Biden Edges Toward Narrow Victory

Democratic challenger Joe Biden edged closer Wednesday to amassing the necessary 270 electoral votes he needs to defeat President Donald Trump and become the 46th president of the United States—winning back two key Midwestern states that his party lost in 2016, Wisconsin and Michigan, in late vote counts.

But the incumbent Trump has refused to concede, instead sponsoring legal challenges to vote-counting in several battleground states. And it was clear, based on exit polls, that the nation remains even more bitterly polarized than pundits thought, posing titanic challenges for a Biden presidency. Voters were sharply divided based on race, ethnicity, and education, perhaps even more so than in 2016. Reflecting those divisions, a record number of Americans are believed to have voted in the presidential election, but the partisan divide is fraught with rage and even threats of violence.

Biden himself, in a statement late Wednesday afternoon, did not declare victory but said, “I’m confident that we’ll emerge victorious,” and that “when it’s finished, God willing,” he’ll be only the fourth challenger in the last century to unseat an elected incumbent president. The former vice president—who if he’s inaugurated Jan. 20 will be, at 78, the oldest president to be sworn in—also alluded to the difficulties ahead, facing a possibly still Republican-led Senate.

“The presidency itself is not a partisan institution,” Biden said, alluding to Trump’s tumultuous, highly divisive tenure, which made him the only president in the modern polling era never to have reached 50 percent approval at any point during his tenure. “We have to stop treating our opponents as enemies,” Biden said.

But that’s exactly the effort the Trump campaign has already launched, filing suit in Philadelphia alleging improper monitoring of ballots that Trump’s lawyer Rudy Giuliani called “totally illegitimate.” At a news conference, the president’s son Eric Trump said, “The Democrats know the only way they can win this election is to cheat in Pennsylvania.” 

Many thousands of votes remain uncounted in Pennsylvania, but even as Giuliani was speaking, Fox News joined CNN in calling Michigan for Biden, taking him up to as many as 264 electoral votes, according to the Fox count. Biden would then need only Nevada, a state where he is leading, to put him over the top, even without winning Pennsylvania. But the final vote counts remained uncertain Wednesday night.

To leave FP’s live election blog and read the rest of this article, click here.