In Wilmington, Biden’s supporters hope Friday will bring a victory celebration.
Joseph R Biden Jr kept a low profile in the morning as he pulled ahead of President Trump in Pennsylvania, a battleground whose 20 electoral votes would give him victory in the presidential race. But outside the Westin Hotel near Biden’s home here in Wilmington, signs of celebration were already afoot.
Someone passed out Biden-Harris campaign signs and attached them to a security barrier set up around an event where Biden is likely to speak. People stood around in the parking lot, waiting for news. A security presence was out in full force. The flag-bedecked stage from which Democrats hoped Biden would declare victory on Tuesday — and then Wednesday and Thursday — remained at the ready.
Thomas Kunish, 40, of Mechanicsburg, Pa, said he had driven to Wilmington to show support with his five-year-old son, spending the night in the car. The last time he voted, he said, was for George W Bush in 2000.
Georgia’s secretary of state Friday that the presidential race in his state was so close that a recount was inevitable. As of late Friday morning, Biden led President Trump in the state by a mere 1,579 votes in Georgia.
Minutes after a lawyer for the Trump campaign signalled that it was not conceding the presidential contest, even after newly counted ballots put Biden in the lead in key states, a spokesman for the Biden campaign reiterated Friday that voters — not the candidates — would decide the election’s outcome.
“As we said on July 19, the American people will decide this election,” the campaign spokesman, Andrew Bates, said in a statement. “And the United States government is perfectly capable of escorting trespassers out of the White House.”
