DONALD Trump has claimed he has "already won" the US election despite all votes not yet being counted in key battleground states.
Trump addressed the nation in an extraordinary late night speech from the White House in which he called for "all voting to stop" and suggested he would go to the Supreme Court.
⚠️ Read our US election live blog for the latest news & updates
Trump fumed there had been a "major fraud" - despite there being absolutely no evidence to suggest any problems with ballots - as the election comes down to the wire.
His comments were condemned by Joe Biden's campaign as "outrageous, unprecedented and incorrect" and even Trump's Republican allies questioned his accusations.
The incredibly close election now hinges on the Midwest and Rust Belt states, Georgia, Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin.
Trump has stunningly defied pollsters who predicted an easy win for Biden, but the electoral college could still tip in the Democrat's favour and hand him the White House.
Shortly after 2am, Trump stepped out to address the nation in an speech that many Democrats had feared was coming - an apparent declaration of victory before the conclusion of the election.
Speaking from the ceremonial East Room, he said: "We did win this election. This is a fraud on the American public."
What we know so far
- Trump addresses the nation and baselessly claims election hit by "major fraud"
- President says "as far as I’m concerned, we already have won it" and suggests he will go to Supreme Court
- Joe Biden campaign condemns comments as "outrageous, unprecedented and incorrect"
- Both candidates have a path to the White House hinged on key states Georgia, Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin
- Biden is forecast to win Arizona - a key victory for the Democrat
- Trump expected to win battleground states Florida and Ohio
- Ugly scenes BLM & Antifa mobs clash with cops outside White House
- Trump campaign holds massive party at the White House serving burgers and fires
The President added: "This is a major fraud on our nation. We want the law to be used in a proper manner, so we’ll be going to the U.S. Supreme Court. We want all voting to stop."
He went on: "To me, this is a very sad moment. And we will win this. As far as I’m concerned, we already have won it."
The President also said his campaign is now considering turning to the Supreme Court - another move which had been predicted by his critics.
Trump has sowed seeds of doubt on the election process throughout the campaign, and just hours earlier had accused the Democrats of trying to "steal" victory in a post on Twitter.
Biden's campaign angrily reacted as it accused Trump of a "naked effort to take away the democratic rights of American citizens".
What happens if both candidates get 269 electoral votes?
As the election is coming down to the wire, let's take a look at what happens if both candidates get 269 electoral votes.
A 269-269 tie is unlikely, but there are possible different scenarios that could occur.
If neither presidential candidate gets 270 Electoral College votes, the Constitution requires the House of Representatives to pick the president.
The Senate would then pick the vice president.
The House has decided only two elections - both occurring before the current threshold of 270 electoral votes needed to win.
Thomas Jefferson defeated Aaron Burr in 1800 (fans of the Broadway play "Hamilton" should know this well). Jefferson and Burr were both part of the Democratic-Republican Party and finished in a 73-73 tie before the House gave the win to Jefferson.
Mr Biden's campaign manager Jen O'Malley Dillon said: "If the president makes good on his threat to go to court to try to prevent the proper tabulation of votes, we have legal teams standing by ready to deploy to resist that effort.
"And they will prevail."
Trump has seized major victories in the key bellwethers of Florida and Ohio, which both have long records of choosing the winner of the White House.
Former vice-president Mr Biden still has clear routes to victory, however, having won a major coup by seizing Arizona, a state that has only backed a Democrat in the race once in 72 years.
Trump's comments have sent a shockwave through the election however as it opens up the possibility that the final decision could be handed to the courts.
"We were getting ready for a big celebration. We were winning everything and all of a sudden it was just called off," Trump said, without fully explaining what he meant.
There was also immediate backlash from Trump's own Republican backers.
Chris Christie, a Trump advisor, said: "It's a bad strategic decision. It's a bad political decision.
"All these votes have to be counted that are in now. I disagree with what he did tonight."
Rick Santorum, former Republican Senator from Pennsylvania, said he was "very distressed" by Trump's comments.
"Using the word fraud... I think is wrong," he said on CNN.
And Ben Shapiro, a conservative commentator and critic of Trump, tweeted calling the comments "deeply irresponsible".
Meanwhile, Democrats blasted Trump's comments as they fear the election slipping away from them.
New York representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez tweeted: "Donald Trump's premature claims of victory are illegitimate, dangerous, and authoritarian. Count the votes. Respect the results."
And Minnesota congresswoman Ilhan Omar tweeted: "The irony of worrying about people turning America into Somalia, while allowing Trump to do literally what Somali dictators used to do.
"Wake up, he is destroying everything that sets us apart. We send election observers into other countries, we shouldn't need ours monitored."
Key quotes from Trump's address
DONALD Trump made an extraordinary address to the nation as he appeared to declare victory and suggest he will fight the election result in the Supreme Court.
- " Millions and millions of people voted for us tonight and a very sad group of people is trying to disenfranchise that group of people, and we won’t stand for it."
- " We were winning everything, and all of a sudden it was just called off. "
- " The citizens of this country have come out in record numbers, this is a record, there’s never been anything like it, to support our incredible movement."
- " We won states that we weren’t expected to win. Florida—we didn’t win it, we won it by a lot."
- " They knew they couldn’t win so they said let’s go to court. And did I predict this, did I say this?"
- " We were getting ready to win this election. Frankly, we did win this election. So our goal now is to ensure the integrity, for the good of this nation."
- "This is a major fraud on our nation. We want the law to be used in a proper manner, so we’ll be going to the US Supreme Court. We want all voting to stop."
- "To me, this is a very sad moment. And we will win this. As far as I’m concerned, we already have won it ."
As it stands, the heated contest could come down to the key Rust Belt states that Trump won in 2016: Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin.
If either candidate wins any two of these three states then they will take the White House.
Should Trump and Biden take the states they are expected to win, then the race could come down to Pennsylvania and the result may be days or even weeks away.
But early on Wednesday, Biden spoke to supporters – and said he was confident in winning Pennsylvania.
"We knew this was gonna go long," Biden said of the drawn out wait. "We believe we're on track to win this election."
Biden said while speaking from Delaware that he's "feeling good" and the election "ain't over 'til every ballot is counted."
The Democrat said he's "feeling really good about Michigan and Wisconsin."
Just as Biden spoke, Trump tweeted the wild claim that Democrats were trying to "steal the election" for Biden.
"We are up BIG, but they are trying to STEAL the Election. We will never let them do it."
"Votes cannot be cast after the Polls are closed!" he wrote in the post, which has since been flagged as misleading by Twitter.
Trump said in another tweet: "I will be making a statement tonight. A big WIN!"
Votes in Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania are delayed because of mail-in postal voting that Trump has waged a war against in the fierce presidential battle.
Biden failed to delivered a knockout blow by winning key states that paved a clear path to the presidency and yet again Trump defied the opinion pollsters to deliver an election night upset.
Trump won Florida early on and despite early indications of possible shock wins for Biden in Texas, Ohio, and North Carolina, his lead was being eaten away during the evening as more votes were counted – leaving the election on a knife edge.
One chink of hope for the Democrat challenger was a prediction that he would snatch Arizona away from Trump.
Biden was projected to win Arizona by Fox News – a call that many quickly said was "too soon" of a decision.
Republican Arizona Governor Doug Ducey tweeted: It’s far too early to call the election in Arizona. Election Day votes are not fully reported, and we haven’t even started to count early ballots dropped off at the polls."
"In AZ, we protected Election Day. Let’s count the votes — all the votes — before making declarations."
Just like in Florida, the Trump campaign has declared they won Ohio after Fox News projected the win.
The battleground state of Minnesota was called for Biden.
For months, opinion polls had predicted Biden would win by a large margin after four years of a tumultuous Trump presidency.
But the race tonight was much closer than they had foreseen with the whispers of a "shy Trump vote" becoming a reality – just like in 2016.
In the crucial state of North Carolina, Trump was leading Biden 49.9 percent to 48.8 percent with 93 percent of votes returned.
The 2020 election has seen the highest US voter turnout in a century.
In 2016, Trump won the election with 306 Electoral College votes, meaning Biden will need to take back at least three sizable states to put him over the 270 mark.
Were Biden to win the swing states of, for example, Arizona, Pennsylvania, and Michigan, it would put the Democrats at 270 vs the Republicans' 259 and Biden would take the White House.
According to Bloomberg News, Trump allies "are getting tentatively optimistic."
"Trump is having a much better night than expected, and several people close to him tell me they think he might win this race."
Reuters reported that Trump aides described the president's circle as “good, but nervous” and “calmly confident.”
Biden's team would have been hoping to win Florida – one of a number of swing states that could decide the election – if he was on course for a huge win against Trump.
In response to the bombshell data, a Biden campaign source said: "Not worried. Our path doesn’t include Florida. Ohio and [North Carolina] I’m hearing good things."
NBC News reported that a senior Trump administration official thinks they've won Ohio and now look to Pennsylvania.
However, referring to the president's whirlwind of rallies around the country after his recovery from coronavirus in the last days of the campaign, Trump campaign strategist Jason Miller told reporters: "We feel very, very good about our ground game."
"We feel very good about where we’re turning out."
As voter returns started to look good for Trump later in the night, Miller tweeted a "mind blown emoji" and wrote: "It’s happening."
Trump had an optimistic early outlook on election results, tweeting: "WE ARE LOOKING REALLY GOOD ALL OVER THE COUNTRY. THANK YOU!"
Former White House adviser Kellyanne Conway said that the United States "will hear from the president tonight."
"The president is expected to address the nation later from the East Room of the White House," Conway said.
Outside of the presidency, Fox News projected on Tuesday night the Democratic will keep control of the House of Representatives.
Before Election Day, more than 100million votes were cast in the election via early voting or mail-in voting – which many people have opted to do because of the coronavirus pandemic.
That number of early votes doubles the number of total votes cast in the entire 2016 election between Trump and Hillary Clinton.
Photos taken around the country show patriotic citizens casting their ballots for the candidates in one of the most contested presidential races in US history.
Earlier on Tuesday during a visit to his campaign headquarters, Trump said: "You know, winning is easy. Losing is never easy, not for me, it’s not."
As the president was addressing staffers as the campaign came to a close, Biden was mobbed by supporters outside his childhood home in Scranton, Pennsylvania.
There, he wrote on the living room wall of his old house: "From This House To The White House With The Grace of God."
He told the crowd mobbed outside that “It’s good to be home!” – to which supporters fired back: "We love you, Joe!”
After leaving Scranton, Biden headed to Philadelphia – where a large number of supporters were seen chanting for the former VP.
"We have an enormous opportunity as a country," Biden told supporters through a megaphone as he spoke on the street.
"I don't mean just my being elected," he said. "I want everybody to understand: the public nationwide has figured it out."
Biden said the US will "beat the virus" and "rebuild the middle class."
"If you elect me, I'm gonna be an American president. There's gonna be no red states or blue states. Just the United States of America."
If Biden wins in Pennsylvania, Trump would have a narrow path to victory.
The Trump campaign has said it's gearing up for a legal fight on ballots cast.
On Monday, during a campaign event in Scranton, Pennsylvania, Trump zeroed in on the state's process to count votes.
He has used stark terms to threaten a lawsuit to stop the tabulation of ballots arriving after Election Day – counting that is allowed with earlier postmarks in some states.
Despite Trump saying that delayed results are a bad sign, it’s standard practice to continue tabulating votes after Election Day.
Trump has said that “we're going in with our lawyers” as soon as the polls close in Pennsylvania – and spoke ominously about the Supreme Court decision to grant an extension to count the votes after Tuesday.
“They made a very dangerous situation, and I mean dangerous, physically dangerous, and they made it a very, very bad, they did a very bad thing for this state," Trump declared.
He said of Pennsylvania's Democratic Governor Tom Wolf: “Please don’t cheat because we’re all watching. We’re all watching you, governor.”
“I think it’s terrible when we can’t know the results of an election the night of an election in a modern-day age of computers,” he said.
“I don’t think it’s fair that we have to wait a long period of time after the election.
“If people wanted to get their ballots in, they should have gotten their ballots long before. They could have put their ballots in a month ago.”
There is already an appeal pending at the Supreme Court over the counting of absentee ballots in Pennsylvania that are received in the mail in the three days after the election.
Since the 2000 presidential election, which was ultimately decided by the Supreme Court, both Democrats and Republicans have enlisted legal teams to prepare for the unlikely event that voting wouldn’t settle the contest.
But this year, there is a near presumption that legal fights will happen.
During an interview with Fox and Friends earlier on Election Day, Trump predicted he will top his 2016 vote tally.
He warned, however, that if Biden wins, Kamala Harris will take over – an outcome that would be a "terrible thing for women."
Trump told viewers that he believes he will beat Biden, but if he loses the Democrat will not be in office "for very long."
He continued: "He's got a vice president who's further left than Bernie Sanders, who is not a particularly good person."
He then said that if Biden were replaced by his running mate, Harris, "it would be a terrible thing" for both "our country" and "for women."
Trump added that if the Democrats win, the country would become "socialist."
When asked to predict Tuesday's result, the president said he will "top" his 2016 amount of 306 electoral college votes.
"We will top it. We have had incredible crowds turning up. Nobody has ever seen that before," the president said.
Despite being confident that he will win, Trump confirmed that he will "declare victory only when there's victory."
Over the weekend, Trump denied a report that he will preemptively claim victory.
Sources told Axios that the president revealed that if it looks like he's ahead on Tuesday night, he plans to say he won.
Trump was asked by a reporter on Sunday about his alleged plan to declare victory before the official results and the final ballot counts are announced.
"That was a false report," Trump said.
He added: "I think it's terrible when we can't know the results of an election the night of the election in a modern day age of computers."
Trump spent Monday, the final full day of campaigning, sprinting through five rallies – from North Carolina to Pennsylvania to Wisconsin with his final rally, just like four years earlier, in Grand Rapids, Michigan.
Biden devoted most of his time to Pennsylvania, and also visited Ohio – a show of confidence in a state that Trump won by eight percentage points four years ago.
Trump and Vice President Mike Pence watched the returns at the White House.
Meanwhile, Biden and his running mate, Senator Kamala Harris, are going to come together to watch the returns in Wilmington, Delaware, after campaigning separately earlier in the day.
EXIT POLLS
Before Election Day, nearly 100million votes were already cast.
In exit polls, voters ranked the coronavirus pandemic and the economy as their top election concerns.
People were especially likely to call the public health crisis the nation’s most important issue, with the economy following close behind, AP VoteCast, a national survey of the electorate, found.
Fewer named health care, racism, law enforcement, immigration or climate change as their biggest concerns.
What is an exit poll?
An exit poll helps news organizations predict the winner of an election, sometimes as soon as voting concludes in a state.
In a nutshell, it's when voters are polled immediately after leaving polling stations in the US.
A randomly sample of voters are selected for the poll.
CNN explains: "News media and election watchers have long relied on exit polling to tell them who voted and why they support their chosen candidate on election night."
Many voters said they have been personally affected by the virus. Roughly 6 in 10 said the country is going in the wrong direction.
The survey found that Trump’s leadership loomed large in voters’ decision-making.
Nearly two-thirds of voters said their vote was about Trump – either for him or against him.
Voters were more likely to think the government should prioritize limiting the spread of the coronavirus — even if it damages the economy — than to say the economy should be the top priority.
Roughly half of voters said the coronavirus situation in the US is not at all under control. About 6 in 10 voters said the economy is in poor shape, while about 4 in 10 said economic conditions are excellent or good.
According to another set of exit polls, taken by the Morning Consult, many Biden voters said that they made their decision more in spite of Donald Trump than for the Democrat.
This data also showed that 93 percent of Biden voters were bothered about controlling the spread of Covid.
However, a smaller 59 percent of Trump voters cared about the matter.
https://news.google.com/__i/rss/rd/articles/CBMiTWh0dHBzOi8vd3d3LnRoZXN1bi5jby51ay9uZXdzLzEzMTAxNTEwL2ZpcnN0LWV4aXQtcG9sbHMtcmVsZWFzZWQtYmlkZW4tdHJ1bXAv0gFRaHR0cHM6Ly93d3cudGhlc3VuLmNvLnVrL25ld3MvMTMxMDE1MTAvZmlyc3QtZXhpdC1wb2xscy1yZWxlYXNlZC1iaWRlbi10cnVtcC9hbXAv?oc=5
2020-11-04 08:28:12Z
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