Supporters of Joe Biden danced in the streets outside a ballot-counting center in Philadelphia on Friday as the steadily growing vote tallies showed the Democratic former vice president could soon be declared winner of the US presidential election.
In Detroit, several hundred supporters of President Donald Trump, some carrying their guns, raised premature chants of “We won!” outside a counting center, despite it looking increasingly unlikely, though not impossible, that this would prove true.
Philadelphia appeared to relish its turn as the center of the nation’s attention, even if it was earned only by the relative slowness of its vote counting as the biggest city in the closely fought state of Pennsylvania.
It is one of a few pivotal states where the outcome of Tuesday’s election was still too close to call, and Philadelphians delighted in parading past the assembled news cameras playing violins and trombones or dressed up in election-themed costumes.
Sean Truppo, a 37-year-old social studies teacher, said he lit fireworks upon awaking to the news that Biden had overtaken Trump, a Republican, in the state’s count before putting his 4-year-old daughter in a stroller to join the growing crowds outside the Philadelphia Convention Center.
“My daughter was born under Trump and I wanted her to witness the end of Trump,” he said.
Biden has a 253 to 214 lead in the state-by-state Electoral College vote that determines the winner, according to Edison Research.
Winning Pennsylvania’s 20 electoral votes would give Biden the 270 he needs to secure the presidency.
He has already won the popular vote by some 4 million votes.
The nation has spent nearly three days staring at the slowly updating vote tallies on the news, or finding chores to distract themselves from the prolonged uncertainty.
A few, however, have taken to the streets, with Biden supporters cheering for poll workers to “count every vote,” at times breaking into dance whenever someone turned up a Beyonce or Missy Elliott song on loudspeakers.
Some Trump supporters, taking a cue from the president himself, insisted there must be something wrong with any count that showed Biden winning, and brought their rifles and hand-guns with them to rallies outside counting centers in Detroit and Phoenix, Arizona.
Dressed in the Trump-supporter uniform of”Make America Great Again” red baseball hats, some fell to their knees in public prayer.
