US Election 2020 Results LIVE Updates: With no clear majority, Senate control may be decided by fate of two Georgia runoff races in January – World News , Firstpost

US Election 2020 Results LATEST Updates: Control of the Senate likely won’t be decided until a January runoff in Georgia, even after Democrat Joe Biden won the White House on Saturday. That post-election cliff-hanger will determine the balance of power in Washington, as neither party appears to have a lock on a Senate majority right now.

After Democrat Joe Biden had won the race for the White House, Republican President Donald Trump and his allies made one thing clear- he does not plan to concede anytime soon. The president pledged on Saturday to go forward with a legal strategy that he hopes will overturn state results that gave Biden the win in Tuesday’s vote. Trump aides and Republican allies, while somewhat conflicted on how to proceed, largely supported his strategy or remained silent.

The Trump campaign and Republican National Committee filed a lawsuit Saturday in Arizona that seeks the manual inspection of potentially thousands of in-person Election Day ballots in metro Phoenix that they allege were mishandled by poll workers and resulted in some ballot selections to be disregarded.

Americans gathered spontaneously on street corners and front lawns Saturday after news broke of former Vice President Joe Biden’s projected victory in the presidential election – with people honking their horns and starting impromptu dance parties

 In his first speech after securing the White House, President-elect Joe Biden is making an appeal to supporters of President Donald Trump. Biden said Saturday night in Wilmington, Delaware, that “this is the time to heal in America” and pledged to be a president to represent even those who didn’t support him.

“The Bible tells us that to everything there is a season — a time to build, a time to reap, a time to sow. And a time to heal. This is the time to heal in America,” Biden said.

US President-elect Joe Biden, addressing the nation, said, “I pledge to be a President who seeks not to divide, but to unify. Who doesn’t see Red and Blue states, but a United States.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi was among the many world leaders who congratulated Joe Biden on his victory in the US election.

President-elect Joe Biden will address the nation at 8 pm ET (6.30 am IST) in Delaware, according to a press release from the Biden-Harris campaign. Harris is also likely to give a statement preceding Biden’s.

President-elect Joe Biden says it’s time for America to “unite” and to “heal.” Biden said in a statement Saturday, “With the campaign over, it’s time to put the anger and the harsh rhetoric behind us and come together as a nation.”

Democrat Joe Biden defeated President Donald Trump to become the 46th president of the United States on Saturday

Amid the protracted counting of votes in the US and President Donald Trump’s claims of “fraud” in the election process, he tweeted at 8.20 pm IST that he will be addressing a “big” press conference in Philadelphia at 10 pm IST.

US Federal Election Commission officer Ellen Weintraub was quoted as saying that “there really has been no evidence of fraud” in the 2020 presidential election, even as President Donald Trump and his campaign claim fraud in the election process.

“State and local officials and poll workers throughout the country really stepped up. And there have been very few complaints about how this election was run,” she was quoted as saying by CNN. “Very few substantiated complaints, let me put it that way. There is no evidence of any kind of voter fraud. There is no evidence of illegal votes being cast. In fact, and you don’t have to take my word for it, because people throughout the country, nonpartisan election experts, have come out and handled this election and how it was run.”

Days after the US went to polls on 3 November, the votes are still being counted, and as the Trump and Biden campaigns await results from major swing states, crucial states like Georgia, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Nevada are still “too close to call”.

The Guardian also reported that Georgia is likely to conduct a recount.

The Guardian quoted analysis from the S&P Global firm shows a pattern and differing priorities in the way the Donald Trump and the Joe Biden campaigns spent money on ads.

“The Biden campaign outspent Trump on traditional broadcast TV ads by $249.9m to $174.6m. But the Republicans put more money behind digital. In that market, Trump spent $201.46m. Biden spent $166.12m,” the report said.

The Democratic challenger is edging towards the presidency after pulling ahead in the key states of Pennsylvania and Georgia.

Biden moved closer to winning the White House as he expanded his lead over President Donald Trump in battleground state of Georgia by 7,248 votes.

Biden overtook Trump in Georgia, historically a Republican stronghold, to secure a lead of 4,000 votes.

Joe Biden urged unity in a brief address in Delaware, calling for an end to the “partisan warfare” that has characterized American politics in recent years.

The Democratic presidential candidate confidence as his campaign inches closer to the White House while votes continue to be tallied in key battleground states.

The posts were flagged amid complaints that the social media giant only censors users with conservative viewpoints.

Biden continues to lead in the battleground state of Pennsylvania after a new batch of votes from Allegheny County were counted, widening his lead by 27,130 votes.

Two men armed with loaded handguns were arrested Thursday near the Philadelphia convention center where an ongoing vote count could decide the presidential election, police told AP.

Joe Biden is expected to begin his speech soon, with some news reports suggesting that it may be a victory speech.

President Donald Trump issued a fresh statement on Friday as his political rival Joe Biden solidified leads in key states. Repeating his claim about Democrats endorsing counting of illegal ballots, Trump said he will not give up fighting for America and Americans.

Joe Biden’s campaign says he will give a speech during prime time Friday. The Democratic presidential candidate’s campaign announced that he would be making an address but did not say where or what he plans to say.

Biden is on the cusp of winning the presidency as he opens up narrow leads over President Donald Trump in several critical backgrounds.

The US state of Georgia said Friday it will recount votes from the election in which Joe Biden has eked out a razor-thin lead over President Donald Trump.

As news headlines declared a Biden lead in key swing state of Pennsylvania, the Trump campaign hit back harder with allegations of breach of law in counting and polling processes, reminding people of it’s threat to drag the battle in courts.

Biden has finally managed to pull ahead in the critical state of Pennsylvania, an absolute must win for Trump if he wants to stay within a fighting chance for the presidency. After Philadelphia posted it’s vote count, Biden reportedly has a lead of 5,587 votes

Reports say that Pennsylvania can post another batch of vote counts in an hour. Biden is only behind President Trump by a little more than 18,000 votes in Pennsylvania right now, after having trailed at one point by more than half a million ballots in the hours after polls closed, according to CNN. This comes at a time when, poll watchers and reporters have been opining on Twitter that the only counties left to be counted in are predominantly Blue.

The expected count is from the city of Philadelphia, considered a Democratic bastion.

The votes counted tally in Georgia now shows that Joe Biden has the lead in the state.

Clayton County in Georgia has just 3,500 of its 30,000 mail-in and provisional ballots left to count, the director of the county’s board of election, Shauna Dozier, told CNN.

Trump and Biden have won 49.4 percent of the vote share. This state is key for Trump’s re-election chances.

Local media said the men were detained following a tip-off that an armed group were heading to the centre.

Joe Biden’s lead continued to shrink in Arizona after more vote tallies were released Thursday evening in a state that The Associated Press and Fox News have already put in the former vice president’s column.

President Donald Trump is currently leading Joe Biden by only 1,709 votes in Georgia, where he previously had a lead of over 18,000 votes.

According to local media Action News, a man has been taken into custody, and cops have recovered a weapon and recovered the Hummer vehicle they were tipped off about.

President Donald Trump’s campaign lost court rulings in the closely contested states of Georgia and Michigan on Thursday, even as it vowed to bring a new lawsuit challenging what it called voting irregularities in Nevada.

President Donald Trump’s lead over former Vice President Joe Biden in Georgia has shrunk to 1,775 votes, said CNN. The two candidates are tied at 49.4% each.

At least three leading television news networks in the US cut away from Donald Trump’s address from the White House on Thursday evening and expressed doubts on its legitimacy.

In Pennsylvania, Biden is trailing by 48,800 votes after officials released a new batch of ballot counts from Delaware county.

The US president struck a typically defiant tone, accusing pollsters of interfering in the election process and Democrats of engaging in fraud.

A judge in Georgia has dismissed a lawsuit by the state Republican Party and US president Donald Trump’s campaign that asked him to ensure a coastal county was following state laws on processing absentee ballots, AP reported.

Chatham County Superior Court Judge James Bass did not provide an explanation for his decision on Thursday at the close of a roughly one-hour hearing. The county includes the heavily Democratic city of Savannah.

The suit had raised concerns about 53 absentee ballots that poll observers said were not part of an original batch of ballots. County elections officials testified that all 53 ballots had been received on time.

Joe Biden’s campaign manager Jen O’Malley Dillon said that the Democratic presidential candidate was closing in on the lead of US president Donald Trump in the crucial swing state of Pennsylvania. She also said that while Georgia is a “toss-up” and is a “very very close” race, “the state is leaning towards the former vice president”.

Poll authorities in one of the crucial battleground states, Arizona, said that there are 375,000 ballots still to be counted in the Western battleground, reports said.

Biden holds a 2.35 percentage point lead over Trump in Arizona, an advantage of about 68,000 votes. The vast majority of the ballots yet to be counted are from Maricopa County, the most populous area of the state.

Georgia, Nevada, and Pennsylvania are among the handful of states up for grabs to determine the final outcome of the election. Democratic candidate Joe Biden is currently inching towards a victory with 264 projected electoral college votes. Now Biden needs just six more to win the race to the White House.

Pennsylvania is a controversial state with a massive number of electoral votes – 20. With around 89% of votes are in, and Trump is up 50.7% against Biden’s 48.1%.

As per The New York Times, the presidential race in Georgia appeared headed for a photo finish as Biden steadily gained ground on President Donald Trump. The victor will be awarded 16 electoral votes

Biden’s lead in Arizona, which he was projected to win by AP and Fox News, has narrowed. Biden has 50.5 percent of the vote (14,69,341) against Trump, who has 48.1 percent (14,00,951)

According to the AP, Trump is marginally higher with 49.6 percent of the vote (24,30,156) while Joe Biden has 49.2 percent of the vote (24,07,589).

With 71% of mail-in ballots counted in Pennsylvania, officials still needs to count 763,000 of the 2.6 million cast, CNN projected.

On Wednesday, multiple Twitter profiles began promoting a #StopTheSteal protest in front of the Clark County Elections Department.

Trump is in the lead in Pennsylvania by about 3 points but the difference between votes cast for the president and those cast for Biden has been shrinking with each batch of results released.

Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger said Wednesday evening that there are still 122,535 uncounted ballots in the state.

The new filings, joining existing Republican legal challenges in Pennsylvania and Nevada, demand better access for campaign observers to locations where ballots are being processed and counted, and absentee ballot concerns, the campaign said.

Biden isn’t making any predictions about the outcome of the election as the final hours of voting tick down.

Trump campaign manager Bill Stepien has said that the President is well within the threshold for recount and they will immediately place a request for it.

However, Republican Scott Walker weighed in on Twitter earlier that Biden’s lead may be too big for a recount to have any effect

Joe Biden will win at least three of Maine’s electoral votes, CNN and NBC News projects.

President Donald Trump in a tweet claimed that the states in which he was leading last night have “started to magically disappear as surprise ballots were counted”. He also says it is “very strange” that the Republican party’s vote share has fallen.

In the race to get the 270 electoral college votes needed to occupy the White House, Joe Biden is currently projected to win 224. Trump is predicted to win 213 based on CNN projections. The outcome of this election, however, is likely to be determined by the tens of millions of postal ballots yet to be counted.

Although the counting of votes is still underway in Wisconsin, as per CNN projections, Democratic nominee Joe Biden is leading in two of the crucial swing states: Michigan and Wisconsin. Meanwhile, President Donald Trump is currently leading in another swing state, Pennsylvania.

As per CNN, Joe Biden is ahead by nearly 21,000 votes. Throughout much of the night, President Trump was ahead by over 100,000 votes, but now, with 97% votes reported, Biden is ahead.

The race to the White House is now down to the wire with Donald Trump and Joe Biden battling it out in the key states of Wisconsin, Michigan, Nevada and Pennsylvania, who are now key battleground states to watch out for as per pollsters.

After winning Florida and Iowa, US President Donald Trump is engaged in a tight electoral battle with Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden on the three Northern battleground states — Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania — that could prove crucial in determining who wins the Oval office

Biden has taken the lead in Wisconsin and is hoping that Arizona, where he has a 5-percentage point lead with 82% of the ballots counted.

Democrat Joe Biden’s campaign said it will fight any efforts by President Donald Trump’s campaign to go to the US Supreme Court to prevent ballots from being tabulated.

Biden won the statewide tally and the 1st Congressional District, good for three electoral votes.

The victory by Biden can be a huge blow to Trump’s chances for reelection. Arizona has backed a Democratic presidential candidate only once in the last 72 years.

Donald Trump expressed confidence about winning Pennsylvania, as the state continues to count ballots.

So far Biden has 224 electoral votes and Trump 213, after Nebraska split its electoral votes between the two – four for Trump and one for Biden, CNN and Fox News projected.

An avalanche of early votes fed Democrats’ high hopes of ending decades of losses in Texas, where polls showed Joe Biden running unusually close.

Thanking the people for the patience, given the early voting and mail-in voting, Democratic Presidential nominee said, “I believe we’re on track to win this election.”

Democratic Presidential nominee Joe Biden will deliver remarks in Wilmington at 12.30 am ET. Meanwhile, Trump prevailed in the hotly contested Rust Belt state of Ohio – one he seized in 2016 and which is key to his efforts to win reelection over Biden.

Biden has captured 16 states including his home state Delaware and big prizes California and New York, as well as the US capital.

Fox News Channel on Tuesday night declared that Democrats would retain control of the House of Representatives, picking up at least five seats.

With about 91 percent of the Florida vote in, Donald Trump leads Biden by about 3 points, 51%-48%, reported AP.

Colorado, which went for Democrat Hillary Clinton four years ago, has trended sharply to the left since President Donald Trump’s 2016 election.

Donald Trump has picked up North Dakota, South Dakota, Wyoming, Louisiana and Nebraska. The AP also called Indiana for Trump shortly before polls closed in some western states.

Biden has captured his home state of Delaware, Maryland, Massachusetts, Vermont, Virginia and New Jersey, as well as the three electoral votes given to the US capital Washington (District of Columbia).

Democrat Joe Biden is projected to win the state of Virginia by winning its 13 electoral votes.

Democrat Hillary Clinton won Virginia over Republican Donald Trump in 2016, helped in part by her choice of running mate: Virginia Sen. Tim Kaine.

Virginia has grown increasingly liberal over the last four years, and as a result of the 2019 elections, Democrats now control every branch of government in the state.

Donald Trump took to Twitter on Tuesday evening (local time) as polls began shutting around the country and early trends began trickling in.

US president Donald Trump called into talk radio shows in the battleground states of Pennsylvania and Wisconsin just hours before polls closed. Trump projected confidence Tuesday that he will win key states like North Carolina and Florida and said he’s expecting a “great” evening.

Trump told Wisconsin host Vicki McKenna that he is expecting a strong night based on lines of people waiting to vote. Trump has sown doubts about mail voting, without evidence, and is expecting most of his supporters to turn out on Election Day.

In North Carolina, an armed man loitering at a polling site on Election Day has been arrested and charged with trespassing, AP reported.

Thirty-six-year-old Justin Dunn was legally carrying a firearm but loitered at the Charlotte site after voting Tuesday morning, which prompted a precinct official to call police over fears of voter intimidation. A precinct official accompanied by a police officer asked him to leave the site and banned him from the location.

Police say Dunn left the precinct but returned about two hours later. He was taken into custody and charged with second-degree trespassing.

Publicly listed numbers for Dunn were disconnected when a reporter tried to reach him Tuesday.

Vermont Governor Phil Scott says he voted for Joe Biden for president, making him the first Republican governor in the nation to acknowledge voting for the Democratic presidential candidate.

The Republican governor told reporters Tuesday after casting his ballot in his hometown of Berlin, Vermont, that he had never voted for a Democrat in his life.

“As many of you knew, I didn’t support President Trump. I wasn’t going to vote for him,” Scott said. “But then I came to the conclusion that it wasn’t enough for me to just not vote. I had to vote against.” He says he “put country over party, which again wasn’t an easy thing to do in some respects.”

With the coronavirus now surging anew, voters ranked the pandemic and the economy as top concerns in the race between President Donald Trump and Democratic rival Joe Biden, according to AP VoteCast, a national survey of the electorate.

Voters were especially likely to call the public health crisis the nation’s most important issue, with the economy following close behind. Fewer named health care, racism, law enforcement, immigration or climate change.

After eight months and 232,000 deaths, the candidates faced a dissatisfied electorate. Many voters said they have been personally affected by the virus. Roughly 6 in 10 said the country is going in the wrong direction.

Voters across the US received anonymous robocalls in the days and weeks before Election Day urging them to “stay safe and stay home” — an ominous warning that election experts said could be an effort to scare voters into sitting out the election, AP reported.

The FBI is investigating calls that seek to discourage people from voting, a senior official at the Department of Homeland Security told reporters Tuesday. Authorities wouldn’t offer details.

The brief calls, which featured a computerized female voice, made no mention of the election. But given the lack of details, and the timing, the message was clear, according to Dan Doughty, a Kansas City resident who received the robocall Tuesday morning.

As America set out to vote on Election Day amid the COVID-19 pandemic, state election authorities weighed in on the situation on polling in their respective jurisdictions.

In Arizona, Secretary of State Katie Hobbs said that while Joe Biden has a narrow edge over US President Donald Trump in the state, “either candidate has the possibility to win”. “I try to be non-partisan, but we’ve seen Biden leading pretty much most of the polls that have been done here for Arizona. The margins vary, but he’s been ahead,” Hobbs told CNN’.

Meanwhile, the report said that voting in Minneapolis was going “very smoothly” so far “with no incidents of equipment malfunction or voter intimidation.”

Additionally, in Michigan, the authorities said the vote “will be counted sooner than previously expected, with both day-of and absentee ballot counts expected to be reported soon after polls close tonight”, CNN reported.

The North Carolina board of Elections extended voting in four precincts after they opened late on Tuesday, CNN reported, adding that the election results are likely to be delayed by at least 45 minutes in the state.

Democratic vice presidential nominee Senator Kamala Harris urged voters to stay calm no matter what the outcome of the election is and said, “Have faith in the American people. I do strongly believe that we — whoever we vote for — will defend the integrity of our democracy and the peaceful transfer of power. And that there are certain lines that no matter who you vote for, they won’t cross.”

Speaking to reporters in Detroit, she was quoted by CNN as saying, “The path to the White House and the path to determining who will be the next President of the United States without question runs right through Michigan.”

Addressing the campaign team in the bullpen of the headquarters in Virginia, Donald Trump claimed that his campaign was doing “very well” in the states of Florida, Arizona, and Texas. “I think we’re going to have a great night and more importantly we’re going to have a great 4 years.”

US President Donald Trump said on Tuesday that he had built the world”s greatest economy, which was “horribly” interrupted by the “plague” that came from China

First Lady Melania Trump has cast her in-person vote at the Morton and Barbara Mandel Recreation Center in Palm Beach.

According to the US president’s son, China, Mexico, Cuba, Liberia, the US states of New York and California along with part of India are the only places that don’t want Trump to have four more years in the White House. Curiously, Jammu and Kashmir, according to Trump Jr, would prefer a Trump presidency.

News reports say that 9,069,761 people have already voted in Florida, which is roughly 95 percent of the 9.6 million total votes in the 2016 election. Registered Democrats lead registered Republicans by about 115,000 votes. Nearly 2 million people with no party affiliation have also voted, CNN reported.

In what CNN termed ‘only a mildly confident view of his prospects’, President Donald Trump asserted that he will call in a win, only when there’s a win.

Joe Biden has started Election Day with a visit to church — and the grave of his late son, Beau. Biden and his wife, Jill, made an early morning stop at St. Joseph’s on the Brandywine in Wilmington, Delaware

At least 98.1 million people voted before Election Day, or just shy of 71 percent of the nearly 139 million ballots cast during the 2016 presidential election, according to data collected by The Associated Press. Given that a few states, including Texas, had already exceeded their total 2016 vote count, experts were predicting record turnout this year

President Donald Trump and his reelection campaign are signaling they will pursue an aggressive legal strategy to try to prevent Pennsylvania from counting mailed ballots that are received in the three days after the election. The matter could find its way to the Supreme Court, especially if those ballots could tip the outcome in the battleground state.

On Election day, President Donald Trump is planning to visit his campaign headquarters in Virginia on Tuesday, while Biden will travel to his birthplace of Scranton, the scrappy Pennsylvania town where Trump also visited on Monday

Polls opened at 6:00 am (4.30 pm IST) in the eastern states of New York, New Jersey, Virginia, Connecticut and Maine. But the first polling stations to open in the country were in two New Hampshire villages, Dixville Notch and Millsfield, starting at midnight

Election Day is finally here.

Or at least what we still call Election Day, since nearly 100 million Americans had already cast ballots by Tuesday.

That’s the result of an election system that has been reshaped by the worst pandemic in a century, prompting many voters to take advantage of advance voting rather than head to polling places in person at a time when coronavirus cases are rising.

Here’s what to watch as the final votes for President Donald Trump and Democratic challenger Joe Biden are cast:

Results, Results…?

We may not know who won the presidential election on Tuesday night. And if so, it does not necessarily mean anything is broken, fraudulent, corrupted or wrong.

President Donald Trump has repeatedly suggested a slower-than-typical result is a sign of trouble.

“I think it’s terrible that we can’t know the results of an election the night of the election,” he said on Sunday. “I think it’s a terrible thing when states are allowed to tabulate ballots for a long period of time after the election is over.”

It’s unclear what the president thinks is a long period. But it’s standard practice to continue tabulating votes after Election Day. But as it turns out that not knowing final results on the voting day itself is not an exception but the norm. The reason is simple enough, that it is physically impossible to count millions of ballots overnight as votes are cast across 51 states both in person, and by mail.

What the headlines mean, when they say that results will be delayed this year is that there may not be enough information available early enough to call out the polls in favour of one candidate over the other.

Does this mean results will come out later than usual?

Yes.

The biggest factor that may slow things down this year is clear: Millions of Americans decided to vote by mail rather than risk contracting coronavirus at a polling place. And in general, those mail ballots take longer to count.

Election workers must remove the ballots from their envelopes, check for errors, sort them and flatten them — all before they can be run through scanners the moment polls close and be tabulated. In states with well-established vote-by-mail programs, this processing happens weeks before Election Day. The results are often released quickly.

But several states did not have this system in place before this year and laws on the books prohibited election officials from processing the ballots well in advance of Election Day. Without a head start, there’s virtually no way to process and count all the mail votes on Election Day, while also counting all the in-person votes.

There are three important battlegrounds with restrictions on when the mail vote can be processed — Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.

In those states, Republican-controlled legislatures have resisted pleas from election officials to update the laws to allow for a speedier count. (The Michigan legislature did allow processing to begin 24 hours before Election Day in cities, but election officials say that’s not enough of a head start.) Instead, they will initially report in-person votes — expected to heavily favor Trump — and gradually update with the more Democratic-leaning mail ballots later.

But don’t news organisations call a winner before all the vote is counted?

Yes, there’s never been a presidential race in history in which all votes are counted on election night. It’s just not physically possible to instantly count that many ballots — possibly as many as 150 million on the night of Nov. 3.

Media organizations, including The Associated Press, declare winners in thousands of races on election night based on the results that are in, voter surveys and other political data.

But in a close race, more of the vote may need to be counted before The Associated Press can call a winner.

Is there any hope for knowing the winner on election night?

Sure. Not all battleground states are slow-counting states. So if several key states release their results promptly, one candidate may have a majority of the electoral vote — even without knowing who won in Wisconsin, Pennsylvania or Michigan.

That becomes more likely if the races in those states are not close.

It’s a scenario that puts a lot of eyes on Florida. The state allows its election offices to process mail ballots 22 days before the election. It’s also the biggest swing state. As long as the race isn’t too close — a big “if” in a place famous for tight races — there could be a close-to-complete count by midnight. And if Trump loses Florida, it’s is very difficult for him to reach the 270 electoral votes he needs to defeat former Vice President Joe Biden and return to the White House.

Two other Southern battlegrounds — North Carolina and Georgia — also can begin processing mail ballots early. They are both considered critical states for Trump. However, unlike Florida, neither state has a record of handling a large number of mail ballots. It’s unclear how quickly they will count those votes.

Finally, two Midwestern states — Iowa and Ohio — also allow for early processing of mail ballots. Trump won both states handily in 2016, but Democrats believe Biden is competitive there. Results in those two states on election night could give hints about what lies ahead in the critical Rust Belt states that take longer to count.

With inputs from AP and AFP