Biden Believes In His Path To Victory While Preaching Patience
Very early on Wednesday Joe Biden said that he is on track to win the 2020 presidential election, as vote returns show a narrowing, yet still viable, path to victory for the former vice president.
Addressing his supporters at a drive-in election night event in Wilmington, Delaware, in the early hours of Wednesday, Biden called for patience while election officials across the country tally outstanding ballots. But he projected confidence in his chances of capturing the White House, laying out a path to victory that runs through Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania.
“It may take a little longer,” Biden said to honking car horns. “As I’ve said all along, it’s not my place or Donald trump’s place to declare who won this election. It’s put to the American people. But I’m optimistic about the outcome.”
The speech was his first since states began counting ballots on Tuesday. The former vice president only spoke for a few minutes, but said that he and his running mate, Senator Kamala Harris , would speak publicly later Wednesday.
Biden and President Trump are locked in a tight race for the White House, with Biden now seeing a narrower path to 270 electoral votes than once expected.
The Associated Press has declared Trump the winner in Florida, the largest of the traditional swing states, and the president currently leads in other battlegrounds like North Carolina and Georgia, where most votes have already been counted.
Biden’s chances of winning the presidency now hinge on states like Arizona, as well as three northern states, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, though counting could take days to complete.
Biden was confident about his chances in Georgia on Wednesday morning, saying that he’s “still in the game” there. A shift in Georgia, however, will hinge on late-breaking counts in heavily Democratic areas, and it’s unclear whether that will be enough to allow Biden to overtake Trump.