Demo­c­rat Joe Biden was push­ing clos­er to the 270 Elec­toral Col­lege votes need­ed to car­ry the White House, secur­ing vic­to­ries in the “blue wall” bat­tle­grounds of Wis­con­sin and Michi­gan and nar­row­ing Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump’s path.

With just a hand­ful of states still up for grabs, Trump tried to press his case in court in some key swing states. It was unclear if any of his campaign’s legal maneu­ver­ing over bal­lot­ing would suc­ceed in shift­ing the race in his favor.

Two days after Elec­tion Day, nei­ther can­di­date had amassed the votes need­ed to win the White House. But Biden’s vic­to­ries in the Great Lakes states left him at 264, mean­ing he was one bat­tle­ground state away — any would do — from becom­ing president-elect.

Trump, with 214 elec­toral votes, faced a much high­er hur­dle. To reach 270, he need­ed to claim all four remain­ing bat­tle­grounds: Penn­syl­va­nia, North Car­oli­na, Geor­gia and Nevada.

With Biden edg­ing clos­er to unseat­ing him from the White House, Trump says he wants to put a halt to vote counting.

The extra­or­di­nary state­ment by an incum­bent pres­i­dent to voice sup­port for ceas­ing the count of legal­ly cast votes came in a Thurs­day morn­ing tweet, say­ing only: “STOP THE COUNT!”

Elec­tions are run by indi­vid­ual state, coun­ty and local gov­ern­ments. Trump’s pub­lic com­ments have no impact on the tal­ly­ing of votes across the country.

So far, the vote count across the coun­try has been con­duct­ed effi­cient­ly and with­out evi­dence of any mis­con­duct, despite Trump’s pub­lic complaints.

Trump’s com­ments come as his cam­paign has filed legal action in sev­er­al states to try to stop vote count­ing, claim­ing a lack of trans­paren­cy. Still, Trump’s cam­paign has held out hope that con­tin­ued count­ing in Ari­zona could over­come a Biden lead in the state.

With mil­lions of votes yet to be tab­u­lat­ed, Biden already had received more than 71 mil­lion votes, the most in his­to­ry. At an after­noon news con­fer­ence Wednes­day, the for­mer vice pres­i­dent said he expect­ed to win the pres­i­den­cy but stopped short of out­right declar­ing victory.

“I will gov­ern as an Amer­i­can pres­i­dent,” Biden said. “There will be no red states and blue states when we win. Just the Unit­ed States of America.”

It was a stark con­trast to the approach of Trump, who ear­ly Wednes­day morn­ing false­ly claimed that he had won the election.

Trump’s cam­paign engaged in a flur­ry of legal activ­i­ty to try to improve the Repub­li­can president’s chances and cast doubt on the elec­tion results, request­ing a recount in Wis­con­sin and fil­ing law­suits in Penn­syl­va­nia, Michi­gan and Geor­gia. Statewide recounts in Wis­con­sin have his­tor­i­cal­ly changed the vote tal­ly by only a few hun­dred votes; Biden led by more than 20,000 bal­lots out of near­ly 3.3 mil­lion counted.

For four years, Democ­rats have been haunt­ed by the crum­bling of the blue wall, the trio of Great Lakes states — Michi­gan, Wis­con­sin and Penn­syl­va­nia — that their can­di­dates had been able to count on every four years. But Trump’s pop­ulist appeal struck a chord with white work­ing-class vot­ers and he cap­tured all three in 2016 by a com­bined total of just 77,000 votes.

The can­di­dates waged a fierce fight for the states this year, with Biden’s every­man polit­i­cal per­sona res­onat­ing in blue-col­lar towns while his cam­paign also pushed to increase turnout among Black vot­ers in cities like Detroit and Milwaukee.

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. But even as Biden’s prospects improved, the U.S. on Wednes­day set anoth­er record for dai­ly con­firmed coro­n­avirus cas­es as sev­er­al states post­ed all-time highs. The pan­dem­ic has killed more than 233,000 peo­ple in the Unit­ed States.

Trump spent much of Wednes­day in the White House res­i­dence, hud­dling with advis­ers and fum­ing at media cov­er­age show­ing his Demo­c­ra­t­ic rival pick­ing up bat­tle­grounds. Trump used his Twit­ter feed to false­ly claim vic­to­ry in sev­er­al key states and ampli­fy unsub­stan­ti­at­ed con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries about Demo­c­ra­t­ic gains as absen­tee and ear­ly votes were tabulated.

Trump cam­paign man­ag­er Bill Stepi­en said the pres­i­dent would for­mal­ly request a Wis­con­sin recount, cit­ing “irreg­u­lar­i­ties” in sev­er­al coun­ties. And the cam­paign said it was fil­ing suit in Michi­gan and Penn­syl­va­nia to halt bal­lot count­ing on grounds that it wasn’t giv­en prop­er access to observe. Still more legal action was launched in Georgia.

At the same time, hun­dreds of thou­sands of votes were still to be count­ed in Penn­syl­va­nia, and Trump’s cam­paign said it was mov­ing to inter­vene in exist­ing Supreme Court lit­i­ga­tion over count­ing mail-in bal­lots there. The cam­paign also argued that out­stand­ing votes still could flip the out­come in Ari­zona, which went for Biden, show­cas­ing an incon­sis­ten­cy in its argu­ments over pro­longed tabulation.

In oth­er close­ly watched races, Trump picked up Flori­da, the largest of the swing states, and held onto Texas and Ohio while Biden kept New Hamp­shire and Minnesota.

Beyond the pres­i­den­cy, Democ­rats had hoped the elec­tion would allow the par­ty to reclaim the Sen­ate and pad its major­i­ty in the House. But while the vot­ing scram­bled seats in the House and Sen­ate, it ulti­mate­ly left Con­gress much like it began — deeply divided.

The can­di­dates spent months press­ing dra­mat­i­cal­ly dif­fer­ent visions for the nation’s future, includ­ing on racial jus­tice, and vot­ers respond­ed in huge num­bers, with more than 100 mil­lion peo­ple cast­ing votes ahead of Elec­tion Day.

Trump, in an extra­or­di­nary move from the White House, issued pre­ma­ture claims of vic­to­ry and said he would take the elec­tion to the Supreme Court to stop the counting.

Sen­ate Major­i­ty Leader Mitch McConnell dis­count­ed the president’s quick claim of vic­to­ry, say­ing it would take a while for states to con­duct their vote counts. The Ken­tucky Repub­li­can said that “claim­ing you’ve won the elec­tion is dif­fer­ent from fin­ish­ing the counting.”

Vote tab­u­la­tions rou­tine­ly con­tin­ue beyond Elec­tion Day, and states large­ly set the rules for when the count has to end. In pres­i­den­tial elec­tions, a key point is the date in Decem­ber when pres­i­den­tial elec­tors meet. That’s set by fed­er­al law.

Dozens of Trump sup­port­ers chant­i­ng “Stop the count!” descend­ed on a bal­lot-tal­ly­ing cen­ter in Detroit, while thou­sands of anti-Trump pro­test­ers demand­ing a com­plete vote count took to the streets in cities across the U.S.

Protests — some­times about the elec­tion, some­times about racial inequal­i­ty — took place Wednes­day in at least a half-dozen cities, includ­ing Los Ange­les, Seat­tle, Hous­ton, Pitts­burgh, Min­neapo­lis and San Diego.

Sev­er­al states allow mailed-in votes to be accept­ed after Elec­tion Day as long as they were post­marked by Tues­day. That includes Penn­syl­va­nia, where bal­lots post­marked by Nov. 3 can be accept­ed if they arrive up to three days later.

Trump appeared to sug­gest that those bal­lots should not be count­ed and that he would fight for that out­come at the high court. But legal experts were dubi­ous of Trump’s dec­la­ra­tion. Trump has appoint­ed three of the high court’s nine jus­tices includ­ing, most recent­ly Amy Coney Barrett.

The Trump cam­paign on Wednes­day pushed Repub­li­can donors to dig deep­er into their pock­ets to help finance legal chal­lenges. Repub­li­can Nation­al Com­mit­tee Chair­woman Ron­na McDaniel, dur­ing a donor call, spoke plain­ly: “The fight’s not over. We’re in it.”

Jaffe report­ed from Wilm­ing­ton, Delaware. Asso­ci­at­ed Press writ­ers Aamer Mad­hani and Andrew Tay­lor in Wash­ing­ton and Kath­leen Ron­ayne in Sacra­men­to, Calif., con­tributed to this report.

This sto­ry will be updat­ed fre­quent­ly through­out the night. Check back for the lat­est updates.