AP News in Brief at 6:04 a.m. EST

Biden rebuilding 'blue wall' in race for the White House

WASHINGTON (AP) — Democrat Joe Biden was pushing closer to the 270 Electoral College votes needed to carry the White House, securing victories in the “blue wall” battlegrounds of Wisconsin and Michigan and narrowing President Donald Trump's path.

With just a handful of states still up for grabs, Trump tried to press his case in court in some key swing states. It was unclear if any of his campaign's legal maneuvering over balloting would succeed in shifting the race in his favor.

Two days after Election Day, neither candidate had amassed the 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 — any would do — from becoming president-elect.

Trump, with 214 electoral votes, faced a much higher hurdle. To reach 270, he needed to claim all four remaining battlegrounds: Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Georgia and Nevada.

With millions of votes yet to be tabulated, Biden already had received more than 71 million votes, the most in history. At an afternoon news conference Wednesday, the former vice president said he expected to win the presidency but stopped short of outright declaring victory.

___

EXPLAINER: States still in play and what makes them that way

WASHINGTON (AP) — A handful of pivotal states remained in play Wednesday in the tightly contested U.S. presidential race. Here, The Associated Press reviews them and examines the reasons why they could still go to either Republican Donald Trump or Democrat Joe Biden:

___

GEORGIA: Outstanding ballots left to be counted in counties where Biden has performed well.

THE BACKGROUND: Early Wednesday, Trump prematurely claimed he carried Georgia.

“It’s ... clear that we have won Georgia. We’re up by 2.5%, or 117,000 (votes) with only 7% (of the vote) left” to count, Trump said during an early morning appearance at the White House. He also said he planned to contest the U.S. presidential election before the Supreme Court. It was unclear exactly what legal action he might pursue.

___

Trump sues in 3 states, laying ground for contesting outcome

WASHINGTON (AP) — As Democrat Joe Biden inched closer to the 270 Electoral College votes needed to win the White House, President Donald Trump's campaign put into action the legal strategy the president had signaled for weeks: attacking the integrity of the voting process in states where the result could mean his defeat.

Democrats scoffed at the legal challenges the president's campaign filed Wednesday in Pennsylvania, Michigan and Georgia. In spite of the aggressive move, the flurry of court action did not seem obviously destined to impact the election's outcome.

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 raised absentee ballot concerns, the campaign said.

The Associated Press called Michigan for Democrat Joe Biden on Wednesday. The AP has not called Nevada, Pennsylvania or Georgia.

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.

___

With another Florida loss, Democrats begin second guessing

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (AP) — Perhaps only in Florida is a loss by fewer than 4 percentages points considered a public drubbing.

In a state famous for razor-thin margins, the size of former Vice President Joe Biden's loss to President Donald Trump was humiliating for Democrats and sent many searching for answers to how they failed to close the deal with voters — again.

Democrats zeroed in on two clear explanations: Biden didn't connect with the state's Latino voters, performing particularly poorly with Cuban voters in South Florida. They also second-guessed the party's decision to freeze in-person organizing during the worst of the pandemic, a decision that set them back in reaching voters.

“Clearly, Biden was not able to capture the imagination of the Florida electorate and create the type of enthusiasm to go out and vote for Biden like Trump did with his base of supporters in the state," said Fernand Amandi, a Miami-based Democratic pollster. “It’s an unacceptable record of futility. What makes it so vexing is that the problems that need to be fixed are so apparent. But they just don’t get fixed."

Amandi focused on the Biden campaign's struggles to connect with Hispanic voters in the state.

___

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.

___

Trump backers converge on vote centers in Michigan, Arizona

Dozens of angry supporters of President Donald Trump converged on vote-counting centers in Detroit and Phoenix as the returns went against him Wednesday in the two key states, while thousands of anti-Trump protesters demanding a complete tally of the ballots in the still-undecided election took to the streets in cities across the U.S.

“Stop the count!” the Trump supporters chanted in Detroit. “Stop the steal!” they said in Phoenix.

The protests came as the president insisted without evidence that there were major problems with the voting and the ballot counting, especially with mail-in votes, and as Republicans filed suit in various states over the election.

Wearing Trump gear, the Phoenix protesters filled much of the parking lot at the Maricopa County election center, and members of the crowd chanted, “Fox News sucks!” in anger over the network declaring Joe Biden the winner in Arizona.

Rep. Paul Gosar, an Arizona Republican and staunch Trump supporter, joined the crowd, declaring: “We're not going to let this election be stolen. Period.”

___

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.”

___

In Spain, coronavirus puts the poor at the back of the line

MADRID (AP) — Erika Oliva spends at least three hours a week standing in line at a soup kitchen.

She spends a couple more at the social worker’s office with her 8-year-old son, who has autism. She waits on the phone to the health center or when she wants to check if her application for a basic income program will get her the promised 1,015 euros ($1,188).

So far, it hasn’t.

“They are always asking for more papers but we still haven’t seen a euro. Everything seems to be closed because of the pandemic. Or you are told to go online,” said Oliva. She managed to apply online, but others in her situation don’t know how to use a computer or simply don’t have one.

“Poor people queue. It’s what we know how to do best,” Oliva said.

___

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.

___

World markets rally as markets shrug off election limbo

U.S. futures and world shares surged on Thursday as investors awaited the outcome of the U.S. presidential election and embraced the upside of more gridlock in Washington.

European markets opened higher after a day of gains in Asia, while the fate of the U.S. presidency remained undecided as neither President Donald Trump or Democratic challenger Joe Biden had secured the 270 Electoral College votes needed to win.

Analysts say a Congress likely once again split between a Democratic House and a Republican Senate is expected to keep U.S. tax and other policies relatively stable amid legislative stalemates. And share prices tend to rise regardless of who is in the White House.

Taking reassurance where they can, “markets have been happy to presume that this Democratic White . . . House and Republican Senate is the ‘Goldilocks’ outcome. In other words, a ’Goldilocks Gridlock,‴ Mizuho Bank said in a commentary.

An expectation that Biden has a chance of winning also has raised hopes that U.S. foreign policies might be “more clear," said Jackson Wong, asset management director of Amber Hill Capital. He added, “investors are cheering for that. That’s why the markets are performing well.”