Trump repeated baseless claims of electoral fraud
Credit: AP
Trump launches Twitter barrage
The US president continued to tweet claims backing up his narrative that the election was being stolen from him. “STOP THE FRAUD!” read one. “STOP THE COUNT!” another.
Twitter once again limited access to many of those tweets, initially blocking them from users with warning messages that said their contents are “disputed and might be misleading”.
Mr Trump also said in a statement released in all caps: “If you count the legal votes, I easily win the election! If you count the illegal and late votes, they can steal the election from us!”
Mr Biden meanwhile projected confidence in victory as he and Kamala Harris, his vice presidential nominee, attended a briefing about Covid-19 and the economy.
On Wednesday night his team had sent live a website for his transition into the presidency, which — while its text noted votes were still being counted — built the impression he was preparing for a win.
STOP THE COUNT!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 5, 2020
President losing route to victory
By Thursday afternoon Mr Biden was ahead with 253 electoral votes to Mr Trump’s 214.
US elections are decided by the electoral college system, with each state having a different number of electoral votes up for grabs. The candidate who reaches 270 or higher wins.
On Thursday afternoon Mr Biden had more paths to victory. He was ahead in both Arizona and Nevada, two states in the West. If he won both the White House was his (see the results chart below).
US 2020 election table
Mr Trump was ahead in the other three states: Georgia, North Carolina and Pennsylvania. However his leads were narrowing dramatically as postal votes were being counted.
All eyes were on Pennsylvania, a battleground which both candidates poured time and money into during the campaign. A victory there for Mr Biden his victory was secured.
But by late afternoon on Thursday all five races were in the balance, each with a margin of just a few percentage points — a reflection of just how close the election was, defying pre-vote polls.
Flood of lawyers called in
Much of the Trump campaign’s focus on Thursday was on lawsuits. They alleged widespread fraud, especially over the increased use of mail-in ballots which have favoured Mr Biden.
Bill Stepien, the Trump campaign manager, said in a provocative and unproven allegation: "The Democrats lying, cheating and stealing is running rampant all over this country.”
In Michigan and Pennsylvania the Trump campaign demanded voting counting halt, claiming their officials were being denied access to watch the process.
A Michigan judge denied the request to stop the count. In Pennsylvania, Trump campaign officials were allowed better access, a small concession they dubbed a “major" victory.
In Nevada, the Trump campaign submitted a lawsuit as they claimed that ballots had been found in bins and even that some dead voters had ballots submitted in their names.
The veracity of the allegations was not immediately proven.
The Trump campaign also sought to convince the Supreme Court to decide on the legality of Pennsylvania allowing postal ballots which arrive by the end of the week to be counted.
The state’s officials had made the change before the election. The ballots had to have been submitted before polls close on Tuesday.
It remained unclear if the Supreme Court would pick up the legal challenge.
The Biden campaign, however, dismissed the lawsuits across the board as “meritless” in their own briefing of journalists on Thursday.
Supreme Court ‘will reject cloud of suspicion’
Bob Bauer, a top attorney for the Biden campaign, claimed the Trump campaign was using the legal challenges to create a “cloud” of suspicion and confusion about the election result.
“We see through it, so do the courts and so do election officials,” Mr Bauer said.
The significance of the legal challenges and whether they could have a major impact on the result will be based partly on how big the margins in key states are once all votes are counted.
If the winning candidate is thousands or tens of thousands of votes ahead in the states which tip the balance, the result being decided in court is less likely than if it is hundreds.
The contested 2000 US presidential election, where both candidates were neck-and-neck and the result depended on who won Florida, centred on a win margin of around 500 votes.
Mr Trump predicted before the election that the result would end up in the Supreme Court in some form, as it had in 2000. It remains unclear whether that will happen.
Meanwhile senior campaign figures both projected confidence about victory in their rival briefings on Thursday.
Jason Miller, a senior Trump campaign adviser, claimed that by the end of Friday it would be clear that Mr Trump had won and would be heading for a second term in the White House.
But Jen O’Malley Dillon, Mr Biden’s campaign manager, said: “We are absolutely confident that Joe Biden will be the next president of the United States.”
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