Biden says election results may not be known until Wednesday morning or later
US Democratic presidential nominee and former Vice President Joe Biden, accompanied by his wife Jill, arrives to deliver early results remarks from the 2020 U.S. presidential election in Wilmington, Delaware, US, November 4, 2020. PHOTO: REUTERS
Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden said the results of the election may not be known until Wednesday morning or later but he is optimistic of the outcome.
President Donald Trump took the lead over Democratic rival in the vital battleground of Florida and other US swing states on Tuesday, but Biden pinned his White House hopes on Arizona and a “blue wall” of three Rust Belt states that could take days to count their votes.
Biden’s hopes for a decisive early defeat of Trump faded as the president took solid leads in Florida, Georgia, Ohio and Texas. Fox News projected Trump would win Florida, a must-win state in his quest for 270 Electoral College votes.
Biden, 77, was eyeing the so-called “blue wall” states of Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania that sent Trump, 74, to the White House in 2016 for possible breakthroughs, although vote counting could stretch for hours or days there.
Trump held early leads in those three states, but much of that was built on Republican-heavy Election Day voting. The counting of Democratic-heavy mail-in ballots in all three states was expected to take hours or days. In Wisconsin and Pennsylvania and much of Michigan, mail-in ballots were not processed until Election Day.