WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump carried Florida, the nation's most prized battleground state, and he and Democrat Joe Biden focused early Wednesday on the three Northern industrial states — Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania — that could prove crucial in determining who wins the White House.
Four years after Trump became the first Republican in a generation to capture that trio of states, they were again positioned to influence the direction of the presidential election. Trump kept several states, including Texas, Iowa and Ohio, where Biden had made a strong play in the final stages of the campaign.
By early Wednesday, neither candidate had the 270 Electoral College votes needed to win. The tight overall contest reflected a deeply polarized nation struggling to respond to the worst health crisis in more than a century, with millions of lost jobs, and a reckoning on racial injustice.
Trump, in an early morning appearance at the White House, made premature claims of victories in several key states and said he would take the election to the Supreme Court. It was unclear exactly what legal action he might try to pursue.
Several states allow mailed-in votes to be accepted after Election Day, as long as they were postmarked by Tuesday. That includes Pennsylvania, where ballots postmarked by Nov 3. can be accepted if they arrive up to three days after the election.
Trump suggested those ballots shouldn't be counted. But Biden, briefly appearing in front of supporters in Delaware, urged patience, saying the election “ain’t over until every vote is counted, every ballot is counted.”
“It’s not my place or Donald Trump’s place to declare who’s won this election,” Biden said. “That’s the decision of the American people.”
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Jaffe reported from Wilmington, Delaware. Miller reported from Washington. Associated Press writers Robert Burns, Kevin Freking, Aamer Madhani, Deb Riechmann and Will Weissert in Washington, Bill Barrow and Haleluya Hadero in Atlanta, Jeff Martin in Cobb County, Georgia, Thomas Beaumont in Des Moines, Juan Lozano in Houston, Corey Williams in West Bloomfield, Michigan, Kathy McCormack in Concord, New Hampshire, and Natalie Pompilio contributed to this report.