Washington: Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden has emerged victorious in Michigan with 16 of the battleground state’s electoral votes, as indicated by media reports.
Both NBC and CNN News called the race for Biden on Wednesday evening, even as other pivotal states such as Pennsylvania, North Carolina and Nevada were yet to announce a winner, The Hill news site announced.
An entire day after Election Day, neither of the candidates had reached the 270 Electoral College votes required to win the White House. Yet, Biden’s triumphs in the Great Lakes states left him at 264, which means he was one battleground state away from crossing the edge and becoming president-elect.
Biden was accompanied by Kamala Harris, his running mate, at an evening news conference and said he currently expects to win the presidency, however, he avoided outright saying that he is going to win.
In the presidential election of 2016, then-Republican candidate Donald Trump took Michigan with 47.50 per cent of the votes, while his competitor Hillary Clinton followed very closely at 47.27 per cent.
Biden and Trump campaigned in Michigan ahead of Election Day.
While the President went to a rally on Monday, on October 31 Biden made a joint appearance with ex-President Barack Obama.
Michigan is the second of three Rust Belt “blue wall” states that Biden has won after Trump had flipped them four years prior.
The other two are Pennsylvania, where counting was as yet in progress of outstanding ballots, and Michigan.
As of Wednesday night, Biden had 264 electoral college votes, six less of the 270 required to become President, and Trump had just 214, as indicated by media tally.
The single way Trump can get re-elected is by gaining 54 of the remaining 60 votes.
Biden likewise made a record for the highest number of popular votes polled by a presidential nominee with 70.3 million ballots as of Wednesday evening and is still counting.
Trump had polled 67.5 million votes.
Because of the unfinished results, there was a tie in the party standings in the Senate, with each side having 48 seats.
Democrats had 205 seats to Republicans’ 190 in the House of Representatives.
It was not clear when or how quickly a national winner could be decided after a long, bitter campaign overwhelmed by the COVID-19 and its impacts on Americans and the national economy. In any case, Biden’s potential pathways to the White House were expanding quickly.
