Joe Biden takes lead in Pennsylvania putting him on verge of the presidency

Donald Trump’s chances are fading fast, with Joe Biden now ahead in four of the five states that are still considered up for grabs.

Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden has taken the lead in Pennsylvania. Picture: Drew Angerer/Getty Images/AFP

Democrat Joe Biden has taken the lead in key battleground state Pennsylvania, and is now ahead in four of the five undecided states.

He overtook President Donald Trump in Pennsylvania on Friday morning, US time. The state is worth 20 electoral votes, which is enough to push the Democrat above the 270-vote threshold he needs for victory.

At last count, he was up by 13000 votes there, having once trailed by 700,000, before officials started to count the mail-in ballots.

Now, with more than 100,000 ballots left - many of them from heavily Democratic areas - he seems all but certain to win. We still have to wait and see, though.

Mr Biden has also inched in front in Georgia. He is up by a tiny margin of fewer than 2000 votes there, with very few left to count.

He is probably going to win the state, but don’t expect the TV networks to project it anytime soon, given how close it is. And the state government has already announced there will be a recount.

Three other states remain contested. Mr Biden leads in Nevada and seems all but certain to win it, as most of the outstanding votes are from Democrat-leaning Clark County.

The President leads in North Carolina, and should hold on, though we probably won’t know for certain until next week.

And then there’s Arizona. Fox News and The Associated Press both called it for Mr Biden days ago. Other networks haven’t, and the Trump campaign has insisted it will end up winning the state.

It’s certainly a close contest, and we will keep watching it, though the latest batch of votes suggests Mr Trump is not catching up fast enough to overtake Mr Biden there.

RELATED: Follow our live results blog

Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden has taken the lead in a key state, putting him within reach of the Presidency.

US President Donald Trump at the White House on November 5. Picture: Brendan Smialowski / AFP

The latest batches of results come after Mr Trump held a press conference railing against the counting of mail-in votes which are at a record high amid the coronavirus pandemic. Trump supporters have taken to counting centres to claim for legal vote counts to be stopped following the President’s baseless allegations.

Several major US television networks cut away from live coverage of Trump’s event over concerns of disinformation and there were signs of cracks in support within his Republican Party.

But prominent Republicans rallied behind Trump and signalled that they could challenge the legitimacy of results if the president loses.

“I think everything should be on the table,” Senator Lindsey Graham said when asked by Fox News host and Trump loyalist Sean Hannity if Pennsylvania’s Republican-led legislature should refuse to certify results.

By contrast, Biden has called for people to remain calm.

Biden, 77, was just one or, at most, two battleground states away from securing the electoral college votes to take the White House.

Trump, 74, needs an increasingly unlikely combination of wins in multiple states to stay in power.

Biden, who has promised to heal a country bruised by Trump’s extraordinarily polarising four years in power, appealed for “people to stay calm.” “We have no doubt that when the count is finished, Senator (Kamala) Harris and I will be declared the winners,” he said in comments to reporters in his hometown of Wilmington, Delaware.

“The process is working,” he said. “The count is being completed. And we will know soon.”