WASHINGTON: Former Vice President Joe Biden has moved to within 17 electoral votes of claiming the presidency by winning the state of Michigan, CNN reported.
His breakthrough came as Trump’s campaign launched a flurry of lawsuits in several states designed to stop the former vice president from getting over the line, including challenging Pennsylvania’s vote count at the Supreme Court.
Biden’s victory in Michigan means he has now captured two-thirds of the vaunted “blue wall” in the Midwest and Pennsylvania that paved Trump’s path to victory four years ago.
If Biden holds his leads in Nevada and Arizona, where counts have yet to be completed, he will have sufficient Electoral College votes to be the 46th president.
The Biden camp is also confident of overtaking Trump in another key battleground state, Pennsylvania, where hundreds of thousands of mail-in and early absentee votes, which are expected to favor the Democrats, are still being counted.
But the Trump campaign plans to ask the court to intervene in a case challenging a Supreme Court decision that allowed Pennsylvania ballots to be counted after Election Day.
The justices had refused to expedite the appeal before the election, and are considering whether to take up the case.
Biden holds a 253-213 lead in the Electoral College. A candidate must reach the 270 mark to win the presidency.
Races in Arizona, Georgia, Nevada, North Carolina and Pennsylvania are too close to call. In many cases, the tight races could depend on the counting of absentee and mail-in ballots, which tend to disproportionately favor Democrats.
In a brief statement Wednesday afternoon, Biden said his campaign was on track to win 270 electoral votes but that he was not declaring victory until the count was completed in key states. “Here, the people rule. Power can’t be taken or asserted,” Biden said, in a speech in which he tried to create the aura of a winner, pledging to bring the country together and to work for national healing as president.
Trump hasn’t appeared in public since his brazen and false claim of victory in the early hours of Wednesday morning in which he demanded that legally cast ballots in contested states where he may fall behind not be counted.
According to Fox news, Biden has taken the lead with 264 Electoral College votes against 214 by Donald Trump. The presidency, now, hinges on four battle grounds after Biden wins Michigan.
(With inputs from Agencies)
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