President Trump and Democratic challenger Joseph R. Biden were locked in a tight battle in the race for the White House as of early Wednesday, with votes still being counted in a handful of key states that have yet to be called.
Mr. Trump notched wins on Tuesday in key states such as Florida, Ohio and Texas, which Democrats had hoped to make more competitive this time around.
Mr. Biden held his ground in typically bluer states such as Minnesota, Virginia and Colorado.
Mr. Trump held slight leads in North Carolina and Georgia, though votes in a good deal of Democratic-leaning areas were still to be counted.
In Pennsylvania, there are more than 1 million mail ballots remaining to be counted, Gov. Tom Wolf said. Mr. Trump held a lead of more than 600,000 in overall votes counted, or 12 points, with about 75% of the estimated votes reported.
But Mr. Biden was winning the absentee ballots by a margin of nearly four-to-one.
“I promised Pennsylvanians that we would count every vote and that’s what we’re going to do,” the Democratic governor posted on Twitter Wednesday morning.
He decried “a partisan attack on Pennsylvania’s elections, our votes, and democracy.”
“Our counties are working tirelessly to process votes as quickly AND as accurately as possible,” Mr. Wolf said. “Pennsylvania will have a fair election and we will count every vote.”
Pennsylvania is among a number of key states that by law could not start processing mail ballots until Tuesday morning.
It’s still unclear whether Mr. Trump’s lead there would be too big for the Democrat to make up the deficit.
“We’re winning Pennsylvania by a tremendous amount,” Mr. Trump had said hours earlier.
Mr. Biden took a slight lead in Michigan Wednesday morning as additional ballots from Democratic-leaning areas such as Wayne County, where Detroit is, were tabulated.
Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson, a Democrat, said on CNN that the state is on track to have a more complete picture of where things stand by the end of the day.
Earlier, Mr. Biden had pulled ahead in Wisconsin as absentee ballot counts from Democratic-heavy Milwaukee County rolled in.
The former vice president also held a slight lead in Nevada, where further updates weren’t expected until Thursday morning.
The Associated Press had called Arizona for Mr. Biden, which would be the only state thus far that hasn’t followed its 2016 results and would be a big pick-up for the Democrat. Arizona last broke for a Democratic presidential candidate in 1996.
Mr. Biden said in a speech to supporters early Wednesday that he likes where he stands but that all votes should be counted.
Mr. Trump told his supporters at the White House early Wednesday that in his mind, he won the election and said he wants vote-counting to stop.
The president said he planned to petition the U.S. Supreme Court, though he didn’t provide additional details on what that would entail.
The Biden campaign said it’s prepared for any such legal challenges.
Mr. Trump has decried recent Supreme Court decisions that let stand lower court rulings allowing mail ballots to be counted in Pennsylvania and North Carolina as long as they’re received by Nov. 6 and Nov. 12, respectively.
• Dave Boyer can be reached at dboyer@washingtontimes.com.
• David Sherfinski can be reached at dsherfinski@washingtontimes.com.
Please read our comment policy before commenting.