Democratic candidate Joe Biden was leading US President Donald Trump in the US presidential race on Thursday and was closing in on the 270 Electoral College votes that would win him the White House. The Trump campaign has mounted legal challenges even as votes are still being counted.

According to an AP tally, which has predicted Arizona will go to Biden, the Democratic candidate has reached 264 but other US media outlets have yet to call Arizona for either candidate.

Among the states that remain undecided, Biden leads in Nevada while Trump is currently ahead in Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Alaska and Georgia. If he were to win all four states he would rack up 268 electoral votes, just shy of the 270 needed to win.

Trump is suing to stop vote counting in Pennsylvania and his campaign filed an injunction Thursday to bar votes from being counted in Philadelphia unless a Republican observer was present. He also filed a lawsuit to halt the vote count in Michigan, which a judge rejected. His team is seeking a recount of votes in Wisconsin; recounts in other states are also possible.

Trump has predicted a “big win”, claiming – without evidence – that Democrats are trying to “steal” the election. In remarks late Thursday, he repeated his unsubstantiated claims that illegitimate votes were being counted.

Biden has called for patience, saying he is “on track” to win the White House if all votes are counted.

America is set for its highest voter turnout in a century, with more than 100 million votes cast even before Election Day. But results have been slowed, in part, by the unprecedented number of mail-in ballots this year due to the coronavirus.

Congressional race results are also trickling in, with Democrats set to retain their majority in the House, albeit with a slimmer margin. Republicans appear poised to hold on to their majority in the Senate.

The head of a monitoring mission from the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), of which the United States is a member, said his team saw no evidence of fraud involving mail-in  ballots, describing the claims as “baseless” and Trump’s calls for an end to vote counting a “gross abuse of office”. The OSCE sends monitors to major elections in all of its member countries.

Source: France 24