- Voting has closed in the United States and all eyes are on the count in key states of Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Georgia and North Carolina to decide the race for the White House.
- Addressing supporters, Biden said he believes he is “on track” to win. He flipped Arizona, while taking California, Washington, New York and Illinois.
- Trump claimed victory prematurely and has continued to falsely claim ballots counted after election day signal malfeasance. He takes Florida, Ohio, Iowa, Missouri and Texas.
- Early voting surged to unprecedented levels with just over 100 million early votes cast either in person or by mail before polls opened on Election Day.
Hello and welcome to Al Jazeera’s continuing coverage of the US elections. This is Joseph Stepansky.
Biden garners most votes ever
Biden has broken the record set by his former boss for the most votes cast in a presidential election.
Barack Obama earned 69,498,516 votes in 2018.
Biden has surpassed him, with 70,427,609 and counting.
Pennsylvania officials ask for patience as ballot count continues
Al Jazeera’s Hilary Beaumont has sent this report from Malvern, Pennsylvania
Hours after Election Day voting came to a close in the US elections, officials in the battleground state of Pennsylvania said it could take days to count all the remaining ballots – and not to expect final results on Wednesday.
Before noon local time (17:00 GMT), Trump had a solid lead in the state, but Democratic candidate Biden could still win as mail ballots are likely to skew blue.
Only about 50 percent of the state’s mail votes have been counted so far, said Pennsylvania Commonwealth Secretary of State Kathy Boockvar.
“We are exactly where we said we would be,” said Boockvar, who emphasised that the election went smoothly with no major issues. “We said it was going to take some time to count the mail ballots.”
Read more here.
Wisconsin called for Biden
The AP has called Wisconsin in favour of Joe Biden, giving him the 10 electoral votes of the key battleground state.
Trump campaign files lawsuit to halt vote counting in Michigan
The Trump campaign has filed a lawsuit to halt ballot counting in Michigan.
“As votes in Michigan continue to be counted, the presidential race in the state remains extremely tight as we always knew it would be,” campaign manager Bill Stepien said in a statement. “President Trump’s campaign has not been provided with meaningful access to numerous counting locations to observe the opening of ballots and the counting process, as guaranteed by Michigan law.”
“We have filed suit today in the Michigan Court of Claims to halt counting until meaningful access has been granted. We also demand to review those ballots which were opened and counted while we did not have meaningful access. President Trump is committed to ensuring that all legal votes are counted in Michigan and everywhere else,” the statement said.
Republican Maine Senator Susan Collins wins reelection: AP
Republican Senator Susan Collins of Maine has won the hardest-fought race of her career, turning back a challenge by Democrat Sara Gideon and surviving to serve a fifth term, The Associated Press reported Collins, one of four candidates on the ballot, won a majority of first-place votes.
That meant no additional tabulation rounds were necessary under Maine’s ranked choice voting system and strengthens Republicans prospects for retaining control of the US Senate.
“I am the first person since Maine directly elected its senators to win a fifth term,” Collins said, according to the Reuters news service.
Collins, 67, turned back one of the strongest challenges in her career as she defeated Gideon, 48, the speaker of the Maine State House of Representatives.
Gideon said she called Collins to concede the race.
The result is a setback for Democrats, who hoped to pick up at least three seats to win control of the 100-seat Senate. Collins had been viewed as one of the most vulnerable Republicans.
Maine’s 2nd Congressional district called for Trump
The AP calls Maine’s 2nd Congressional district for Trump, giving him 1 more electoral seat.
Georgia expects to announce winner today
Al Jazeera’s Chris Moody has sent this report
Georgia is expected to finish counting ballots today, a move that will help further clarify the state of the presidential race, Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger said in a press briefing Wednesday morning.
“My team has sent reminders to counties to get all – let me repeat – all of our results counted today,” Raffensperger said. “Every legal vote will count.”
He added that there were still around 200,000 left to count and many in the state’s largest counties. He specifically mentioned tens of thousands of votes left in Dekalb County, Fulton and Forsyth Counties. Raffensperger also pushed back against President Trump’s claims that votes shouldn’t be counted after election day and against accusations of voter suppression in Georgia.
“This election puts to rest the debates inflamed by those in our – or not in our state – who have looked to sew doubt about our systems and those who have wrongly claimed there’s a lack of access to voting,” he said. Georgia, where 16 Electoral College votes are up for grabs, is a state that has supported Republican presidential candidates for decades, but it has become a battleground state this year as the demographics shift in a way that has been friendlier to Democrats.
Trump campaign to request Wisconsin recount
Trump campaign manager Bill Stepien has said they will request a recount in the state.
“Despite ridiculous public polling used as a voter suppression tactic, Wisconsin has been a razor thin race as we always knew that it would be,” Stepien said in a statement. “There have been reports of irregularities in several Wisconsin counties which raise serious doubts about the validity of the results. The President is well within the threshold to request a recount and we will immediately do so.”
Officials have not released a final tally yet in the state.
Michigan secretary of state says expects unofficial vote count by end of day
Michigan, a key battleground state that will help determine who wins the presidential election, is still counting “tens of thousands” of ballots and expects to have an unofficial tally by the end of the day, the state’s secretary of state, Jocelyn Benson, has told reporters.
Michigan, with its 16 electoral votes, is one of a handful of states that has not yet been called for either candidate. Under state law, officials could not begin counting ballots until Election Day.
Berlin calls for ‘trust’ in electoral process after US vote
German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas has urged America’s politicians to help maintain “trust” in the electoral system after Trump prematurely declared victory in the tightly contested race.
“It is important that all politicians who reach people directly, establish trust in the electoral process and the results,” Maas said in a statement, adding that it would be “premature” to comment further given that ballots were still being counted.
“We must now be patient,” said the minister, whose country holds the rotating presidency of the European union.
Postal Service says it completed required ballot sweep
The US Postal Service (USPS) completed required sweeps of mail processing facilities late Tuesday in about a dozen states after it had earlier said it could not meet an afternoon deadline to complete the checks, a spokesman for the agency has said.
US District Judge Emmet Sullivan on Tuesday had ordered the sweep in response to lawsuits by groups including Vote Forward, the NAACP, and Latino community advocates.
USPS data showed as of Sunday about 300,000 ballots that were received for mail processing did not have scans confirming their delivery to election authorities.
Trump campaign says ‘illegally cast’ ballots should not be counted, it expects to win
Trump’s campaign has said it would forge ahead with legal efforts to ensure legally cast – and not illegally cast – votes were counted, and said it expected to win even as ballots in key states continued to be tallied.
“If we count all legal ballots, we win, the president wins,” Campaign manager Bill Stepien told reporters on a conference call.
Campaign says Biden ‘on track to win this election’
Biden campaign manager Jen O’Malley Dillon, in a briefing, said the campaign believes Biden is “in a clear path to victory by this afternoon”.
She said Biden would garner more votes than “any presidential candidate in history” and said Biden was on track to win in the key states of Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania.
Biden says ‘won’t rest until every vote counted’
Biden has said that his campaign will not “rest until every vote is counted” in the US election after Trump said he would pursue action in the Supreme Court to halt the counting process.
“We won’t rest until everyone’s vote is counted, ” Biden said in a tweet.
Trump again falsely suggests vote count indicates malfeasance
Trump, in his first tweet the day after Election Day, suggested that “surprise ballot dumps” had shrunk his lead in key states.
Trump has repeatedly falsely claimed that ballots counted after Election Day are somehow less valid than those counted on the day of the vote. Experts have warned his statements could undermine the electoral process and foment unrest.
Twitter labeled the tweet, saying its content “is disputed and might be misleading about an election or other civic process.
Analyst: Trump statement on vote counting crosses line for some Republican allies
Amy Pope, the former deputy homeland security advisor to President Barack Obama, has told Al Jazeera that Trump’s demand that vote counting be halted has crossed a line for some of his Republican allies.
“The fact that [Former New Jersey Governor and Trump ally] Chris Christie pretty immediately contradicted it online suggests that this is really going over the line even for the Republicans,” she said. “So you can’t stop the vote count,” Pope said, adding there are other avenues Trump could eventually take to challenge the outcome, including some already-pending litigation in states across the country.
“I think he (Trump) is not confident he is going to win,” she added. “The fact that he is doing so preemptively, the fact that he has been doing so for the past several weeks really suggests a level of uncertainty about his ability to succeed and he wants – especially among his base – to seed doubt about this election.”
Trump has falsely claimed that vote counting after election day is evidence of Democrats stealing the election. This is false. States regularly, and legally, count votes, in particular mail-in ballots, after Election Day.
Dow jumps 250 points as US election vote count continues
The major stock indexes in the US opened higher on Wednesday after a long election night produced no clear winner in a historic presidential race.
With votes still being counted in six key battleground states, the Dow Jones Industrial Average vaulted more than 251 points or 0.92 percent to 27,731.63, within a minute of the open of trading on Wall Street.
Read more here.
Uber and Lyft spend big and win big in California on Prop 22
Californians overwhelmingly voted in favour of Prop 22, a ballot measure that exempts app-based ride-hailing and delivery services from classifying drivers as employees.
Uber, Lyft and other app-based ride-hailing and delivery services spent $200m in a winning bet to circumvent California lawmakers and the courts to preserve their business model by keeping drivers from becoming employees eligible for benefits and job protections.
Read more here.
Recap: Where are we?
A contentious and fast-moving election season held under the spectre of the coronavirus pandemic and protests against racial injustice culminated on Tuesday with millions of US citizens heading to the polls.
Voting across the country on Election Day appeared to go relatively smoothly. Before that, More than 100 million US citizens cast ballots by mail or in in-person in historic early voting.
However, as expected, counting those ballots, especially in states that do not allow the tally to begin until Election Day, has proven more daunting.
Currently, the AP has projected 238 electoral votes for Biden, who so far flipped Republican bastion Arizona. The AP has called 213 electoral votes for Trump, with the AP calling an early victory for the president in battleground Florida. A candidate must clear 270 electoral votes to win.
The nation is now anxiously awaiting results from six key battleground states: Pennsylvania with 20 electoral votes, Michigan with 16, Wisconsin with 10, North Carolina with 15, Georgia with 16, and Nevada with six.
France: Vote result will not affect trade with Europe
The outcome of the presidential elections will have little effect on US-Europe trade relations, France’s finance chief asserted, saying Washington is unlikely to drop its confrontational stance whether Trump wins or not.
The US administration has inflicted billions of dollars worth of tariffs on European imports over the past four years, with Trump claiming unfair barriers against American firms trying to compete on continental markets.
Rouhani: Who wins US election not important for Iran
Iranian President Hassan Rouhani has repeated his country’s stance on the US presidential race, saying it is not important who wins but what actions the next president takes towards sanctions on Iran.
“What is important for us is that America returns to respecting the Iranian nation. We want respect instead of sanctions, no matter who is [in office]. If he lifts the unfair and illegal sanctions and replaces them with respect, then our situation will be different,” Rouhani said in a televised speech on Wednesday.
German minister warns of ‘very explosive situation’
German Defence Minister Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer warns the US is facing a “very explosive situation” and a possible systemic crisis after Trump prematurely declared election victory.
Following Trump’s remarks that he will go to the Supreme Court to stop ballots from being tallied, Kramp-Karrenbauer told public broadcaster ZDF: “This election has not been decided … votes are still being counted.”
She said Trump could create “a constitutional crisis in the USA”, calling such a scenario “something that must deeply concern us”.
What might happen if US election result is disputed?
Despite incomplete results from several battleground states that could determine the outcome of the US presidential race, Trump prematurely claimed election victory.
The move confirmed worries that Trump would seek to dispute the election results.
Read more here about the different ways the election can be contested.
See how the calls came in
In an election season that saw unprecedented early voting, some states were quick to count votes, which allowed The Associated Press to declare those electoral votes going to either candidate. Others, notably battlegrounds Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Georgia and North Carolina could not yet be called.
Follow how the calls came in on our November 3 live blog here.
