US election news you missed overnight: Biden edges closer to White House as Trump supporters protest

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Donald Trump’s path to the White House narrowed overnight, as Joe Biden secured more wins and the president’s supporters protested outside election centres.

Mr Biden took Michigan and Wisconsin on Wednesday, so needs one more state on Thursday to clear the 270 Electoral College vote hurdle for an overall win.

Three states — Nevada, Pennsylvania and Georgia — could still provide that boost, but were undecided as votes continued to be counted.

Some 150,000 ballots still needed to be processed in the Peach State alone, where absentee ballots could deliver another Biden win once all the votes are tallied.

Ballot counts also continued in Alaska, North Carolina and Arizona, which could also deliver Mr Biden with a win on Thursday, thanks to the Sun Belt state’s 11 Electoral College votes.

With lawsuits filed in Pennsylvania, Michigan and Georgia, the Trump campaign continued to contest the election outcome, with demands to observe vote counts at processing centres in those states.

A crowd of Trump supporters, meanwhile, appeared outside an election centre in Arizona on Wednesday night, amid baseless rumours that Republican votes were deliberately not being counted.

Mr Trump, for his part, had promised to take his case to the Supreme Court in a speech on Wednesday morning that accused his opponents and officials of falsely committing election “fraud”.

The crowd in Phoenix, Arizona, had chanted "Stop the steal!", and "Count my vote", while some were been armed with rifles and handguns, the Associated Press reported.

A similar scene played out on Wednesday afternoon in downtown Detroit, where city election officials blocked about 30 people, mostly Republicans, from entering a vote-counting centre.

Pennsylvania governor Tom Wolf said on Wednesday that the Trump campaign had been "simply wrong” to file lawsuits in order to stop votes being counted. “It goes against the basic principles of our democracy,"

Officials across other states, as well as the president's opponents, provided similar criticism.