Joe Biden has claimed he is on course to win the US presidential election and issued a plea for national unity, even as Donald Trump threatens to fight the outcome in court.
The former vice-president flipped the crucial battleground states of Michigan and Wisconsin on Wednesday, giving him 264 electoral college votes to Trump’s 214. The target is 270 to secure the White House.
“After a long night of counting, it’s clear that we’re winning enough states to reach 270 electoral votes need to win the presidency,” Biden said in Wilmington, Delaware. “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.”
Biden praised a historic turnout of about 150 million and noted that he was set to win Wisconsin by 20,000 votes, similar to the president’s margin in 2016, and leading in Michigan by more than 35,000 votes and growing – substantially more than Trump managed four years ago. Both states have been called for Biden.
As Trump seeks to fire up his supporters for a bitter legal struggle, Biden called for people on both sides “to unite, to heal, to come together as a nation”.
With his running mate, Kamala Harris, standing nearby, Biden struck the tone of a president-elect: “I will work as hard for those who didn’t vote for me as I will for those who did vote for me. Now, every vote must be counted. No one’s going to take our democracy away from us. Not now. Not ever.”
It was a clear rebuke to Trump’s attempt to sow doubt with claims of fraud and threats to dispute the election all the way to the supreme court, ushering in a potentially prolonged and messy endgame to the election.
Late on Wednesday there were signs of desperation as Trump felt his presidency slipping away. He tweeted a thread stating that he was establishing a “claim” on Pennsylvania, Georgia and North Carolina, all of which remain too close to call.
“We have claimed, for Electoral Vote purposes, the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania (which won’t allow legal observers) the State of Georgia, and the State of North Carolina, each one of which has a BIG Trump lead,” he wrote.
Source: Elections - theguardian.com
