Biden wins key states; Trump heads to court
Democrat takes Michigan, Wisconsin — president claims vote fraud
WASHINGTON — Joe Biden’s narrow victories in Michigan and Wisconsin on Wednesday had Democrats looking west to Arizona and Nevada, where wins in states where he already leads would make him the nation’s 46th president.
Biden struck a conciliatory tone as he all but declared victory Wednesday afternoon after taking Wisconsin, a battleground state that was key to President Trump’s victory four years ago.
“After a long night of counting, it’s clear that we’re winning enough states to reach the 270 electoral votes needed to win the presidency,” Biden said during a sixminute appearance in Wilmington, Del., with his running mate, California Sen. Kamala Harris.
“Once this election is finalized and behind us, it’ll be time for us to do what we’ve always done as Americans — to put the harsh rhetoric of the campaign behind us,” he said. “To lower the temperature. To see each other again. To listen to one another.”
But with his own path to victory narrowing, Trump focused on a legal fight, calling for a recount in Wisconsin and filing suits in Michigan, Georgia and Pennsylvania.
In a Philadelphia news conference Wednesday afternoon, Eric Trump, the president’s son, accused Democrats of
“This is a fraud on the American public. We’ll be going to the U. S. Supreme Court. We want all voting to stop. We don’t want them to find any more ballots at 4 o’clock in the morning and add them to the list. We will win this. As far as I’m concerned, we already have won it.” President Trump, early Wednesday morning at the White House
“After a long night of counting, it’s clear that we’re winning enough states to reach the 270 electoral votes needed to win the presidency. Once this election is finalized and behind us, it’ll be time for us to do what we’ve always done as Americans — to put the harsh rhetoric of the campaign behind us. To lower the temperature. To see each other again. To listen to one another.” Joe Biden, Wednesday afternoon in Wilmington, Del., with running mate Kamala Harris
massive voter fraud and said Republicans would file a suit to stop counting at least some of the votes.
“We’re going to win in Pennsylvania, but ( Democrats are) trying to cheat us out of it because they know it’s their only path to victory,” he said, without providing any evidence. “It’s not fair. This isn’t democracy.”
Trump’s son was echoing comments his father made at a White House news conference on election night.
“This is a fraud on the American public,” the president said in reference to the continuing count of mail ballots. “We’ll be going to the U. S. Supreme Court. We want all voting to stop. We don’t want them to find any more ballots at 4 o’clock in the morning and add them to the list. We will win this. As far as I’m concerned, we already have won it.”
The Trump campaign’s legal fight left it in the odd position of calling for the vote count to stop in Pennsylvania, where the president held the lead, but urging counts to continue in Arizona and Nevada, where Biden had the advantage.
Republicans, though, had no choice but to embrace that strategy. Biden victories in the two western states would make any court battles in Pennsylvania moot, since those wins would give the former vice president 270 electoral votes, the exact number he needs to claim the presidency.
The “blue shift,” which refers to the history of latearriving votes favoring Democrats, appeared to be occurring in full force Wednesday. In Georgia and Pennsylvania, which have yet to be called, Biden moved closer to Trump. The president’s lead in Georgia had narrowed to about 31,000 votes by late evening, with thousands of votes still to be counted.
The Biden camp, meanwhile, continued to view North Carolina as a likely Trump win. While the president hasn’t been declared the victor there, he continues to hold a narrow lead with a dwindling number of votes still uncounted.
It could take days before the presidential race is decided, however, as vote reporting in several key states was expected to stretch into at least Thursday.
In downtown Phoenix on Wednesday night, about 100 protesters gathered outside the vote center, waving Trump flags and shouting “Let us in,” demanding to be allowed inside where they could watch a vote count. Members of the antiimmigration AZ Patriots group stormed into the center in the early evening, but were ejected by sheriff’s deputies.
In a Wednesday morning briefing, the Biden campaign was ready to predict victory.
“Joe Biden is on track to win this election and he will be the next president of the United States,” Biden campaign manager Jen O’Malley Dillon said.
The rollout of results matched what experts had long expected — the key battlegrounds where counting was still going on Wednesday had not allowed mailin ballots to be counted in advance. Amid the pandemic, Democrats heavily chose to cast their votes by mail. That meant that early results tended to favor Trump, because they reported totals from inperson voting and Trump-leaning areas.
Wednesday’s results, however, were from urban centers and mailin votes, which were expected to heavily favor Biden.
While results filtered in throughout the day, states expected their results to be completed at different times. Georgia and Michigan estimated they would be able to count their outstanding votes by the end of Wednesday, officials said. In Nevada and Pennsylvania, officials anticipated counting to continue into Thursday and likely beyond. North Carolina will keep accepting absentee ballots postmarked by election day until Nov. 12.
Trump tweeted several times on Wednesday questioning the shifts in leads — tweets to which Twitter appended warnings about misinformation.
“Last night I was leading, often solidly, in many key States, in almost all instances Democrat run & controlled. Then, one by one, they started to magically disappear as surprise ballot dumps were counted. VERY STRANGE, and the “pollsters” got it completely & historically wrong!” Trump tweeted.
Election officials in Pennsylvania and Michigan, however, gave televised briefings on Wednesday explaining that vote counting would continue, to ensure that every voter’s ballot was properly registered, as had been expected with the extraordinary volume of voting by mail.
Unlike the presidential race, the political map was looking less optimistic for Democrats in the battle to the flip the Senate. While the body’s majority was likely to remain unsettled pending likely runoff elections, Democrats failed to flip many of their prime pickup opportunities, making a divided government a possibility should Biden win the White House.
Tal Kopan is The San Francisco Chronicle’s Washington correspondent. Joe Garofoli is The Chronicle’s senior political writer. John Wildermuth is a Chronicle political reporter. Email: tal.kopan@sfchronicle.com, jgarofoli@sfchronicle.com, jwildermuth@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @talkopan, @joegarofoli, @jfwildermuth