Key states in the US presidential election continued to count ballots, including those votes cast by mail in record numbers. To the irritation of President Donald Trump, the day-after counting was giving a boost to Democratic nominee Joe Biden in the battleground states where results remained in flux.
Biden won Michigan, and focus now shifted to Pennsylvania, which could decide the contest for both candidates, while Biden could claim victory if he takes either Georgia or Nevada. In both states Trump still has a minor lead.
* Donald Trump secured a lone electoral vote in Maine | **Joe Biden secured a lone electoral vote in Nebraska
Where do we stand?
If Biden's lead in Arizona holds, and he wins Nevada and its six electoral votes as expected, he will have 270 electoral votes and can claim victory.
Should Trump hold North Carolina and Georgia but lose Arizona, he must take Biden's home state of Pennsylvania as well as Nevada to win. Simply winning Pennsylvania - or even Pennsylvania as well as Alaska and its three electoral votes, as expected - will not be enough.
The paths to victory become more murky should some of the expected outcomes change.
Antifa protesters arrested in downtown Portland
Despite one BLM leader attempting to promote a message of unity among protesters, a white-majority splinter group broke off from the main gathering.
Demonstrators dressed in black smashed shopfront windows, parking meters and tagged walls. Portland Police, Multnomah County law enforcement and State Troopers soon closed in on the group, blocking off roads.
Eight arrests have been made, with police seizing a long gun of one individual. Police continue to chase down protesters in the hope of shutting down the disorder before it escalates.
Trump team files legal action in Georgia
Donald Trump’s lawyers are taking action in the deep South state of Georgia, a Republican stronghold which is still counting votes and too close to call.
They allege the state, with Republicans in virtually all statewide offices, are failing to ensure “absentee ballots are stored in a manner to ensure that such ballots are not inadvertently or intentionally counted”.
The Associated Press, one of the news organisations most trusted to make accurate election calls, has said Joe Biden has won Michigan. Essentially, all eyes now turn to Pennsylvania, which could decide the winner for both candidates.
Biden and Trump addresses side by side
Donald Trump and Joe Biden have both spoken while waiting for the results to come in. The Democrat candidate announced on Wednesday evening he was confident that he and Kamala Harris would win and lauded high voter turnout as he emphasized the importance of the US democratic system.
The Republican, in the early hours Wednesday morning, reiterated unsubstantiated claims that the Democrats were attempting to steal the election through fraud.
Networks call Michigan for Biden but Trump claims it
Minutes after US TV networks and other media started calling Michigan state for Joe Biden, Donald Trump tweeted he had won the state.
Trump said: “We have claimed, for Electoral Vote purposes, the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania.”
He also said he had won in Georgia and North Carolina though no results or calls have been made in those two states. Twitter marked Trump's post with a warning.
Vote counting enters the final straight for the six states still to call a result. Alaska (48 per cent of votes counted) with three Electoral College votes is expected to remain a Republican possession that will bump Donald Trump up to 217.
Joe Biden, on 248 votes, needs to find 22 more electoral college votes from the remaining five battleground states where it is too close to call.
GEORGIA (16 Electoral College votes)
Trump leads by about 78,000 votes but the outstanding ballots left to be counted are in counties where Mr Biden has performed well. About 5-6 per cent of votes are still to be counted.
MICHIGAN (16 Electoral College votes)
An estimated 4 per cent of the vote remains to be counted in the state, much of it from the Democratic stronghold of Detroit. That makes the race between Trump and Biden too early to call.
Trump claimed early on Wednesday that he was winning the contest with Mr Biden. Since then mail-in votes have been counted, which swayed the state in Biden's favour. He holds a 38,000-vote advantage over Trump.
NEVADA (6 Electoral College votes)
About 75 per cent of the votes are in and Mr Biden leads by fewer than 8,000 votes. But there are outstanding ballots to be counted in the coming days. Under state law, they can still be accepted as long as they were postmarked by the November 3. Additionally, many ballots received on election day are yet to be tallied. Trump narrowly lost Nevada in 2016 as the state has trended towards the Democrats in the past decade.
NORTH CAROLINA (15 Electoral College votes)
Mr Trump is holding a 80,000-vote advantage, but the race is too early to call, with fewer than 200,000 mail-in ballots still to count. The president also prematurely claimed early on Wednesday that he won the state.
PENNSYLVANIA (20 Electoral College votes)
More than one million votes are still to be counted. Pennsylvania was among a handful of battleground states in this election. Trump, who held a 675,000-vote lead early on Wednesday, prematurely declared victory in the state.
“We’re winning Pennsylvania by a tremendous amount. We’re up 690,000 votes in Pennsylvania. These aren’t even close. It’s not like, ‘oh, it’s close',” Trump said at the White House. Yet the vast majority of the votes left to be counted there were cast by mail, a form of voting that Biden has carried by a large margin.
Under state law, election officials could not begin processing mail-in ballots until the morning of election day, and only about 64 per cent of the vote had been counted.
With agencies (CNN/ The National)
The two-party/forced-coalition politicorporate system is a deceptive fraud for the centre-right vulturine Western establishment and their same rip-off pretend-choice baton just gets passed to either hand from time to time for the next fake sdministration to break more promises, blatantly lie and dogmatically profiteer from the detriment of anybody normal. It has always been like this but people get blinded by the phony histrionics - which is why they are still predictably rolling out the same 'issues' decade after decade.