Joe Biden has taken the lead in Pennsylvania with 5,5870 votes and is now poised for White House victory, leading in four of the remaining swing states, despite Trump’s refusal to accept defeat and claiming he is the victim of an elaborate conspiracy.
As of 9am EST on Friday, Biden leads 49.4% to Trump’s 49.3% in Pennsylvania, snatching back the lead from the President with just 140,000 votes left to count.
The remaining votes in Pennsylvania, the largest prize in the electoral college with 20 votes, are mostly in the Biden strongholds of Pittsburgh and Philadelphia.
It is still too early for officials to call the entire state for a for Biden, with so many votes outstanding.
NBC’s decision desk and Vox’s decision desk are both projecting that he will win it today but after days of delayed counts and flip-flop results across the country, most are erring on the side of caution.
The votes in Pennsylvania are being counted quickly, unlike in Georgia, Nevada, and Arizona, the remaining states in play.
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Biden is also leading in all three of those states but if he takes Pennsylvania first, he no longer needs any of them to claim an overall victory.
Here is how the other remaining states break down;
- In Georgia, Biden leads by 1,067 with some 8,000 votes left to count and another 8,000 possible mail-ins from overseas military. It is worth 16 electoral college points
- In Arizona, Biden leads by 47,000 votes with another 200,000 to count
- In Nevada, Biden leads by 11,438 with some 50,000 left to count
- North Carolina still has not been called. It is likely to go to Trump but makes no difference to the breakdown of electoral college seats if Trump loses Pennsylvania or any of the other states
Trump is refusing to accept what now seems like an inevitable defeat. On Thursday night, he launched an astonishing, 17-minute tirade from the White House briefing room where he claimed to be the victim of a conspiracy by big tech, big money, the Democrats, and the media.
He has vowed not to accept the final results, and his own children are telling the country to ‘fight to the death’ not to accept them either.
In a statement on Friday morning, his campaign team said the election was ‘far from over’. They said it was a ‘false projection’ that Biden would win.
His reluctance to accept the result poses an unprecedented scenario for the country and the world. It will make Biden’s transition to power, should he win enough electoral college votes, more difficult.
Many networks on Thursday night refused to air Trump’s speech.
ABC, CBS, and NBC cut away from the press conference before it finished, warning their viewers that Trump had made ‘a number of false statements’ that needed clarifying. MSNBC was the first to cut away, as anchor Brian Williams warned ‘here we go again’. Fox News and CNN covered it in full.
In a series of tweets sent at 2.30am, Trump continued his tirade – attacking social media regulation, making baseless claims of fraud, casting doubt over several close Senate races, and calling on the Supreme Court to intervene.
Joe Biden remained narrow favorite to win the presidency on Friday, with results in a number of key swing states expected before the end of the day.
Having narrowly won the swing states of Wisconsin and Michigan, he has more routes to the White House open to him – with Nevada, Arizona, Pennsylvania, Georgia, and North Carolina yet to be called.
A win in Pennsylvania would hand him the presidency even if all the other states go to Trump. Holding his lead in Arizona and Nevada would also hand him the win.
Meanwhile, Trump needs most of the outstanding states to go his way to stand a chance of winning.
Biden also gave a speech Thursday, calling for calm and patience while the votes are counted, insisting once again that when the dust has settled he will have beaten Trump.
‘Democracy is sometimes messy. It sometimes requires a little patience as well,’ the former vice president said from the stage of Wilmington’s Queen theater late Thursday afternoon.
‘So I ask everyone to stay calm, all people to stay calm. The process is working. The count is being completed and we’ll know very soon.’
He also tweeted: ‘No one is going to take our democracy away from us.
‘Not now, not ever. America has come too far, fought too many battles, and endured too much to let that happen. Keep the faith, folks.’
Meanwhile, Donald Trump Jr gave a speech in Georgia, where Trump’s lead is now just a few hundred votes, calling for his father to ‘fight to the death’ and urging him to ‘go to war’ to ‘expose all of the fraud that has been going on for far too long.’
‘Americans need to know that this is not a banana republic and right now very few people have faith that’s not the case,’ he added.
At the podium in the briefing room on Thursday night, President Trump read from a script and listed his grievances at Biden’s campaign, ‘suppression polls’ and ‘fraud.’
He left without taking a question as CNN’s White House reporter Jim Acosta shouted: ‘Are you a sore loser?’ – then his press secretary Kayleigh McEnany had to scuttle back to the podium because he had forgotten to take his notes with him.
Trump’s condemnation of the entire democratic system and his growing list of enemies was switched off rapidly by TV network after TV network.
MSNBC anchor Brian Williams said as they turned away less than a minute in: ‘Here we go again.’
CNN was among the few channels to air the president’s full speech, after which Anderson Cooper said Trump was ‘like an obese turtle flailing in the sun.’
‘That is the President of the United States.
‘That is the most powerful person in the world and we see him like an obese turtle on his back flailing in the hot sun realizing his time is over,’ Cooper said on air.
‘But he just hasn’t accepted it and he wants to take everybody down with him, including this country.’
Republicans also turned on him within minutes with Larry Hogan, the Maryland governor, saying: ‘There is no defense. No person or election is more important than our democracy.’ GOP rep Adam Klinzinger called it ‘insane.’
At the briefing room podium – where the only aide with him was White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnanany – Trump appeared downcast as he listed his enemies and claimed a victory which nobody has handed to him.
‘If you count the legal votes, I easily win. If you count the illegal votes, they can try to steal the election from us,‘ he said during what he called a press conference.
