Breaking: Joe Biden almost over the line with leads in Georgia and Pennsylvania
Joe Biden is just inches away from becoming the 46th President of the United States after taking the lead in the key battleground of Pennsylvania.
In a drastic flip from red to blue, the Democrat edged past incumbent President Donald Trump in the Southern state, leaving Biden in touching distance of Pennsylvania’s 20 electoral votes that would tip him to victory.
Both Biden and Trump need 270 electoral votes to enter the White House. Biden is currently on 253 votes, against Trump’s 214.
Pennsylvania is the biggest state left on the board — if Biden wins in Pennsylvania, he wins the presidency. The Democrat also maintains leads in three other states that have yet to be declared.
Biden steadily erased Trump’s early lead in Pennsylvania this morning, after more than 31,000 mail-in votes counted in Philadelphia came out overwhelming in favour of the Democrat.
An extra 2016 votes from Bucks Country meant he cruised past the Republican by 6,737 votes in the state, all but shutting the door for any path to reelection for Trump.
In a last-ditch bid to block Biden’s route to victory, the President’s legal team has challenged the Pennsylvania count in court, after Trump last night baselessly claimed wide-scale electoral “fraud”.
Presidential candidates have only beaten incumbent Presidents four times in US history.
If Biden enters the White House, he will not only make Trump the fifth ever one-term President, but will also make Kamala Harris the first ever female vice president and the first ever vice president of colour.
Speaking briefly to reporters in Wilmington, Delaware, the presidential hopeful urged the American public to show a “little patience” as the vote counting in battleground states stretched into its third day.
“Democracy can sometimes be messy,” he said.
Biden’s path to presidency received critical reinforcement this morning as the Democrat also edged past Trump in Georgia, flipping the state from red to blue.
His 917-vote lead against Trump means Georgia’s 16 electoral votes are now within easy reach.
The former vice president now has several clear routes to victory. He currently leads in Pennsylvania, Georgia, Nevada and Arizona.
In Arizona, the continuing vote count slimmed down Biden’s early lead in the state to roughly 47,000 votes, but still firmly placed him in in pole position to take the state.
Several outlets prematurely called the state for the former VP yesterday, prompting furious backlash from an increasingly desperate Trump.
Fox News has instructed anchors not to call Biden the “president-elect” if he passes the 270 mark, in a move that has sparked outrage from politicians across the US.
Memos leaked to CNN showed instructions for Fox anchors to “stay away” from using the description, and to instead say Biden has “enough electoral votes to win the presidency.”