From polling, counting, threats and rebukes: How the day unfolded in the US

The Election Day opened with a village of 12 residents in the US state of New Hampshire casting their ballot at midnight. It then progressed to voters exercising their franchise all over the country with polling opening and closing at different times, Alaska being the state where polls closed the last.

This was in-person voting. Nearly 100 million voters had already cast mail-in ballots, according to the US Elections Project. 

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Counting of votes

Although almost every major poll showed Democratic challenger Joe Biden’s significant lead over Republican incumbent Donald Trump, the results showed an extremely tight fight. While both the contenders won in the states they were expected to win, the fight was razor-thin in the key swing states.

While Biden won 50% of the votes counted, Trump won 48.2%, The New York Times reported, till 6 am ET.

As it stands, Biden has won 238 electoral votes and Trump 213, based on the states they’ve so far won.

Electoral college is a system in which every state gets a number of electors based on its population. These ultimately decide the election’s outcome. 

Also Read | Why we might not know the final US election result for days

Among the larger states, Biden has won California that has 59 electoral votes and Trump has won Florida, which has 29 votes.

Results are still awaited from the key swing states of Arizona, Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin. While in Arizona and Wisconsin, postal ballots and absentee votes will be counted on Wednesday morning, in Pennsylvania votes will be counted by Friday, The New York Times reported.

In North Carolina, mail-in ballots postmarked by November 3 are accepted till November 12.

So, whoever claims victory, the final picture will take days to emerge.

‘Keep faith,’ says Joe Biden

In a brief appearance in Pennsylvania, Biden told his supporters to keep faith.

“Keep the faith, we’re gonna win this,” he said.

“Your patience is commendable, we knew this was going long… we feel good about where we are, we believe we are on track to win this election,” he added.

Also read | For Florida Latinos, Trump’s tough talk against socialism rang true

Trump claims victory, threatens legal action

Biden’s address was followed by that of Trump, who addressed from the White House.

“We won it by a lot… they can’t catch us,” he said.

“We were winning in many other states and we were just about to declare it and then suddenly this fraud happened there. A fraud on the American people,” he claimed.

The President said he would “go to the US Supreme Court and ensure that suddenly new ballots are not mysteriously found at 4 am and added to their tally.”

The Biden campaign swiftly hit back saying if Trump went to the Court, “we have legal teams standing by ready to deploy to resist that effort.”