COURTESY HT NOV 7

MR. PRESIDENT-ELECT?

Joe Biden, leading in key states, looks set to be the next US President, unless Trump can pull off an electoral or legal miracle. REUTERS
Yashwant Raj

letters@hindustantimes.com

Washington : Joe Biden, the scrappy kid from Scranton who overcame a stutter, was on the verge on Friday of winning the White House after overtaking President Donald Trump in Pennsylvania, and the “tipping-point” state where he trailed by 700,000 votes at one stage. He led also in all but one of the remaining states that had not been called yet.

Pennsylvania’s 20 Electoral College votes alone will suffice, however.

Biden has been at 264 votes, according to the Associated Press tracker (other news outlets have him at 253 with Arizona still up for grabs according to them), to President Trump’s 214. That tally has remained unchanged for more than a day now.

But as time passed and leads changed, he was fast emerging as the clear winner.

The former vice-president was expanding his lead over the President in Pennsylvania, was narrowly ahead in Georgia (16 electoral college votes), a Republican stronghold that had last voted Democratic in 1992, and in Nevada (6). President Trump was ahead in North Carolina (15), but that alone was not sufficient to get him anywhere near a credible path to victory.

There was been no word from Biden or his campaign on the outcome till the time of going to print on Friday. But a sense of anticipation was setting in. His Secret Service security was being beefed up, according to reports, and a “no-fly zone” order by the US Federal Aviation Administration went into effect for over his home in Wilmington, Delaware.

But the Trump campaign reacted by, not surprisingly, rejecting increasing signs of the inevitability of Biden’s victory. “This election is not over. The false projection of Joe Biden as the winner is based on results in four states that are far from final,” Matt Morgan, Trump campaign’s general counsel, said in a statement. He indicated the campaign would seek a recount of votes in Georgia, and repeated the campaign’s grievances and allegations of election irregularities in Pennsylvania.

Morgan also claimed the President was “on course” to win Arizona (11), where Trump has indeed narrowed the gap between him and Biden.