The US presidency is likely to be determined by a few thousand votes in a handful of states, with the nation’s torturous uncertainty liable to be prolonged for many hours or even days by recounts and legal challenges.
Even before the counting was finished, Biden had won more votes than any president in history – over 70 million – edging out Barack Obama’s 2008 record and about 2.5 million ahead of Trump, once again highlighting the disparity between the popular vote and the arithmetic of the US electoral college system.
But it was clear on Wednesday that the nation had not delivered the decisive “blue sweep” repudiation of Trumpism Democrats had hoped for, and their aspirations to take control of the Senate were fading with every passing hour. On Wednesday afternoon, one of the Democrats’ top Senate targets, Susan Collins of Maine, announced that her opponent had conceded.
The morning after a fraught, nail-biting night, both campaigns claimed that victory was in sight in the presidential race. As the count in critical states edged towards completion, Joe Biden was narrowly ahead in Wisconsin, Michigan and Nevada, while Donald Trump held leads in Pennsylvania, Georgia and North Carolina.
Even before the Wisconsin count was complete, the Trump camp was demanding a recount, as legal combat took over from the long political struggle that had been fought to near stalemate.
If that state of play remained unchanged, it would be enough to give the Biden a narrow victory, but much will depend on how many of the yet-to-be-counted votes were mail-in ballots, where Biden has a substantial lead, or in-person votes, where Trump appears to have enjoyed a last-minute surge.
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In the scramble for states and their assigned electoral college votes, Biden failed in his bid to win over Florida and Ohio, but looked likely to flip Arizona, another closely contested state that Trump won in 2016.
As had been predicted, Trump appeared on television from the White House early on Wednesday morning and falsely claimed he had won, describing the vote count “a major fraud on our nation”. Speaking after 2am, he announced he would be taking a case to the US supreme court, saying: “We want all voting to stop.” Voting had stopped by that time, and it appeared he meant to say vote-counting.
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Faith v fraud: Biden and Trump react during the US election count – video
Trump’s own campaign officials, briefing the press on Wednesday morning, expressed support for continued vote-counting in states where the president was behind.
Neither the vice-president, Mike Pence, nor the Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell, echoed Trump’s spurious allegation that late-counted votes were inherently fraudulent.
“We don’t know who won the presidential race yet,” McConnell said, after winning his own re-election battle in Kentucky.
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‘The American way’: Mitch McConnell defends Trump threat to challenge election results – video
On Wednesday morning, Trump continued to maintain that the turnover in the lead in some states as the vote count progressed, somehow constituted fraud. He put out a tweet claiming that his states leads “started to magically disappear as surprise ballot dumps were counted” but it was labelled as misleading by Twitter.
Biden, who appeared on an outdoor stage at a drive-in rally in Wilmington, Delaware before the president’s remarks, urged patience while the votes were counted, but claimed he was optimistic about his chances.
“It’s not my place or Donald Trump’s place to declare who has won this election,” Biden said. “That’s the decision of the American people.”
In Pennsylvania, one of the states that could decide the presidency, governor Tom Wolf warned: “There are millions of mail-in ballots that are being counted. And that takes longer than the standard in person voting. So we may not know the results even today, but the most important thing is that we have accurate results.”
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‘Pennsylvania will have a fair election’: governor announces possible result delay – video
Even the completion of the count may well not determine a final winner. Republicans have already called for a recount in Wisconsin. In Pennsylvania, a close result will trigger an automatic recount, while in Nevada, candidates can request a recount whatever the margin.
Lawyers were also flocking to the battleground states, as Republicans also stepped up their flurry of legal challenges around the country aimed at disqualifying votes in heavily Democratic areas, and Democrats deployed their own legal teams to fight those challenges.
In the battle for control of the Senate, Democratic hopes of toppling Republicans in Maine, Iowa, South Carolina, Montana and North Carolina fell short and a Senate Democrat in Alabama, Doug Jones, lost to a former football coach, Tommy Tuberville.
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Democrats gained seats in Colorado and Arizona, but their remaining hopes of a 50-50 Senate rested winning at least one of two runoffs in Georgia, and pulling off wins in close races in Michigan and North Carolina.
One issue that both camps agreed on was that the pollsters had once more got their predictions wrong, in some cases by a wider margin than in 2016, consistently undercounting Trump voters around the country.
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