How Trump and Biden reacted to incomplete voting results overnight
President Donald trump falsely claimed victory while Democratic nominee Joe Biden urged patience and expressed confidence overnight amid unclear and incomplete election results.
No winner has been declared in the presidential race, and the outcome largely hangs on the results in three major battleground states — Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan — where votes are still being counted.
Speaking at the White House early Wednesday morning, Trump prematurely declared victory over Biden.
“This is a fraud on the American public,” he said. “This is an embarrassment to our country. We were getting ready to win this election. Frankly, we did win this election.”
Trump said “we want all voting to stop.”
“We don’t want them to find any ballots at 4 o’clock in the morning and add them to the list,” he said.
Biden urged patience during a speech to his supporters in Wilmington, Delaware.
“We knew because of the unprecedented early vote and the mail-in vote that it was going to take a while,” he said. “We’re going to have to be patient until the hard work of tallying the votes is finished. And it ain’t over until every vote is counted, every ballot is counted.”
He expressed confidence about the results so far and said his campaign was confident about winning Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania.
“We feel good about where we are, we really do,” Biden said. “I’m here to tell you tonight, we believe we’re on track to win this election.”
As of Wednesday morning, Biden has 238 electoral votes and Trump has 213. The winner needs at least 270.
About 1 million votes still need to be counted in Pennsylvania, Gov. Tom Wolf said on Twitter early Wednesday.
About 1 million votes also remain to be counted in Michigan, according the Association Press. The candidates remain in a tight race in Wisconsin, which the AP says is too early to call.
Pennsylvania has 20 electoral votes up for grabs, Michigan has 16, and Wisconsin has 10.
Experts have long said the 2020 election results wouldn’t be declared on election night — or even in the days after — due to the unprecedented number of mail-in votes driven largely by the COVID-19 pandemic.
The president has questioned the integrity of the election throughout his campaign. He has suggested that mail-voting can easily lead to fraud and that absentee ballots received after Election Day shouldn’t be counted.
This story was originally published November 4, 2020 at 4:59 AM with the headline "How Trump and Biden reacted to incomplete voting results overnight."
