What a morning – no clear winner, a president already falsely claiming victory and a challenger calling for everyone just to calm down a little bit.
The US presidential election is shaping up for a nail-biting finish and will be decided by a handful of states that could swing either way.
Of the 13 states on this watch list, seven remain undecided, four have gone to Donald Trump and two have gone to Joe Biden. Of the decided states, only Arizona (won by Biden) represents a change from the 2016 election.
Shortly before 9am on Wednesday, Biden had a lead of 238 Electoral College votes compared to Trump’s 213.
The former vice president’s easiest route to the Oval Office is to win some of the remaining states with the largest Electoral College votes – North Carolina (15), Georgia (16), Michigan (16) and Pennsylvania (20).
But Wisconsin (10), Nevada, (6), and Alaska (3) also remain up for grabs, as does one vote in Maine.
Wisconsin
Yet to declare, but Biden is pulling ahead. If Biden wins here then he will only need Michigan, Pennsylvania or Georgia to claim overall victory.
The count in one county was reportedly delayed after, er, one of the vote-counting machines ran out of printer ink.
The Board of Elections director in Milwaukee County, the state’s most populous, said on Tuesday evening that the county’s presidential vote count would not be completed until at least 11am GMT on Wednesday – meaning so it could come in soon.
Pennsylvania
Yet to declare. Winning Pennsylvania and one other larger state would give Biden the 32 votes needed to pass the 270 threshold.
Pennsylvania governor Tom Wolf has warned “we may not know the results today”, tweeting his state has more than a million ballots to be counted.
Georgia
In Georgia, Trump was leading 51% to 48% after 93% of votes were reported.
A burst pipe delayed absentee-by-mail ballot processing for at least two hours.
Michigan
Yet to declare but Biden is reportedly closing the gap on Trump with many votes still to be counted.
Like Pennsylvania, this was part of the “blue wall” of states that voted Democrat at every presidential election from 1992 to 2012 before a surprise Trump win in 2016.
North Carolina
Yet to declare.
Technical issues at four voting locations meant results have been slightly delayed.
Arizona
Biden has taken the state back from Trump in the first swing of the election – a major coup in the former Republican stronghold.
Florida
In the biggest coup yet for Donald Trump, he was declared the victor in Florida, seen as one of the crucial states with its 29 electoral votes.
Ohio
Trump won the state of Ohio, one of the key bellwethers in a presidential election.
Elsewhere, Trump vowed to drag the US election into the courts as he falsely claimed he had beaten Joe Biden to win the presidency while the knife-edge vote is still much too close to call.
The Republican incumbent baselessly claimed there is a “fraud on the American nation” and said he would go to the Supreme Court to get vote counting stopped, as the nail-biting contest continued. It was not clear on what grounds he intended to try to bring a challenge.