Despite Donald Trump’s efforts to spread lies about electoral fraud, Joe Biden’s path to the White House is becoming increasingly clear – with the Democrat overtaking Trump in the key state of Pennsylvania early on Friday afternoon.
Just a handful of states are yet to be called, but these are key to determining the outcome of the election.
Neither candidate has yet reached the 270 Electoral College votes needed to claim victory, but Trump’s possible route to a second term has narrowed significantly as the count progresses.
Here’s where we stand right now.
What’s happening in the remaining states?
Pennsylvania (20 electoral votes)
Biden has overtaken Trump in Pennsylvania by 13,220 votes, according to the Associated Press. Biden is at 49.5%, Trump at 49.3%.
Pennsylvania still has around 150,000 votes left to count, or about 2%. Those remaining ballots are either mail-in or provisional votes, and as such are likely to be in Biden’s favour.
Additional results from the battleground state are expected to come later on Friday, but it could take days for the race to be decided.
Nevada (6 electoral votes)
Biden’s lead in Nevada has also increased to 20,137 votes ahead of Trump. Biden is at 49.7%, Trump at 48.1%.
There is still a considerably long way to go before all the votes will be counted in Nevada, with around 87% of votes counted. Many of those still to be processed are ballots postmarked on election day, and likely to be in Biden’s favour.
More results could be coming in later on Friday, but the vote count is expected to continue into the weekend.
Arizona (11 electoral votes)
Biden’s lead is continuing to narrow in Arizona. As of Friday morning, his advantage had contracted from 93,000 to 43,779.
With about 220,000 votes – or 90% – of the estimated votes counted, Biden is at 49.9% and Trump at 48.6%.
More results are expected this evening, but it’s unclear whether it will be enough for a projection.
Georgia (16 electoral votes)
Biden is ahead by 1,558 votes, flipping what was once a lead in the tens-of-thousands for the current president. Some 99% of votes have already been counted.
The margin is very, very thin – Biden has a 0.03% lead (just over 1,000 votes) over Trump. This afternoon, Georgia’s secretary of state Brad Raffensperger said there would be a recount in the state “with a margin that small”. This would not start until the current count had ended, and could take weeks.
Many of the votes still being counted are coming from counties where Biden was in the lead.
North Carolina (15 electoral votes)
Trump currently leads by more than 77,000 votes, with around 6% of the vote uncounted – but state officials have said a full result would not be known until next week.
Trump is expected to win the state, but with up to 116,000 mail ballots left to count, the race is still too early to call.
The state allows mail-in ballots postmarked by Tuesday to be counted if they are received by November 12, which is when more results will be released.
What are Biden and Trump’s paths to winning?
Biden still has a much clearer route to the presidency than Trump. He could claim victory by winning Pennsylvania alone, or two out of the trio of Georgia, Nevada and Arizona. Trump’s options are more limited – he needs to hang onto both Pennsylvania and Georgia while overtaking Biden in either Nevada or Arizona.
Most major US television networks currently give Biden a 253 to 214 lead in Electoral College votes, after he captured the crucial states of Wisconsin and Michigan on Wednesday.
What has Trump said?
The incumbent delivered a rambling speech full of misinformation on Thursday evening, during which he falsely claimed he had won the “legal votes”.
His comments were met with instant backlash, with several major US broadcasters cutting away from the speech to make it clear that there was no evidence for his claims.
“If you count the legal votes, I easily win,” Trump lied, adding without evidence that there had been “historical interference from big media, big money and big tech”.
The president also raised several non-specific issues with postal voting, referring vaguely to “a pipe burst”, “people are using binoculars” and “paper on all of the windows”.
In another mark of just how misleading his speech really was, Twitter marked several clips posted by the president himself with a content warning stating: “Some or all of the content shared in this Tweet is disputed and might be misleading about an election or other civic process.”
The press conference was the first for Trump since early Wednesday, when he addressed the media as the first wave of election results was being reported.
Trump at the time baselessly declared victory and falsely claimed he’d already won several states in which a clear winner had yet to be determined. He also, without evidence, suggested that the ongoing counting of votes amounted to “fraud” and should be halted.
Since then, the Trump campaign has filed lawsuits in several states to halt vote counting and disqualify ballots. Judges in at least two states have ruled against his campaign.
What has Biden said?
Joe Biden wrote on Twitter shortly after Trump’s White House appearance: “No one is going to take our democracy away from us”.
In earlier remarks from his hometown of Wilmington, Delaware, Biden expressed confidence he would win and urged calm as votes were tallied.
“Democracy’s sometimes messy,” Biden said. “It sometimes requires a little patience as well. But that patience has been rewarded now for more than 240 years in a system of governance that has been the envy of the world.”
The Biden campaign said Thursday morning that it believes “victory is imminent,” as it wrote on a slide in a video briefing.
“Our data shows that Joe Biden will be the next president of the United States,” campaign manager Jen O’Malley Dillon said.
Biden and Senator Kamala Harris are expected to give an address on Friday evening.
Why is the count taking so long?
Voting concluded as scheduled on Tuesday night, but it’s not unusual for many states to take days to finish counting ballots.
The presidential election is really 50 different statewide elections, each of them governed by state laws which say different things about how the vote should be counted.
Covid-19 also means that huge numbers of people also voted by mail, making it likely the count will take longer than usual.
What is going on at the polling stations?
As the count has rumbled on, the atmosphere at the polls across the country has become increasingly tense.
Trump has fuelled baseless conspiracy theories of wrongdoing during the counts, and Republicans have issued conflicting calls for some states to “stop the count”, while demanding others “count every vote”. There is no evidence that states have stopped counting prematurely.
In Detroit, about 30 observers, mostly Republicans, were barred from entering a vote-counting hall by election officials who cited indoor capacity restrictions imposed to prevent spread of the coronavirus. Police were called to enforce the decision.
Many of those excluded stood outside the hall voicing their protest and singing “God Bless America” while a second group of Republican observers who were denied entry held a prayer circle nearby. They also broke into chants of “stop the vote” and “stop the count.”
Meanwhile in Philadelphia, police are reportedly investigating an alleged plot to attack the Pennsylvania Convention Centre, where votes are being counted, on Thursday night.
6 ABC reported that police had received a tip about a group – potentially a family – driving up from Virginia to unleash an attack at the Convention Centre.
No injuries were reported, but media on the scene said they witnessed a man being taken into custody, though it is not yet clear if he was linked to the tip.
Police told 6 ABC they had recovered a weapon and believe they recovered a vehicle involved.
Misinformation continues to spread rapidly online, mobilising protests on the ground.
One nationwide organising effort centred on a Facebook group called “Stop the Steal,” which had more than 360,000 members by the time Facebook shut it down Thursday afternoon, less than a day after its creation.
The group promoted more than a dozen protest events in Arizona, the District of Columbia, Virginia, Florida, Pennsylvania and North Carolina from Wednesday through Saturday — the majority of which remained on Facebook’s platform even after the main group was removed.