NEW YORK, Nov 05 (APP): Former United States Vice President Joe Biden set a new record for the most votes won by a U.S. presidential candidate and is now within striking distance of winning the presidency, with the Trump campaign filing a barrage of lawsuits challenging the validity of the count.
Biden, the Democratic Party’s nominee, is just six electoral votes away from capturing the White House, according to the Associated Press, the American news agency.
Biden took two significant steps towards victory on Wednesday when he captured the US states of Wisconsin and Michigan, two states which the incumbent President, Donald Trump, won during the 2016 election.
Now, with four swing states remaining to be called, Biden currently has 264 electoral votes. Trump right now stands at 214 electoral votes. The winner must reach 270 electoral votes.
Biden, accompanied by his running mate, Senator Kamala Harris , told supporters in Wilmington, Delaware, on Wednesday that he is confident of victory:
“I’m not here to declare that we’ve won, but I am here to report that when the count is finished, we believe we will be the winners.”
While Democrats nervously celebrated projected triumphs in tough states, they were downbeat about the expectations for a narrow Republican majority in the Senate.
In the House of Representatives, Democrats looked for someone to blame for a loss of seats on Tuesday.
At best, Democrats are likely to face a divided government in 2021 — an outcome that would throw cold water on Biden’s agenda for transformative bipartisan legislation.
Meanwhile, The state of Nevada is set to release new vote totals from Clark County on Thursday. As of updates late Wednesday, Biden leads in Nevada 49.3 percent to Trump’s 48.7 percent.
Trump Republicans sharpen legal attacks on Pennsylvania ballots as the count continues. As of 9:15 p.m. on Wednesday, Pennsylvania had 99 percent of precincts reporting but only 71 percent of mail ballots counted.
Of the mail ballots counted so far, 77 percent were cast for Biden.
According to reports, thousands of absentee ballots still need to be counted in Georgia.
Early Thursday morning, Biden pulled within 23,000 votes of the president’s lead.
As counting proceeds, Biden’s lead in Arizona narrowed with a new batch of results posted Wednesday evening.
News outlets put the state in Biden’s win column, but all eyes are on the next batch of results today from Maricopa County, which includes Phoenix.
If Trump is defeated when the election results are complete, he would join Jimmy Carter and George H.W. Bush in the modern era of single-term presidents.
