Democrat Joe Biden on Wednesday predicted victory over President Donald Trump after winning two critical U.S. states, while the Republican incumbent alleged fraud, filed lawsuits and demanded recounts in a race yet to be decided a day after polls closed.
While stopping short of declaring victory, Biden launched a website for a transition to a Democratic-controlled White House. His team called it buildbackbetter.com and declared “the Biden-Harris Administration can hit the ground running on Day One.”
As Trump spent part of the day airing grievances over Twitter, Biden pledged to govern as a unifier if triumphant.
“What brings us together as Americans is so much stronger than anything that can tear us apart,” Biden, appearing with his running mate Kamala Harris, said in his home state of Delaware on Wednesday.
At the moment, not including Wisconsin, where the Republican Trump has demanded a recount, Edison Research gives Biden a 243 to 213 lead over Trump in Electoral College votes, which are largely based on a state’s population.
A former vice president with five decades in public life, Biden, 77, was projected by television networks to win the Midwestern states of Michigan and Wisconsin, a boost to his hopes of entering the White House on Jan. 20.
Trump, 74, who won both states in 2016, now has fewer options to secure a second four-year term. He hopes to avoid becoming the first incumbent U.S. president to lose a re-election bid since George H.W. Bush in 1992.
Trump has long sought to undermine the credibility of the voting process if he lost. Since Tuesday, he has falsely declared victory, accused Democrats of trying to steal the election without evidence and vowed to fight states in court.
US election experts say fraud is very rare.
Trump’s campaign fought to keep his chances alive with the demand for a Wisconsin recount as well as lawsuits in Michigan and Pennsylvania to stop vote counting. Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson called his team’s lawsuit “frivolous.”
His campaign filed a lawsuit in Georgia to require that Chatham County, which includes the city of Savannah, separate and secure late-arriving ballots to ensure they are not counted.
It also asked the U.S. Supreme Court to allow Trump to join a pending lawsuit filed by Pennsylvania Republicans over whether the battleground state should be permitted to accept late-arriving ballots.
The manoeuvres amounted to a broad effort to contest the results of a still-undecided election a day after millions of Americans went to the polls during the coronavirus pandemic that has upended daily life.
While fighting to stop the count in states where he feared losing, Trump blasted news organizations that projected losses in Arizona and Nevada, two states he thought he should be winning. He tweeted his consternation over mail-in voting.
“They are finding Biden votes all over the place — in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Michigan. So bad for our Country!” he posted on Twitter.