U.S. President Donald Trump early Wednesday proclaimed victory over Democratic challenger Joe Biden, despite incomplete results from several battleground states, and said he will fight election results in Supreme Court.
"Frankly, we did win," Trump told supporters at the White House. "We will win this. As far as I am concerned we already have."
But election results from some key states, including Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan and Georgia, were still not clear and projections from major networks and Edison Research showed Trump still short of the 270 electoral votes need to win re-election.
"This is a fraud on the American public," Trump said. "We'll be going to the U.S. Supreme Court - we want all voting to stop. In fact, there is no more voting - just counting."
Biden's campaign said in response it will fight any efforts by Trump's campaign to go to the Supreme Court to prevent ballots from being tabulated.
Biden campaign manager Jen O'Malley Dillon called Trump's statement that he will "be going to the U.S. Supreme Court" and that he wants "all voting to stop" "outrageous, unprecedented and incorrect." O'Malley Dillon said the Biden campaign has "legal teams standing by ready to deploy to resist that effort." And she says, "They will prevail."
Trump won the battlegrounds of Florida, Ohio and Texas, dashing Biden's hopes for a decisive early victory, but Biden said he was on track to winning the White House by taking three key "rust belt" states.
Biden, 77, was eyeing the so-called "blue wall" states of Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania that sent Trump, 74, to the White House in 2016 for possible breakthroughs once those states finish counting votes in hours or days to come.
"We feel good about where we are," Biden said in his home state of Delaware, shouting over a din of supporters in cars honking their horns in approval. "We believe we're on track to win this election.
"Trump has repeatedly and without evidence suggested that an increase in mail-in voting will lead to an increase in fraud, although election experts say that fraud is rare and mail-in ballots are a long-standing feature of American elections.