WASHINGTON — Demo­c­rat Joe Biden is now lead­ing Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump in the bat­tle­ground state of Georgia.

By Fri­day morn­ing, Biden over­took Trump in the num­ber of bal­lots count­ed in the bat­tle­ground, a must-win state for Trump that has long been a Repub­li­can strong­hold. Biden now has a 917-vote advantage.

The con­test is still too ear­ly for The Asso­ci­at­ed Press to call. Thou­sands of bal­lots are still left to be count­ed — many in coun­ties where the for­mer vice pres­i­dent was in the lead.

An AP analy­sis showed that Biden’s vote mar­gins grew as coun­ties processed mail bal­lots cast in his favor.

There is a poten­tial that the race could go to a recount. Under Geor­gia law, if the mar­gin between Biden and Trump is under half a per­cent­age point of dif­fer­ence, a recount can be requested.

Mean­while, Trump is test­ing how far he can go in using the trap­pings of pres­i­den­tial pow­er to under­mine con­fi­dence in this week’s elec­tion against Joe Biden, as the Demo­c­rat gained ground in tight con­tests in some key bat­tle­ground states.

With his path­way to re-elec­tion appear­ing to shrink, Trump on Thurs­day advanced unsup­port­ed accu­sa­tions of vot­er fraud to false­ly argue that his rival was try­ing to seize pow­er. It amount­ed to 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.

The president’s remarks deep­ened a sense of anx­i­ety in the U.S. as Amer­i­cans enter their third full day after the elec­tion with­out know­ing who would serve as pres­i­dent for the next four years. His state­ments also prompt­ed a rebuke from some Repub­li­cans, par­tic­u­lar­ly those look­ing to steer the par­ty in a dif­fer­ent direc­tion in a post-Trump era.

Nei­ther can­di­date has reached the 270 Elec­toral Col­lege votes need­ed to win the White House. But Biden eclipsed Trump in Wis­con­sin and Michi­gan, two cru­cial Mid­west­ern bat­tle­ground states, over­took the pres­i­dent in Geor­gia and was inch­ing clos­er to doing the same in Penn­syl­va­nia, where votes were still be counted.

It was unclear when a nation­al win­ner would be deter­mined after a long, bit­ter cam­paign dom­i­nat­ed by the coro­n­avirus and its effects on Amer­i­cans and the nation­al econ­o­my. The U.S. on Wednes­day set anoth­er record for dai­ly con­firmed cas­es as sev­er­al states post­ed all-time highs. The pan­dem­ic has killed more than 233,000 peo­ple in the Unit­ed States.

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.”

Biden’s vic­to­ries in the upper Mid­west put him in a strong posi­tion, but Trump showed no sign of giv­ing up. He was back on Twit­ter around 2:30 a.m. Fri­day, insist­ing the “U.S. Supreme Court should decide!”

It could take sev­er­al more days for the vote count to con­clude and a clear win­ner to emerge. With mil­lions of bal­lots yet to be tab­u­lat­ed, Biden already had received more than 73 mil­lion votes, the most in history.

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.

Mary­land GOP Gov. Lar­ry Hogan, a poten­tial 2024 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, request­ing 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.

Trump 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 22,000 votes — and the race is des­tined to get tighter.

One rea­son is because 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.”

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