Biden wins Michigan, Wisconsin, now on brink of White House

WASHINGTON (AP) — Joe Biden won the battleground prizes of Michigan and Wisconsin on Wednesday, reclaiming a key part of the “blue wall” that slipped away from Democrats four years ago and dramatically narrowing President Donald Trump's pathway to reelection.

A full day after Election Day, neither candidate had cleared the 270 Electoral College votes needed to win the White House. But Biden's victories in the Great Lakes states left him at 264, meaning he was one battleground state away from crossing the threshold and becoming president-elect.

Biden, who has received more than 71 million votes, the most in history, was joined by his running mate Kamala Harris at an afternoon news conference and said he now expected to win the presidency, though he stopped short of outright declaring victory.

“I will govern as an American president,” Biden said. ”There will be no red states and blue states when we win. Just the United States of America."

It was a stark contrast to Trump, who on Wednesday falsely proclaimed that he had won the election, even though millions of votes remained uncounted and the race was far from over.

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Trump sues in 3 states, laying ground for contesting outcome

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump's campaign filed lawsuits Wednesday in Pennsylvania, Michigan and Georgia, laying the groundwork for contesting battleground states as he slipped behind Democrat Joe Biden in the hunt for the 270 Electoral College votes needed to win the White House.

The new filings, joining existing Republican legal challenges in Pennsylvania and Nevada, demand better access for campaign observers to locations where ballots are being processed and counted, and raise absentee ballot concerns, the campaign said. However, at one Michigan location in question The Associated Press observed poll watchers from both sides monitoring on Wednesday.

The AP called Michigan for Democrat Joe Biden on Wednesday. Nevada, Pennsylvania and Georgia are undecided.

The Trump campaign also is seeking to intervene in a Pennsylvania case at the Supreme Court that deals with whether ballots received up to three days after the election can be counted, deputy campaign manager Justin Clark said.

The actions reveal an emerging legal strategy that the president had signaled for weeks, namely that he would attack the integrity of the voting process in states where the result could mean his defeat.

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With presidency in reach, Dems grapple with disappointment

WASHINGTON (AP) — Democrats went into Election Day hoping to reclaim the White House and majorities in both chambers of Congress in a victory that would demonstrate an unmistakable repudiation of President Donald Trump and a Republican Party remade in his image.

It didn't work out that way.

More than 12 hours after polls closed, Biden held a narrow lead in some key states with hundreds of thousands of votes yet to be counted, and he has a comfortable advantage in the national popular vote. But as of midday Wednesday, there was no clear Democratic wave.

Republicans held key Senate seats that Democrats hoped to flip, and the GOP may ultimately shrink the Democrats' House majority. And even if Trump were to ultimately lose, the closeness of the presidential contest raised the prospect that a Biden presidency would have difficulty enacting progressive priorities or quickly move past the cultural and partisan fissures of the Trump era.

“The Trump coalition is more stubborn and resilient and capable than maybe we anticipated,” said Rep. Gerald Connolly, a six-term Democratic lawmaker from Virginia. “The country is even more polarized and divided.”

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Election officials scramble to count ballots in key states

ATLANTA (AP) — Election officials in several key states furiously counted ballots Wednesday as the nation awaited the outcome of the race between President Donald Trump and Democrat Joe Biden and braced for possible recounts and legal challenges.

Unlike in previous years, states were contending with an avalanche of mail ballots driven by the global pandemic. Every election, what’s reported on election night are unofficial results, and the counting of votes extends past Election Day. This year, with so many mail ballots and close races in key states, counting every vote was expected to take more time.

Here's what was happening Wednesday in six key states:

GEORGIA

Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger said he was pushing counties to complete vote tallies, with just under 100,000 ballots left to count as of Wednesday night.

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EXPLAINER: Why AP called Michigan for Biden

WHY AP CALLED MICHIGAN FOR BIDEN:

Democrat Joe Biden has won the electoral battleground of Michigan, the third state that President Donald Trump carried in 2016 that the former vice president has flipped. The Biden victory narrows Trump's path to re-election.

The Associated Press declared Biden the winner of the state at 5:56 p.m. EST Wednesday after conducting an analysis of votes and remaining ballots left to be counted. It showed there were not enough votes left in Republican-leaning areas for Trump to catch Biden's lead.

Biden had a 70,000-vote lead on Wednesday evening, a margin over Trump of about 1.3 percentage points. The ballots that remained to be counted were from overwhelmingly Democratic areas: Wayne County, which is home to Detroit; the city of Grand Rapids, Michigan's second largest city; Genesee County; and Kalamazoo.

Michigan is among a handful of battleground states where Trump prematurely claimed early Wednesday that he was “winning” the contest with Biden. Both are locked in a tight race for the 270 electors needed to win the presidency, though Trump's path is narrowing.

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Trump backers demand Michigan vote center 'Stop the count!'

Dozens of supporters of President Donald Trump chanting “Stop the count!” descended on a ballot-tallying center in Detroit on Wednesday, while thousands of anti-Trump protesters demanding a complete vote count in the still-undecided presidential contest took to the streets in cities across the U.S.

In New York City, thousands marched past boarded-up luxury stores on Manhattan’s Fifth Avenue, calling for every vote to be tallied. The march was largely peaceful, though police said they made at least 20 arrests after a smaller, rowdier group began protesting police misconduct by blocking traffic and setting fires.

In Chicago, protesters demanding a complete count marched through downtown and along a street across the river from Trump Tower.

Similar protests — sometimes about the election, sometimes about racial inequality — took place in at least a half-dozen cities, including Los Angeles, Seattle, Houston, Pittsburgh, Minneapolis and San Diego.

In Portland, Oregon, which has been a scene of regular protests for months, Gov. Kate Brown activated the National Guard after demonstrators engaged in what authorities said was widespread violence downtown, including smashing windows. Protesters in Portland were demonstrating about a range of issues, including police brutality and the counting of the vote.

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US sets record for cases amid election battle over virus

New confirmed cases of the coronavirus in the U.S. have climbed to an all-time high of more than 86,000 per day on average, in a glimpse of the worsening crisis that lies ahead for the winner of the presidential election.

Cases and hospitalizations are setting records all around the country just as the holidays and winter approach, demonstrating the challenge that either President Donald Trump or former Vice President Joe Biden will face in the coming months.

Daily new confirmed coronavirus cases in the U.S. have surged 45% over the past two weeks, to a record 7-day average of 86,352, according to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University. Deaths are also on the rise, up 15 percent to an average of 846 deaths every day.

The total U.S. death toll is already more than 232,000, and total confirmed U.S. cases have surpassed 9 million. Those are the highest totals in the world, and new infections are increasing in nearly every state.

Several states on Wednesday reported grim numbers that are fueling the national trends. Texas reported 9,048 new cases and 126 deaths, and the number of coronavirus patients in Missouri, Nebraska and Oklahoma hospitals set records. About a third of the new cases in Texas happened in hard-hit El Paso, where a top health officials said hospitals are at a “breaking point.”

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Republicans retain power in states despite Democratic push

JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. (AP) — After a costly and intense political battle for control of state capitols, the composition of state legislatures and governors' offices will look a lot like it did before Tuesday's elections.

That means Republicans will again control significantly more states than Democrats, giving the GOP greater power over the once-a-decade task of redrawing congressional and legislative districts based on census results as well as a continued platform to push for conservative economic and social policies.

"When you look at state legislative races, a lot of money got spent, a lot of turnout was had, and yet the end result was pretty much where we started," said Wendy Underhill, director of elections and redistricting at the National Conference of State Legislatures. “This was a status quo election.”

Heading into Tuesday, Republicans had full control of 29 state legislatures compared to 19 for Democrats. The GOP also held 26 governors' offices while the Democrats had 24.

The GOP governors' count grew by one as Montana voters elected U.S. Rep. Greg Gianforte to succeed term-limited Democratic Gov. Steve Bullock. Republicans also appeared to flip control of the New Hampshire House and Senate, according to tracking by the NCSL and national Republican and Democratic groups.

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Election splits Congress, GOP bolstered as Democrats falter

WASHINGTON (AP) — The election scrambled seats in the House and Senate but ultimately left Congress much like it began, deeply split as voters resisted big changes despite the heated race at the top of the ticket for the White House.

It’s an outcome that dampens Democratic demands for a bold new agenda, emboldens Republicans and almost ensures partisan gridlock regardless of who wins the presidency. Or perhaps, as some say, it provides a rare opening for modest across-the-aisle cooperation.

Speaker Nancy Pelosi was on track to keep control of the Democratic House, but saw her majority shrinking and her leadership called into question. Control of the Senate tilted Republicans' way as they fended off an onslaught of energized challengers, though a few races remained undecided Wednesday.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said Wednesday he’s confident “no matter who ends up running the government” they’ll be “trying to overcome all that and get results.”

One certainty is the upended projections will force a rethinking of polling, fundraising and the very messages the parties use to reach voters in the Trump era and beyond.

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Trump and allies spread falsehoods to cast doubt on election

While much of America was sleeping Wednesday morning, President Donald Trump’s leads in crucial battleground states began slipping — and that's when online falsehoods about the election started surging.

More than 100,000 votes that Democratic nominee Joe Biden picked up in Wisconsin were evidence of “outright corruption,” one Twitter user surmised. The ballots were “MAGICALLY” found, claimed another.

In fact, Biden's early morning comeback in the closely watched Midwestern state was simply the result of absentee and early votes being counted.

With the outcome of the U.S. presidential race still in limbo, Trump and his supporters seized on — and spread — online misinformation about legally cast absentee and mail-in votes in battleground states. They used it as fodder to support the president’s baseless declaration on live television early Wednesday that Democrats were trying to “steal the election” from him.

“They are finding Biden votes all over the place — in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Michigan. So bad for our Country!” Trump wrote in a tweet hours later. Trump’s campaign filed lawsuits Wednesday in Pennsylvania, Michigan and Georgia, paving the way for him to contest the election's outcome.