WASHINGTON: US President Donald Trump alleged on Wednesday (Nov 4) that there had been "surprise ballot dumps" in states where he had been leading Democrat Joe Biden in the race for the White House.
"Last night I was leading, often solidly, in many key States, in almost all instances Democrat run & controlled," Trump tweeted. "Then, one by one, they started to magically disappear as surprise ballot dumps were counted."
Twitter has labelled Trump's comments as "misleading".
It had also taken a similar action against an earlier tweet by the president.
Trump did not offer any evidence for his allegation of "ballot dumps" and there have been no reports of any irregularities.
The leads in numerous states have shifted back-and-forth between the candidates as votes are counted.
Trump, who overnight prematurely declared himself the winner of Tuesday's election, has spent months denouncing mail-in ballots, making unsubstantiated claims that they are liable to fraud.
In every US presidential election, officials normally take several days to process provisional and mail-in ballots. The counting of additional ballots is no surprise, and neither is the swing to Biden, which was widely predicted and discussed extensively in the run-up to the vote.
Biden's campaign said on Wednesday that the former US vice president was on track to win the 2020 election, with expected victories in the battleground states of Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania.
Campaign manager Jennifer O'Malley Dillon said she expected the former US vice president to have more than 270 electoral college votes later on Wednesday. She told reporters she believed Biden has already won Wisconsin and was expected to win Nevada.
The usage of mail-in ballots soared this election amid the COVID-19 pandemic and the US Elections Project said a record 65.2 million Americans voted by mail.
Mr Biden's victory in Arizona, a state Mr Trump won in 2016, gives him more breathing room as the "Blue Wall" states remain uncounted.
Even without Pennsylvania, Mr Biden could now reach exactly 270 electoral votes - the minimum necessary to win - if he can win Michigan and Wisconsin, as well as Nevada, where he was leading early on Wednesday (Nov 4).
Those states still have significant numbers of votes outstanding from absentee voters and large urban counties that tend to vote Democratic. Election officials in both states said it would be later Wednesday before they could finish counting those votes.
The difference-maker for Mr Biden could end up being a single electoral vote from the second congressional district of Nebraska, one of two states that splits its votes. Mr Trump won that district in 2016 but Mr Biden won it on Tuesday.
Georgia and North Carolina would give Mr Biden additional options, but Mr Trump appears to have leads in both those states. A Biden win in Nevada, a state the Democratic contender Mrs Hillary Clinton won in 2016, wouldn't help him gain ground on Trump.
Mr Trump needs at least four of the following states to pass 270 electoral votes: Georgia, North Carolina, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. He won them all in 2016. If Mr Biden wins any two of Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Georgia, he will win.
There is a scenario in which the race could come down to a single electoral vote - or even a tie. Maine also splits its votes by congressional district, and one of its two districts remains up for grabs.
If Mr Trump wins that vote - and loses Wisconsin and North Carolina - both Mr Biden and Mr Trump will have 269 electoral votes. In that case, Mr Trump would likely win the tiebreaker vote in the House of Representatives, where each state delegation gets a single vote.
WASHINGTON - US President Donald Trump claimed he had defeated Democratic challenger Joe Biden early on Wednesday morning (Nov 4), even though results from several battleground states that could swing the election had yet to be called.
Mr Trump said he would go to the Supreme Court to halt the counting of votes, accusing the Democrats - without evidence - of “fraud on the American public”.
Meanwhile, Mr Biden told his supporters that he believed he was on track to win the election and urged that every vote be counted.
Neither candidate has the 270 electoral votes needed to win the election yet, in a very close race that will likely come down to the wire in the swing states of Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan, which were not expected to finish counting their votes until Wednesday or even Friday.
Vote counting often goes on for days after Election Day in the US, particularly so this year given the pandemic, which produced a surge of mail-in ballots that take longer to count.
“Frankly, we did win this election,” said Mr Trump, speaking to supporters at the White House.
“Millions of people voted for us today,” he said. “A very sad group of people is trying to disenfranchise that group of people, and we will not stand for it.”
Mr Trump said that the results had been “phenomenal” and that he was winning Pennsylvania by “a tremendous amount”.
He had been getting ready to go outside and celebrate, but it was suddenly called off, he added.
But the President's premature declaration was dismissed by his ally and former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, who told ABC News: "There’s just no basis to make that argument tonight. There just isn’t."
Facebook also swung into action to add labels to social media posts from the two presidential candidates as a reminder that vote counting is still underway.
"Once President Trump began making premature claims of victory, we started running notifications on Facebook and Instagram that votes are still being counted and a winner is not projected," said Facebook. "We're also automatically applying labels to both candidates’ posts with this information."
Mr Biden's campaign said its lawyers are on standby if Mr Trump "makes good on his threat to go to court to try to prevent the proper tabulation of votes".
The Democratic candidate earlier in the night had called for patience.
"We knew because of the unprecedented mail-in vote it's going to take awhile," he said. "It ain't over until every vote is counted, every ballot is counted."
"We knew this would go on, but who knew we would go into maybe tomorrow morning, maybe longer," Mr Biden said as he stood beside his wife, Jill, on an outdoor stage in his hometown of Wilmington, Delaware, half an hour past midnight.
In a sign of how close the race has been, the only Electoral College vote to flip so far came from a congressional district in Nebraska that backed Mr Biden after favouring Mr Trump in 2016, Bloomberg reported.
Mr Trump won Florida, a crucial prize in the race to the White House that closed off former vice-president Biden’s hopes for an early knockout in the election.
The President also won Texas, which Democrats had hoped might turn blue and entirely reshape the electoral map.
Mr Trump significantly outperformed in one of Florida’s most populous counties, Miami-Dade.
After losing the county four years ago by 29 points, he lost by less than 8 to Mr Biden.
The county is diverse, with large Cuban and Venezuelan populations Mr Trump has courted by raising diplomatic and economic pressure on the socialist regimes in those countries.
He accused Mr Biden of sharing their politics.
Earlier, Mr Trump won Ohio and Mr Biden won Minnesota, states that each candidate had sought to take from the other but wound up politically unchanged from 2016.
Ohio was the first of several battleground states decided in the race.
Fox News and NBC News each called it for the incumbent just before midnight on Tuesday.
Mr Biden campaigned in the state the day before the election.
Mr Trump held multiple campaign rallies in Minnesota, a state he narrowly lost to Mrs Hillary Clinton in 2016.
But Mr Biden’s strength in the urban parts of the state kept it in the Democratic column.
Mr Biden scored early wins in traditionally Democratic states, while Mr Trump won Republican strongholds, according to the Associated Press and networks.
Supporters of Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden at various campaign rallies in key states in late October. PHOTO: AFP
Other battleground states that remain undecided include North Carolina, Georgia, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan.
Mr Trump holds leads in North Carolina and Georgia, though there are votes outstanding in each. Mr Trump won both states in 2016.
Mr Biden won Nebraska’s second congressional district, Minnesota, Hawaii, California, Oregon, Washington, Colorado, New York, Virginia, Illinois, Maryland, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Vermont, Rhode Island, New Mexico, Delaware, District of Columbia and New Hampshire, according to the AP.
Mr Trump won Nebraska’s other four Electoral College votes, Iowa, Idaho, Kansas, Arkansas, Indiana, Kentucky, Tennessee, South Carolina, Alabama, Mississippi, West Virginia, North Dakota, South Dakota, Wyoming, Louisiana, Oklahoma and Missouri, in addition to Ohio, Florida and Texas.
Supporters of US President Donald Trump at various campaign rallies in key states in late October. PHOTO: AFP
Nebraska is one of only two states, with Maine, that award an Electoral College vote to the winner of each congressional district.
Mr Trump won two districts and Mr Biden won one. Trump won the state overall, giving him Nebraska’s two remaining Electoral College votes.
Even if they yet claim the White House, a “blue wave” that Democrats hoped would also give them control of both chambers of Congress may fall short.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, a Kentucky Republican, was re-elected, the AP said.
Mr Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, the Senate Judiciary Committee chairman, was re-elected despite a Democratic challenger who badly out-raised him, and Senator Doug Jones, an Alabama Democrat, was defeated by Republican Tommy Tuberville.
Former Colorado governor John Hickenlooper, a Democrat, defeated Senator Cory Gardner, giving his party one pickup.
Other contested Senate seats remain undecided.
Mr Biden is winning over Latino and African-American voters in numbers similar to Mrs Clinton four years ago, and is narrowing Mr Trump’s margin among White voters, early exit polls from the AP show.
Mr Trump had a six-point lead among White voters in Tuesday’s election.
Network exit polls four years ago showed him with a 20-point advantage among those voters.
Mr Biden led among Latino voters by a 2-to-1 ratio, and Black voters 13-to-1.
Mr Trump and Mr Biden had little more to do than wait as officials tally the votes, including millions of pivotal mail-in ballots that could take days to count.
Some Trump supporters posted on Twitter that they were headed to the White House for an election-night party, while the President’s staff held a separate watch party in the West Wing.
A final outcome in the race may not be known until Wednesday or even later.
Elections officials in the key battlegrounds of Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania said they may be counting votes into the week.
Volatility persisted in US equity futures as investors worked to price in shifting odds for Mr Trump’s re-election.
The odds of a second Trump presidency on the Betfair exchange pared some of their gains, and were trading at about 55 per cent.
Mr Trump and Mr Biden both projected confidence throughout Election Day, pointing to long lines at some polling stations as signs they were poised to win.
While there were reports of high voter turnout in states including Texas, Florida and Arizona, there were few signs of disturbances that many had feared.
In Charlotte, North Carolina, police arrested a man who was legally carrying an unconcealed firearm after he returned to a polling station authorities said he’d been banned from.
The New York Police Department said it will deploy thousands of officers on street patrol on Tuesday night to dissuade violence.
“Don’t even try it,” Chief of Department Terence Monahan said.
Mr Biden entered Election Day in a strong position, leading nationally by 7.2 percentage points as well as in most swing states, according to the RealClearPolitics polling average.
But the Election Day vote was expected to favour Mr Trump in large part because Democrats encouraged their supporters to cast early ballots.
Despite Mr Biden’s advantage, some Democrats are spooked that Mr Trump could defy polls and win, just as he did in 2016.
But Mr Biden’s lead over Mr Trump in national polls is greater than Mrs Clinton’s was on Election Day in 2016.
RealClearPolitics had her ahead of Mr Trump nationally by 3.2 percentage points.
Mr Biden also has held consistent leads in some key swing states he needs to win, while in 2016 some of those states were infrequently polled and assumed to be a slam dunk for Democrats.
On Tuesday, Mr Trump predicted a “big red wave” among Republicans who cast their ballots in person rather than vote early or by mail as many Democrats had done.
“I think we’re going to have a great night,” Mr Trump told reporters when he stopped in at his campaign headquarters in Arlington, Virginia, before returning to the White House to await polling results and work the phones.
Voting takes place amid a deadly wave of the coronavirus pandemic, leading to millions of votes being cast by mail – a shift that could delay an official tally in some battleground states for days.
In Pennsylvania, for example, election officials could not begin processing early ballots until Tuesday, and it’s unclear how long it will take officials to tally them.
Early turnout information suggested that Republicans had erased Democrats’ lead in mail-in and early voting in Florida, a key state, Bloomberg reported.
Mr Michael Bloomberg, the founder and majority owner of Bloomberg LP, the owner of Bloomberg News, provided US$100 million (S$136 million) in support of Mr Biden and his running mate, Ms Kamala Harris, in Florida, half of that from his Independence USA PAC.
“If there’s something to talk about tonight, I’ll talk about it,” Mr Biden said on Tuesday afternoon at a campaign stop in Wilmington, Delaware.
“If not, I’ll wait till the votes are counted the next day.”
The Biden campaign sees multiple paths to victory, while Mr Trump has a narrower route that includes recapturing Pennsylvania while protecting the other states he won in 2016.
A win for Mr Biden in those states would all but guarantee him a victory.
Polls have begun to close in parts of the United States in the final hours of a historic US vote - set against the worst pandemic of the century and a global economic crisis - that will decide if President Donald Trump gets another four years in office or if his Democratic rival Joe Biden will be sent to the White House.
Follow live as we bring you the latest developments:
SAN FRANCISCO: Twitter and Facebook on Tuesday (Nov 3) suspended several recently created right-leaning news accounts posting information about voting in the hotly contested US election for violating their policies.
Twitter said the accounts had been suspended for violating its policy against "coordination", posting identical content while appearing independent or engaging in other covertly automated behaviour. Facebook suspended them for inauthentic behaviour.
One of those suspended, SVNewsAlerts, had more then 78,000 Twitter followers, after adding more than 10,000 in the past week.
The account frequently warned of election-related unrest and highlighted issues with voting safety and reliability. It pointed to fraud claims about Democrats and called attention to Republican President Donald Trump's rallies and speeches.
Other accounts suspended by Twitter included FJNewsReporter, Crisis_Intel and Faytuks.
A Facebook page also named SVNewsAlerts, which was suspended on Tuesday afternoon, had more than 20,000 followers. Facebook declined to comment further.
False or exaggerated reports about voting fraud and delays at the polls circulated on social media throughout the day, in some cases helped along by Republican accounts and online publications.
The FBI and the New York attorney general also said they were looking into a spate of mysterious robocalls urging people to stay home, which were reported in multiple battleground states.
The hashtag #StopTheSteal spiked from a few dozen mentions to more than 2,000 mentions over a 15-minute period in the morning, according to media intelligence firm Zignal Labs.
Zignal said unfounded claims about closed polling stations and excessively long lines in Republican-leaning areas in Pennsylvania, one of the most hotly contested states, received more than 33,000 mentions on Twitter.
Twitter appended fact-checking labels to multiple tweets from the @PhillyGOP account, which was among those using #StopTheSteal. The Philadelphia Republican Party did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment on the Twitter labels.
Far-right sites Breitbart and the Gateway Pundit both published articles claiming "the steal is on" in Pennsylvania that racked up thousands of shares on Facebook and Twitter.
In one video shared widely among conservative audiences, a Trump poll-watcher was seen being turned away from a site. Philadelphia officials investigated and concluded the man had mistakenly been barred under an expired law, which required authorisation to enter a specific polling spot. He was then admitted.
The video was viewed 2.4 million times on Twitter.
Followers of the conspiracy movement QAnon also spread the Pennsylvania reports, according to researchers at misinformation tracking firm Alethea Group.
Polls have begun to close in parts of the United States in the final hours of a historic US vote - set against the worst pandemic of the century and a global economic crisis - that will decide if President Donald Trump gets another four years in office or if his Democratic rival Joe Biden will be sent to the White House.
Follow live as we bring you the latest developments:
