US President Donald Trump accused the Joe Biden campaign of election fraud and said he would move the US Supreme Court as presidential contest turned into a state-by-state slog that could drag deeper into the week.

“We want all voting (read counting) to stop,” Trump said, in an address from the White House, at a little past 2 am on Wednesday local time. “We were going to win this election. Frankly, we did win… Our goal is to ensure the integrity for the good of the country. We want the law to be used in a proper manner. So, we will be going to US Supreme Court,” Trump said as several media outlets projected that Democratic candidate Joe Biden was leading Republican Donald Trump in the closely-fought “election of a lifetime”.

President Trump went on to suggest, CNN reported, that attempts to tally all ballots amounted to disenfranchising his supporters. "Millions and millions of people voted for us," Trump said in the East Room. "A very sad group of people is trying to disenfranchise that group of people."

As per Fox News, Biden has 238 of the 538 electoral college seats, while Trump has 213. On the other hand, CNN has projected 220 electoral college votes to Biden and 213 to Trump. The New York Times reported that Biden has earned 223 electoral college votes and Trump 212.

The winner needs at least 270 electoral college votes.

As per latest reports, Trump was leading in the key battleground states of Florida, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan. Biden was leading in Arizona and Minneapolis.

The Biden campaign tried to downplay its electoral performance in Florida, which has 29 electoral college votes. “We said Florida was going to be close and it is! We also said we didn't have to win it, and that remains true, the campaign said in a statement,” reiterating that it has multiple paths to victory.

In a surprise, Trump was leading by seven percentage points in Virginia, which was considered to be a Democratic bastion. Biden won New Jersey and New York in a tight race with President Trump also registering early wins in key states.

The former vice president won in Democratic-leaning states of Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Illinois, Massachusetts, New Mexico, Vermont and Virginia, while President Trump was posting expected victories in Alabama, Arkansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Nebraska, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Tennessee, West Virginia, Wyoming, Indiana and South Carolina, The New York Times said.

“We believe we are on track to win this election,” Biden said in a brief speech after 12:30 a.m. Eastern, saying he was “optimistic” about the outcome once all the votes were counted.

People across the world were closely monitoring the 2020 US presidential elections that saw a record number of over 100 million early voting due to the coronavirus pandemic.

As results from key battleground states started trickling in, experts said that Biden had multiple paths to victory, with Trump having very little room to manoeuvre.

Early on Wednesday, after Trump claimed that the election was being stolen, Twitter and Facebook both attached labels to posts from the US President, The New York Times reported.

Twitter hid Trump’s tweet, which said “they are trying to STEAL the Election,” behind a label that cautioned people that the claim was “disputed” and “might be misleading about an election or other civic process.”

Twitter also restricted users’ ability to like and share the post.

Facebook separately added a label to Trump’s identical post on the social network site, saying that the votes had not all been counted and that “no winner of the presidential election had been projected.”

In a tweet about 10 minutes after Trump’s post, Democrat Biden said: “It’s not my place or Donald Trump’s place to declare the winner of this election. It’s the voters’ place.”

Much of the US has been on edge as the often-predicted “most important election of a lifetime” finally arrived. Undeterred by the pandemic, Americans have already displayed an uncommon determination to have their voices and votes heard this year.

Nearly 100 million cast their ballots ahead of Election Day, shattering records as they sent in their votes by mail. Wearing face masks and standing spaced apart, voters waited at polling stations early on Tuesday to choose a President on an Election Day marked so far by orderliness and short lines, even as major cities braced for potential unrest.

The masks and boarded-up stores in many city centres were reminders of two of the issues shaping 2020’s polarising elections, with Covid still ravaging parts of the country after a summer of sometimes violence-marred protests against police brutality and racism.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation is looking into a spate of mysterious robocalls urging people to stay home on Election Day, a Department of Homeland Security official said. The Washington Post reported that an unidentified robocaller placed an estimated 10 million calls in recent weeks warning people to “stay safe and stay home”.

With reports from The New York Times, PTI