Earlier, Biden told supporters sitting in cars outside the Chase Center in Wilmington, Delaware, that he was “on track to win this election” and urged his supporters to be patient as they waited for the ballots to be counted.
The Associated Press, relied on by many news organizations for election calls, said in a statement that it “is not calling the presidential race yet because neither candidate has secured the 270 electoral college votes needed to claim victory.”
Both men still have paths to victory, though it appears that Biden has more options than Trump does. 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 Biden wins any two of Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Georgia, he’ll win.
Biden edged to a small lead in Wisconsin, up almost 21,000 votes, as returns from Green Bay and Kenosha were added to the total.
Biden was only down by about 13,500 votes overall in Michigan with a sizable number of absentee ballots left to count. In Nevada, where tallying was halted until Thursday, Biden was clinging to a lead of almost 8,000 votes.
There were few surprises among states where the AP announced winners, with Republican and Democratic states generally falling in line, despite expectations for several upsets. The only other Electoral College vote to flip so far, besides in Arizona, came from a congressional district in Nebraska that backed Biden after favoring Trump in 2016.
Trump won Florida, a crucial prize in the race to the White House that closed off 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.
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 Biden.
The county is diverse, with large Cuban and Venezuelan populations Trump has courted by raising diplomatic and economic pressure on the socialist regimes in those countries. He accused Biden of sharing the regimes’ politics.
Trump won Ohio and 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.
Biden carried Minnesota even though Trump held multiple campaign rallies in a state he narrowly lost to Hillary Clinton in 2016. But Biden’s strength in the urban parts of the state kept it in the Democratic column.