WS Chronicle

Although polls closed around 7:30 p.m. on Election Day, the nail-biting carried over well into Wednesday morning here in North Carolina and other battleground states across the country, where the race for the White House was deemed “too close to call.” 

Ballots from precincts started to come in around 9 p.m. here in N.C. and Biden held a small lead over Trump. By midnight Biden led the race by less than 2% and just a few hours later, Trump had taken a 2% lead. According to experts here, early voting and absentee numbers did lean Biden’s way, but Trump supporters had a far better turnout on Election Day. 

 As night turned into early morning, both candidates seemed to realize that a winner wouldn’t be named anytime soon and decided to call it a night. While addressing voters at a drive-in rally just after midnight in Wilmington, Del., former Vice President Biden told supporters and in a statement released by his campaign that he believed he would win, but every vote had to be counted.

“Now I believe that we will win tonight, and I intend to see this fight through to the very end—on that, I give my word as a Biden,” he wrote. “But no matter the outcome of this race, I’m so proud of what we have accomplished together.” 

In true Trump fashion, the commander-in-chief immediately claimed voter fraud when he spoke to his supporters and claimed victory in several states where votes are still being tallied, including North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Georgia. While he spoke to supporters inside the East Room of the White House, Trump also threatened to get the Supreme Court involved. 

“This is a fraud on the American public,” Trump continued. “This is an embarrassment to our country, we were getting to win this election … frankly, we did win this election. So our goal now is to ensure the integrity for the good of this nation. …We want the law to be used in the proper manner so we’ll be going to the U.S. Supreme Court. We want all voting to stop, we don’t want them to find any ballots at 4 o’clock in the morning and add them to the list.” 

It is important to note that all polls closed on Tuesday. The ballots Trump is referring to are mail-in ballots that some states didn’t begin counting until Election Day that may take several days to count. While elections’ boards in N.C. began counting mail-in ballots before Election Day, there are more than 117,000 absentee ballots that have not been returned.  

While the state is still up for grabs, unofficial results show Biden winning in Forsyth County by more than 27,000 votes. The results show Biden carrying 56% of all voters in Forsyth County compared to only 42% for Trump. 

To view the results for the race for president or any local or statewide race visit www.ncsbe.gov and click the “Results & Data” tab.