New Delhi: The knife-edge US presidential race tilted toward Democrat Joe Biden early Thursday, with wins in Michigan and Wisconsin bringing him close to a majority, but President Donald Trump claimed he was being cheated and went to court to try and stop vote counting.
Tallying of votes continued through a second night in the remaining battleground states where huge turnout and a mountain of mail-in ballots sent by voters trying to avoid exposure to the coronavirus made the job all the harder.
Both candidates still had paths to hit the magic number of 270 electoral votes representing a majority of states, thereby winning the White House.
But momentum moved to Biden, who made a televised speech from his hometown of Wilmington, Delaware, to say that “when the count is finished, we believe we will be the winners.”
By flipping the northern battlegrounds of Michigan and Wisconsin, and also winning formerly pro-Trump Arizona, Biden reached 264 electoral votes against 214 so far for Trump.
More than 100 million Americans cast their ballots in advance of Tuesday’s Election Day, according to the US Elections Project watchdog, a record figure largely attributed to the COVID-19 pandemic, reported news agency AFP.