Trump declares self winner of U.S. presidential election

US President Donald Trump has declared himself the winner of the presidential elections.

Trump spoke from the White House this morning, stating that from his point of view, “We already have won this election.”

“The results tonight have been phenomenal,” he said to a room of cheering supporters.

“Such success. The citizens of this country have come out in record numbers. There’s never been anything like it.”

The incumbent also threatened Supreme Court action to stop vote counts.

Trump won the battlegrounds of Florida, Ohio and Texas, dashing Joe Biden’s hopes for a decisive early defeat of the president, but the former Vice-President said he was on track to winning the White House by taking three key Rust Belt states.

Biden, 77, was eyeing the so-called “blue wall” states of Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania that sent Trump, 74, to the White House in 2016 for possible breakthroughs once those states finish counting votes cast earlier by mail and in person.

In Wisconsin and Pennsylvania and much of Michigan, mail-in ballots were not processed until Election Day on Tuesday.

“We feel good about where we are,” Biden said in his home state of Delaware, shouting over a din of supporters in cars honking their horns in approval. “We believe we’re on track to win this election.”

Even without Pennsylvania, Biden victories in Arizona, Michigan and Wisconsin, along with his projected win in a congressional district in Nebraska, which apportions electoral votes by district, would put him in the White House, as long as he also holds the states that Trump lost in 2016.

“We are up BIG, but they are trying to STEAL the Election. We will never let them do it. Votes cannot be cast after the Polls are closed!” Trump said on Twitter, which swiftly tagged the tweet as possibly misleading.

Trump has repeatedly and without evidence suggested that an increase in mail-in voting will lead to an increase in fraud, although election experts say that fraud is rare and mail-in ballots are a long-standing feature of American elections.

In Pennsylvania, of the 4.5 million votes counted so far, only 750,000 were absentee votes, or just 17%. According to Edison Research, more than 2.4 million early ballots were cast in the state, of which nearly 1.6 million were by Democrats and about 555,000 by Republicans.

In Georgia, Trump was leading 52% to 48% at 1:40 a.m., but several hundred thousand ballots remained to be counted early Wednesday in Atlanta and its suburban counties. Many of those areas had favored Democrats in the past, and many of the votes remaining to be counted were those cast before the election.

Supporters of both candidates called the election a referendum on Trump and his tumultuous first term. The winner will lead a nation strained by a pandemic that has killed more than 231,000 people and left millions more jobless, racial tensions and political polarization that has only worsened during a vitriolic campaign.