WASHINGTON — Demo­c­rat Joe Biden was on the cusp of win­ning the pres­i­den­cy on Fri­day as he opened up nar­row leads over Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump in the crit­i­cal bat­tle­grounds of Geor­gia and Pennsylvania. 

Those put Biden in a stronger posi­tion to cap­ture the 270 Elec­toral Col­lege votes need­ed to take the White House. The win­ner will lead a coun­try fac­ing a his­toric set of chal­lenges, includ­ing a surg­ing pan­dem­ic and deep polit­i­cal polarization. 

Trump remained in the White House res­i­dence Fri­day morn­ing as his cam­paign insist­ed the elec­tion wasn’t over. Biden was at his home in Wilm­ing­ton, Delaware, as the vote count continued. 

The focus on Penn­syl­va­nia, where Biden led Trump by near­ly 7,000 votes, came as Amer­i­cans entered a third full day after the elec­tion with­out know­ing who will lead them for the next four years. The pro­longed process added to the anx­i­ety of a nation whose racial and cul­tur­al divides were inflamed dur­ing the heat­ed campaign. 

With his path­way to reelec­tion appear­ing to great­ly nar­row, Trump was test­ing how far he could go in using the trap­pings of pres­i­den­tial pow­er to under­mine con­fi­dence in the vote. 

On Thurs­day, he advanced unsup­port­ed accu­sa­tions of vot­er fraud to false­ly argue that his rival was try­ing to seize pow­er in an extra­or­di­nary effort by a sit­ting Amer­i­can pres­i­dent to sow doubt about the demo­c­ra­t­ic process. 

“This is a case when they are try­ing to steal an elec­tion, they are try­ing to rig an elec­tion,” Trump said from the podi­um of the White House brief­ing room.

Biden spent Thurs­day try­ing to ease ten­sions and project a more tra­di­tion­al image of pres­i­den­tial lead­er­ship. After par­tic­i­pat­ing in a coro­n­avirus brief­ing, he declared that “each bal­lot must be counted.”

“I ask every­one to stay calm. The process is work­ing,” Biden said. “It is the will of the vot­ers. No one, not any­one else who choos­es the pres­i­dent of the Unit­ed States of America.”

Trump showed no sign of giv­ing up and was was back on Twit­ter around 2:30 a.m. Fri­day, insist­ing the “U.S. Supreme Court should decide!”

Trump’s erro­neous claims about the integri­ty of the elec­tion chal­lenged Repub­li­cans now faced with the choice of whether to break with a pres­i­dent who, though his grip on his office grew ten­u­ous, com­mand­ed sky-high approval rat­ings from rank-and-file mem­bers of the GOP. 

That was espe­cial­ly true for those who are eye­ing pres­i­den­tial runs of their own in 2024. 

Mary­land GOP Gov. Lar­ry Hogan, a poten­tial pres­i­den­tial hope­ful who has often crit­i­cized Trump, said unequiv­o­cal­ly: “There is no defense for the President’s com­ments tonight under­min­ing our Demo­c­ra­t­ic process. Amer­i­ca is count­ing the votes, and we must respect the results as we always have before.”

But oth­ers who are rumored to be con­sid­er­ing a White House run of their own in four years aligned them­selves with the incum­bent, includ­ing Sen. Josh Haw­ley, R‑Mo., who tweet­ed sup­port for Trump’s claims, writ­ing that “If last 24 hours have made any­thing clear, it’s that we need new elec­tion integri­ty laws NOW.”

Trump’s cam­paign engaged in a flur­ry of legal activ­i­ty to try to improve the Repub­li­can president’s chances, say­ing it would seek a recount in Wis­con­sin and fil­ing law­suits in Penn­syl­va­nia, Michi­gan and Georgia. 

Judges in Geor­gia and Michi­gan quick­ly dis­missed Trump cam­paign law­suits there on Thurs­day, when Trump still held a small edge in Geor­gia — though Biden was gain­ing on him as votes con­tin­ued to be count­ed. The same was true in Penn­syl­va­nia, where Trump’s lead had slipped to about 18,000 votes — and the race is des­tined to get tighter. 

One rea­son is that elec­tions offi­cials were not allowed to process mail-in bal­lots until Elec­tion Day under state law. It’s a form of vot­ing that has skewed heav­i­ly in Biden’s favor after Trump spent months claim­ing with­out proof that vot­ing by mail would lead to wide­spread vot­er fraud.

Mail bal­lots from across the state were over­whelm­ing­ly break­ing in Biden’s direc­tion. A final vote total may not be clear for days because the use of mail-in bal­lots, which take more time to process, has surged as a result of the coro­n­avirus pandemic.

The Trump cam­paign said it was con­fi­dent the pres­i­dent would ulti­mate­ly pull out a vic­to­ry in Ari­zona, where votes were also still being count­ed, includ­ing in Mari­co­pa Coun­ty, the state’s most pop­u­lous area. The AP has declared Biden the win­ner in Ari­zona and said Thurs­day that it was mon­i­tor­ing the vote count as it proceeded.

“The Asso­ci­at­ed Press con­tin­ues to watch and ana­lyze vote count results from Ari­zona as they come in,” said Sal­ly Buzbee, AP’s exec­u­tive edi­tor. “We will fol­low the facts in all cases.”

Trump’s cam­paign was lodg­ing legal chal­lenges in sev­er­al states, though he faced long odds. He would have to win mul­ti­ple suits in mul­ti­ple states in order to stop vote counts, since more than one state was undeclared.

Some of the Trump team’s law­suits only demand bet­ter access for cam­paign observers to loca­tions where bal­lots are being processed and count­ed. A judge in Geor­gia dis­missed the campaign’s suit there less than 12 hours after it was filed. And a Michi­gan judge dis­missed a Trump law­suit over whether enough GOP chal­lengers had access to han­dling of absen­tee ballots

Biden attor­ney Bob Bauer said the suits were legal­ly “mer­it­less.” Their only pur­pose, he said “is to cre­ate an oppor­tu­ni­ty for them to mes­sage false­ly about what’s tak­ing place in the elec­toral process.”

Weis­sert report­ed from Wilm­ing­ton, Delaware. Asso­ci­at­ed Press writ­ers Colleen Long and Alexan­dra Jaffe in Wash­ing­ton con­tributed to this report.