By Trevor Hunnicutt and Jeff Mason
Wilmington, Delaware/Washington – President Donald Trump falsely claimed victory over Democratic rival Joe Biden on Wednesday with millions of votes still uncounted in a tight White House race that will not be resolved until a handful of states complete vote-counting over the next hours or days.
Shortly after Biden said he was confident of winning the contest once the votes are counted, Trump appeared at the White House to declare victory and said his lawyers would be taking his case to the US Supreme Court, without specifying what they would claim.
"We were getting ready to win this election. Frankly, we did win this election," Trump said. "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."
Polls have closed and voting has stopped across the country, but election laws in US states require all votes to be counted, and many states routinely take days to finish counting legal ballots. More votes still stood to be counted this year than in the past as people voted early by mail and in person because of the coronavirus pandemic.
Earlier in the evening, Trump won the battlegrounds of Florida, Ohio and Texas, dashing Biden's hopes for a decisive early victory, but Biden said he was confident he was on track to winning the White House by taking three key Rust Belt states.
Biden, 77, was eyeing the so-called "blue wall" states of Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania that sent Trump, 74, to the White House in 2016 for possible breakthroughs once those states finish counting votes in hours or days to come.
"We feel good about where we are," Biden said in his home state of Delaware, shouting over a din of supporters in cars honking their horns in approval. "We believe we're on track to win this election."
Winning those three states would be enough to give Biden an Electoral College victory. Fox News projected Biden would win Arizona, another state that voted for Trump in 2016, giving him more options to get to 270 Electoral College votes.
Biden leads 220 to 213 over Trump in the fight for the 270 Electoral College votes needed to win the White House, according to Edison Research.
Even without Pennsylvania, Biden victories in Arizona, Michigan and Wisconsin, along with his projected win in a congressional district in Nebraska, which apportions electoral votes by district, would put him in the White House, as long as he also holds the states that Trump lost in 2016.
"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 said on Twitter before his White House appearance, which swiftly tagged the tweet as possibly misleading.
"It's not my place or Donald Trump's place to declare the winner of this election. It's the voters' place," Biden said on Twitter in response to the president.
Trump has repeatedly and without evidence suggested that an increase in mail-in voting will lead to an increase in fraud, although election experts say that fraud is rare and mail-in ballots are a long-standing feature of American elections.
In Pennsylvania, Democratic Governor Tom Wolf said the state still had to count more than a million mail-in ballots. He called Trump's remarks a partisan attack. According to Edison Research, more than 2.4 million early ballots were cast in the state, of which nearly 1.6 million were by Democrats and about 555 000 by Republicans.
Supporters of both candidates called the election a referendum on Trump and his tumultuous first term. The winner 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.
Trump monitored election returns with members of his family in the living room of the White House residence. Going in and out of the room were first lady Melania Trump, his son-in-law Jared Kushner and his daughter Ivanka among others. “He’s calm, chilling,” said a source familiar with the scene.
In the East Room of the White House, where 200 Trump supporters were having drinks and eating chicken fingers, sliders and cookies, cheers broke out when Fox News called Florida for Trump, said a source in the room.
"The place just erupted," said the source, who said the mood was both "extraordinarily positive" and "cautiously optimistic". "Everyone started cheering." Florida was a must-win state for any Trump path to victory.
Voters were also to decide which political party controls the US Congress for the next two years, with Democrats trying to recapture a Senate majority and favoured to retain control of the House of Representatives.
A Democratic drive to win control of the Senate appeared to fall short, with Democrats picking up only one Republican-held seat while six other races remained undecided early on Wednesday. The six were in Alaska, Maine, Michigan, North Carolina and two in Georgia.
NO EARLY SURPRISES
There were no early surprises as the two contenders split the US states already projected. Trump captured conservative states like Alabama, Indiana, Kentucky and Tennessee while Democratic-leaning Connecticut, Massachusetts, New York and Vermont went to Biden, according to projections by television networks and Edison Research.
Trump's strong performance in Florida was powered by his improved numbers with Latinos. His share of the vote in counties with large Latino populations was larger than it was in the 2016 election.
For months there had been complaints from Democratic Latino activists that Biden was ignoring Hispanic voters and lavishing attention instead on Black voters in big Midwestern cities. Opinion polls in key states showed Biden underperforming with Latinos in the weeks leading up to the election.
Many younger Hispanics were ardent supporters of US Democratic Senator Bernie Sanders during the party’s primary campaign, but in opinion polls expressed little enthusiasm for Biden, viewing him as too moderate and out of touch.
In the Miami area, Latinos are predominantly Cuban Americans, where generations of families have fled communist rule in Cuba. Trump's messaging about Biden being a socialist seemed to work with them and with Venezuelans there despite Biden's denials.
Edison's national exit poll showed that while Biden led Trump among non-white voters, Trump received a slightly higher proportion of the non-white votes than he did in 2016. The poll showed that about 11% of African Americans, 31% of Hispanics and 30% of Asian Americans voted for Trump, up 3 percentage points from 2016 in all three groups.
Edison's national exit poll also found that support for Trump declined by about 3 points among older white voters, compared with 2016.
The poll found Biden made significant gains in the suburbs.
In 42 suburban counties spread across 13 states where most of the votes had been counted, Biden was doing about 5 percentage points better than Clinton did in 2016 and than Barack Obama did in 2012.
US stock futures jumped late on Tuesday as Trump's showing improved, but were volatile and last up 0.25% at 1:50am ET (0650 GMT).
“I think markets were jolted a little bit by how close the race now appears. We are seeing a little bit of a flight-to-safety response in some asset classes,” said Mona Mahajan, senior US investment strategist at Allianz Global Investors, New York.
On betting website Smarkets, odds reflected a 74% chance of Trump winning, up from 33% earlier in the day.
Voters, many wearing masks and maintaining social-distancing to guard against the spread of the coronavirus, streamed into polling places across the country through the day, experiencing long lines in a few locales and short waits in many other places. There were no signs of disruptions or violence at polling sites, as some officials had feared.
Biden, the Democratic former vice president, put Trump's handling of the pandemic at the centre of his campaign and had held a consistent lead in national opinion polls over the Republican president.
But a third of US 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."
Trump is seeking another term in office after a chaotic four years marked by the coronavirus crisis, an economy battered by pandemic shutdowns, an impeachment drama, inquiries into Russian election interference, US racial tensions and contentious immigration policies.
Biden is looking to win the presidency on his third attempt after a five-decade political career including eight years as vice president under Trump's predecessor, Barack Obama.
Biden has promised a renewed effort to fight the public health crisis, fix the economy and bridge America's political divide. The country this year was also shaken by months of protests against racism and police brutality.