Trump claims victory over Biden

President Donald Trump delivered a hazy claim of victory early Wednesday morning over Democratic challenger Joe Biden even as millions of votes remained to be counted, calling on the Supreme Court to "stop a major fraud in our nation."

In a 2:30 a.m. appearance at the White House, Trump called the pending outcome "a fraud on the American public" and "embarrassment on our country."

"We were getting ready to win this election — frankly we did win this election," he said, citing victories in some states that had yet to be decided. "So we'll be going to the U.S. Supreme Court, we want all the voting to stop, we don't want them to find any ballots at 4 o'clock in the morning and add them to the list."

The prospect of a constitutional crisis in a country already torn apart by a scorchingly negative campaign was a nightmare scenario many Americans had dreaded.

As the vote counting pushed into Wednesday morning, the political map looked strikingly as it did four years ago.

Once more, the contest appeared to narrow to three major industrial states — Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin — that delivered the presidency to Trump in 2016 even as he lost the popular vote to Hillary Clinton.

This time, it could take days to know the outcome, with millions of ballots to be tabulated, assuming the courts do not step in.

Both candidates stood at more than 200 electoral votes, shy of the 270 needed to win the White House.

Biden easily won California as part of a West Coast sweep and carried other Democratic strongholds including Minnesota, which Trump targeted after a narrow loss four years ago.

The president once again carried Florida — the campaign's biggest battleground — and prevailed in most of the GOP-leaning Deep South and other Republican bastions. He also won the Republican-tilting states of Ohio and Texas, where Biden made a late play.

New Mexico went to Biden.