America divided: Biden: I'm winning; Trump: I won

WASHINGTON: The outcome of the US presidential election is on a knife edge, with Donald Trump and his rival Joe Biden neck and neck in key swing states. No candidate can credibly claim to have won as yet, and both campaigns said they had potential paths to victory.

President Donald Trump fired off allegations of election fraud, setting the stage for a potential legal battle, as Democrat Joe Biden took a slim lead in key states that could decide the bitterly contested White House race.

Americans woke up on Wednesday not knowing who the next US president would be as votes were still being counted in six battleground states that could swing the election. As Trump vented his frustration on Twitter over the slow vote count, the Biden camp expressed confidence it was on track to win enough of the remaining close state races.

Campaign manager Jen O’Malley Dillon said a victory by the former vice president was a "foregone conclusion."

According to international media reports, latest updates show that Trump has secured 214 electoral college votes, while Biden is leading with 253 electoral college votes. 270 votes are needed for a win.

Fueling fears of a constitutional crisis, Trump prematurely declared victory overnight and threatened to demand the intervention of the Supreme Court to stop vote-counting. "We did win this election," the 74-year-old president said even before the final vote tallies were

complete. "This is a fraud on the American public."

Trump, in a tweet Twitter labeled as potentially "misleading," continued to allege without evidence on Wednesday that there had been instances of fraud.

"Last night I was leading, often solidly, in many key states, in almost all instances Democrat run & controlled," Trump tweeted. "Then, one by one, they started to magically disappear as surprise ballot dumps were counted."

There have been no reports of any irregularities and the leads in numerous states have been shifting back-and-forth between the candidates as votes have been counted. Vote-counting has been slow in several states this year because of the coronavirus-related surge in the use of mail-in ballots.

Trump has spent months denouncing mail-in ballots, making claims that they are liable to fraud. The outcome of the White House race appears to hinge on the results from six states where a winner has not yet been declared -- Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.

As of 11:00am (1600 GMT), Biden had slim leads in Michigan, Nevada and Wisconsin while Trump was ahead in Georgia, North Carolina and Pennsylvania.

But state election officials cautioned that with tens of thousands of ballots outstanding in some states -- millions in others -- the leaderboard could shift.

Trump had a roughly 500,000 vote lead in Pennsylvania with an estimated 78 percent of the vote counted but votes were awaited from heavily Democratic parts of the state.

"We have to be patient," Pennsylvania Governor Tom Wolf said. "We may not know the results today.

"There are millions of mail-in ballots," he said. "They´re going to be counted accurately and they will be counted fully." The Democratic governor shrugged off criticism from the White House over the slow vote count and said "our democracy is being tested in this election."

"Pennsylvania will have a fair election," he said. "And that election will be free of outside influences." Biden vowed on Wednesday to ensure that no American was disenfranchised.

"We won´t rest until everyone´s vote is counted," the 77-year-old former vice president said on Twitter. The Biden campaign also slammed Trump´s victory claim as a "naked effort to take away the democratic rights of American citizens."

"If the president makes good on his threat to go to court to try to prevent the proper tabulation of votes, we have legal teams standing by ready to deploy to resist that effort," it said. The US Elections Project estimated total turnout at a record 160 million voters including more than 101.1 million early voters, 65.2 million of whom voted by mail.

In an election that took place under the shadow of the coronavirus pandemic that has claimed more than 230,000 lives in the United States, Trump appeared to have avoided a Democratic wave predicted by some polls. But as of Wednesday afternoon neither candidate had captured the 270 votes needed for victory in the Electoral College that determines the winner of the presidential race.

Americans are also electing members to the two chambers of Congress, the main law-making body of the US. Those chambers are the Senate and the House of Representatives. Without support in the Senate and the House, the president's ability to enact key policies is severely limited.

Latest updates show that Republicans have secured 48 seats in the Seante, while Democrats have won on 47 seats so far. In the House, Democrats are leading with 198 seats, while Republicans have 185 seats. 51 seats are needed in the Senate for majority, while 218 seats are needed for majority in the House.