Biden's US electoral victory 'imminent' — Pelosi
Courtney Weaver
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Joe Biden's US electoral victory was "imminent" on Friday morning, adding the Democratic nominee would soon no longer be referred to as the former vice-president but "president-elect".
"It's a happy day for our country," Ms Pelosi declared at a press conference in the US Capitol. "Because Joe Biden is a unifier."
She continued: "President-elect Biden has a strong mandate to lead and he will have a strong Democratic House with him."
Ms Pelosi acknowledged that several House Democrats had endured unexpected losses in their re-election races on Tuesday night, but emphasised that the party would still retain control of the House, albeit by a smaller margin.
"We did not win every battle in the House, but we did win the war."
She said she hoped some of the members who lost in districts that Mr Trump won would consider running again in two years, when the president was no longer in the White House or on the ballot.
She said congressional Democrats were still hoping to pass a coronavirus stimulus bill in the weeks before the January inauguration.
"While we prepare for the new Biden administration, we must also move swiftly for a new coronavirus relief bill... We want the Republicans to come back to the table [and] the White House of leadership."
Recount expected in Georgia due to small margin
Mamta Badkar
A top election official in the state of Georgia said he expects a ballot recount in what is proving to be a very tight race in the battleground state, hours after Joe Biden pulled ahead of Donald Trump in the vote count.
"With a margin that small there will be a recount in Georgia," said Brad Raffensperger, Georgia Secretary of State. "The final tally in Georgia at this point has huge implications for the entire country."
Mr Trump had taken a strong early lead in Georgia, which carries 16 electoral votes and has not voted for a Democrat for president since Bill Clinton in 1992. But as of Friday morning, with 99 per cent of ballots counted, Mr Biden held a slim 1,098 vote lead. State election officials have said there are 4,169 ballots left to count.
Mr Biden also took the lead in Pennsylvania, which carries 20 electoral votes, earlier this morning, putting him closer to winning the more than 270 electoral votes needed to claim the presidency.
The Trump campaign said this morning that the election is "not over" and Matt Morgan, the Trump campaign's general counsel, had said Georgia was headed for a recount. The Trump campaign has repeatedly said it will not concede without a legal fight even if Mr Biden has surpassed the 270 vote threshold.
Trump campaign says race 'not over' after Biden takes Pennsylvania lead
Katrina Manson
Donald Trump's campaign insisted the election was “not over” on Friday morning as Joe Biden swung into the lead in Pennsylvania, putting him on track for victory.
Matt Morgan, the Trump campaign’s general counsel, said in a statement that it disputed Mr Biden’s lead in four states — Georgia, Pennsylvania, Nevada and Arizona.
He appeared to acknowledge, however, that Mr Biden was on track to win in the first three states, saying the campaign wanted a recount in Georgia, a state that Mr Trump won in 2016 and which Mr Biden is now leading by a slim margin with 99 per cent of the votes counted.
He also made unsubstantiated claims that there were “many irregularities” in Pennsylvania, where Mr Biden moved ahead of Mr Trump on Friday morning with 98 per cent of the vote tallied, and also complained about the vote in Nevada, where Mr Biden is also ahead.
Only in Arizona did the campaign seek to claim the president was on course to win the state “outright”. Associated Press has already called the state for Mr Biden, although his lead has since tightened with 10 per cent of the vote still to be counted.
US rally halts as Biden looks set for victory after Pennsylvania push
Naomi Rovnick in London
A rally in US stocks, in a strong case of buying the rumour and selling the fact, has ended after Democrat Joe Biden appeared on course to clinch the presidency.
The tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite, which gained almost 7 per cent in the two previous sessions, dropped 1.3 per cent. The S&P 500 fell 0.6 per cent.
Investors and strategists had ascribed the rally earlier in the week to markets betting on a Biden win and a Republican-controlled Senate, which is viewed as less disruptive for corporate taxation and regulation than a Democrat sweep would have been.
Brian Gardner, chief Washington policy strategist at Stifel, warned investors against complacency, however. He wrote in a research note:
We think a Biden administration could have some latitude from Republicans on antitrust policy as both parties have become populist to varying degrees.
We expect M&A deals will receive more scrutiny than before and anti-competitive behavior is going to get a closer look.
Biden edges ahead in Pennsylvania, closing in on presidency
Joe Biden has taken a lead over Donald Trump in Pennsylvania, putting him on course to win more than the 270 electoral votes needed to become the next US president.
Mr Biden was up by about 5,500 votes on Friday morning as state officials continued to tabulate ballots from the heavily Democratic precincts in and around Philadelphia, Pennsylvania’s largest city.
If Mr Biden wins Pennsylvania’s 20 electoral votes, he would have more than enough to win the presidency. He maintains leads in three other states that have yet to be declared. Mr Trump’s legal team has challenged the Pennsylvania count in court.
Twitter hides Trump posts behind cautionary warnings
Hannah Murphy and Harry Dempsey
Twitter has censored almost half of Donald Trump’s tweets in the past 24 hours, cautioning that his claim that the election is being "stolen" from him is disputed or misleading.
Users were unable to see Mr Trump’s tweets unless they clicked a warning saying that some or all content is “disputed and might be misleading about an election or other civic process”.
Social media groups are under scrutiny during the election for their ability to handle misinformation on their platforms.
The censorship on Twitter has been stricter compared with rival Facebook, which has been placing cautionary labels below the president’s posts instead of hiding them behind warnings.
Google-owned YouTube has come under fire during this election for failing to respond to misinformation.
Twitter, meanwhile, permanently banned the account of Steve Bannon, Mr Trump’s former chief strategist, after he called for the execution of Anthony Fauci, the US's leading infectious disease expert, and FBI director Christopher Wray.
The moves angered Mr Trump, who took to Twitter to accuse the platform of being “out of control, made possible through the government gift of Section 230”, the law that grants social media groups' immunity for the user-generated content they host.
Read more about how Facebook and Twitter are struggling to contain rising anger from Mr Trump’s supporters online
Trump family calls on Republican leaders to pledge support
Courtney Weaver and Kiran Stacey in Washington
Donald Trump’s children and closest allies have accused Republican leaders of betraying him by failing to endorse the president’s baseless claims of fraud in the US presidential election.
Mr Trump’s supporters rounded on senior Republican members of Congress on Thursday night after the president attempted to cast doubt on results in several battleground states as Joe Biden, his Democratic rival, edged closer to victory.
Donald Trump Jr, the president’s eldest son, tweeted:
Eric Trump tweeted, but then deleted, a message saying: “Where is the GOP?! Our voters will never forget . . . ”
Mr Trump has erroneously claimed that the White House is being stolen from him because postal ballots, which he described as “illegal” and “late”, were cast disproportionately for Mr Biden. In several swing states, these ballots were counted after election day votes, meaning his early lead disappeared when they were added to the tally.
However, his claims have been met either with criticism or silence from Republican party leaders, suggesting the president may struggle to find supporters as he seeks to challenge the vote count in the courts.
Read the full story here.
US stock futures fall as global rally loses momentum
Hudson Lockett and Camilla Hodgson
Global stocks wavered and China’s currency weakened as a tight US election set investors on edge amid growing prospects of a protracted and fraught battle to decide the next American president.
Stock futures for the US blue-chip S&P 500 fell about 0.7 per cent by late morning in European trading, and those following the tech-focused Nasdaq 100 were down 1 per cent. The declines follow a two-day rally on Wall Street.
The Stoxx 600, Europe’s stocks benchmark, followed suit, sliding 0.3 per cent in morning trade and London’s FTSE 100 was down 0.1 per cent. The declines came after a calm session across major Asian markets.
The Vix, an index of expected volatility on the S&P 500, rose to 28 points, far above its long-term average of about 20 but below last week’s high of 40.
Emmanuel Cau, head of European equity strategy at Barclays, said Friday’s reversal in equity markets was unsurprising: “Markets are back to the top of the range. To move beyond those levels, you need to get confirmation that we can move on and we have a president.”
Joe Biden, the Democrat US presidential contender, said on Thursday there was “no doubt” he would win the election, while Donald Trump claimed without evidence that Democrats were trying to “steal” the election by counting illegal ballots.
“The key implication for markets is . . . that this is likely to get bumpy, and drag on, and through the courts — a process already now under way in a few states, and possibly at the federal level in short order,” said Michael Every, a strategist at Rabobank.
Biden edges ahead in Georgia
Harry Dempsey
Joe Biden has narrowly overturned Donald Trump’s lead in Georgia, which, if maintained, would block the Republican incumbent from a path to victory.
The Democratic party leader edged 917 votes ahead of Mr Trump in the race for Georgia and its 16 electoral votes on Friday, after Clayton county, a suburb near Atlanta, continued counting overnight. Mr Biden had been closing the gap as votes from the heavily African-American and Democratic counties in the Atlanta area were counted.
However, a small proportion of votes remain to be counted, with the race still too close to call.
Clinching Georgia, once a reliable Republican stronghold, would leave Mr Trump without a route to the 270 electoral votes required for the presidency on the assumption that Arizona is still in the balance — although Associated Press has called the state for Mr Biden.
Flipping the state would also potentially provide a cushion against legal challenges by the Trump team if Mr Biden manages to win other swing states yet to be called such as Pennsylvania and Nevada.
Legal challenges by Trump's team to watch
FT reporters
Donald Trump made unsubstantiated claims about vote fraud during the US presidential election and threatened to press on with lawsuits in battleground states on Friday as his lead slipped away in the biggest prizes left on the electoral map.
Here is the latest on the legal challenges that Mr Trump is mounting in some of the key swing states.
Pennsylvania (20 votes): The Trump campaign launched its most vigorous legal challenges in Pennsylvania, seeking to stop the vote count and to demand Republican observers gain better access to the tallying centres in Philadelphia.
Mr Trump’s team touted a legal victory in Philadelphia on Thursday, but the ruling simply paused the count in Pennsylvania’s largest city. By the evening, a judge had dismissed the suit after Democrats and Republicans agreed to allow 60 observers into counting centres.
The Trump campaign has sought permission to take part in pending Supreme Court litigation over how long the state can collect postal ballots. The US high court has previously declined to strike down an extension of the deadline for such ballots, although the case remains live.
Georgia (16 votes): The president’s campaign announced a lawsuit in Georgia state court questioning whether election officials were improperly counting mail-in ballots that had arrived after an election-day deadline. Mr Biden narrowly snatched the lead from Mr Trump on Friday with the race still too tight to call.
On Thursday a Georgia judge dismissed the case, saying the campaign lacked enough evidence that any ballots had arrived late.
Nevada (6 votes): The Trump campaign announced on Thursday it would file a lawsuit claiming authorities in Nevada were improperly counting votes cast by people who lived outside the state.
In the run-up to election day, his legal team had sought to halt the processing of some mail-in ballots in Clark county in an emergency appeal.
A lower state court rejected the challenge to how the county verifies signatures on postal ballots, as well as the “duplication” process it uses to ensure ballots can be fed into counting machines.
Wisconsin (10 votes): Election officials in Wisconsin have said their count is complete, and Associated Press has called the state for Mr Biden with a 20,517-vote margin.
But even before the vote was finished, Bill Stepien, Mr Trump’s campaign manager, said in a statement that the president’s team would immediately request a recount.
Scott Walker, the former Republican governor of Wisconsin, wrote that 20,000 votes may be a “high hurdle”, noting that previous recounts had changed the final tally by, at most, a few hundred votes.
Michigan (16 votes): Before Michigan was called for Mr Biden on Wednesday evening, the Trump campaign filed a lawsuit to halt the counting of votes in the state, alleging it had not been given “meaningful access” to observe the count in several locations.
Mr Stepien said in a statement that the lawsuit filed in state court sought to halt the count until they were given access, as well as a “review” of ballots already counted.
But a Michigan state judge dismissed the suit on Thursday, saying it had come too late and questioning its claims.
North Carolina (15 votes): The question of ballot deadlines is also being contested in North Carolina, a “new South” state that was always seen as a bit of a long shot for Mr Biden.
The state elections board has said in a court-approved settlement that mail-in ballots could arrive up to six days after November 3. The US Supreme Court last week declined to issue an injunction against the extension, but the case remains live in the lower courts.
Read more on the Trump campaign escalating the legal offensive here
States to watch: where the campaigns are fighting it out
FT reporters
Republican Donald Trump watched as his rival Joe Biden racked up support in Pennsylvania and Georgia from urban and suburban counties as hundreds of thousands kept the count up in the days after the polls closed on Tuesday.
Democratic votes have narrowed the margin between Mr Biden and the president to put their nominee within reach of the 270 electoral votes needed to take the White House.
Here is the state of play in the swing states that will decide who is sworn in as US president on January 20.
Pennsylvania (20 votes): The biggest setback for Mr Trump came in the ballot count in Pennsylvania, where a lead that once stood in the hundreds of thousands of votes dwindled to around 22,000 early Friday.
Mail-in ballots counted in the heavily Democratic city of Philadelphia and its neighbouring suburban counties have boosted Mr Biden. Campaign aides expressed confidence they would make bigger gains once the Pittsburgh area took up the count again on Friday.
Georgia (16 votes): Mr Biden edged ahead in Georgia on Friday after he gained postal ballots from urban and suburban counties to muscle out the president’s lead.
Vote-rich suburban areas around Atlanta, and Fulton county, which includes the city, helped to overturn Mr Trump’s lead with returns that came in heavily for Mr Biden.
Nevada (6 votes): Mr Biden was ahead on Thursday, and his narrow lead grew slightly with tallies released in the morning. However, more results were not expected to come until Friday, keeping the state — the only one still in question that went for Hillary Clinton in 2016 — too close to call.
About 190,000 ballots remained to be counted, said Barbara Cegavske, the Nevada secretary of state, on Thursday. About 90 per cent of them, she added, are in the Democratic stronghold of Clark county, which includes Las Vegas, giving the Biden campaign reason to believe their lead would grow.
North Carolina (15 votes): The former US vice-president’s strength in the suburbs has put him within striking distance of Mr Trump, but it may narrow his losing margin to the incumbent, who was ahead statewide by more than 1 percentage point with 95 per cent of the vote counted.
Read more in depth here
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