biden in Tuesday’s election.

But his lead is narrower in the handful of states that could decide the result.

More than 98 million people have already cast their ballots in early voting, putting the country on course for its highest turnout in a century.

In the US election, voters decide state-level contests rather than an overall single national one.

To be elected president, a candidate must win at least 270 votes in what is called the electoral college. Each US state gets a certain number of votes partly based on its population and there are a total of 538 up for grabs.

This system explains why it is possible for a candidate to win the most votes nationally – like Hillary Clinton did in 2016 – but still lose the election.

Tuesday’s vote comes amid the ongoing coronavirus pandemic. The US has recorded more cases and more deaths than any other country worldwide, reporting more than 81,000 new infections on Sunday alone.

As the nation counts down the hours to the vote, there are fears that pockets of post-election violence could break out. Businesses in the nation’s capital, Washington DC, and in New York City have been seen boarding up their premises due to concerns about unrest.

After a punishing schedule of rallies in six states on Sunday, President Trump sprinted through four more battleground states on Monday.

In North Carolina, he told supporters that “next year will be the greatest economic year in the history of our country”. The rally was postponed from Thursday due to Hurricane Zeta.

He touted numbers that he says “nobody even thought possible”.

The US economy saw record-breaking 33% growth in the third financial quarter of this year, following a record 31% contraction in the second. Economists warn the damage inflicted by the pandemic – the biggest decline in the US economy in more than 80 years – could still take years to overcome.

After North Carolina, Mr Trump headed to Scranton, Pennsylvania, the city where his opponent lived until he was 10. At a rally there he reminded his supporters that he won the state in 2016 despite polls suggesting he would lose.

Mr Biden also went to Pennsylvania where he was joined by singer Lady Gaga at a rally in Pittsburgh. Musician John Legend addressed voters with vice-presidential candidate Kamala Harris.

At a last-minute campaign stop in Ohio, Mr Biden repeated the core message of his campaign, telling voters that the race was about the soul of America. He said it was time for Mr Trump to “pack his bags”, saying “we’re done with the tweets, the anger, the hate, the failure, the irresponsibility”.

The race in Ohio is extremely tight. In 2016, Mr Trump won by more than eight points – currently, he has a 0.2% lead over Mr Biden, according to an aggregate of polls by RealClearPolitics.

On Monday, Mr Trump also held rallies in Traverse City, Michigan, and Kenosha, Wisconsin. Kenosha was rocked by violent protests in August after the police shooting of a black man.

In Traverse City he asked for the votes of black Americans.

His last rally of the campaign is due to be held in Grand Rapids, Michigan, before midnight.

On Sunday the candidates attacked each other on two of this campaign’s key themes – Covid-19 and racial tension.

The president and his campaign have meanwhile indicated they will sue to block the potentially pivotal state of Pennsylvania from counting postal ballots received three days after the election.

The US Supreme Court allowed a lower court ruling granting the extended deadline to stand, but several conservative justices signalled they might be open to revisiting the issue after the vote.

Mr Trump tweeted on Monday that the high court decision allowing ballots to be accepted three days after election day was “a very dangerous one”.

“It will allow rampant and unchecked cheating and will undermine our entire systems of laws. It will also induce violence in the streets. Something must be done!” Twitter added a warning label that the tweet might contain “misleading” information.

Legal fights over ballots have also been unfolding in Minnesota, North Carolina and Texas.

Mr Biden has already vowed to stop Mr Trump “stealing” the election.

The president is to host an election night party inside the White House with about 400 guests invited.

Up to 10,000 protesters are expected to gather on election night at Black Lives Matter Plaza and a park not far from the White House, according to CBS News.

Mr Biden and Ms Harris will watch the election night returns in the former vice-president’s hometown of Wilmington, Delaware.

Source: BBC