US election: What you missed overnight

Three days since election day on Tuesday, and the race for the White House remains finely poised, with all eyes on vote counts in Georgia and Pennsylvania. 

Even as several crucial swing states approach an outcome, President Donald Trump issued a speech in the White House late on Thursday expanding on his claims of a “rigged” election, with allegations of unspecified fraud and “shenanigans”.

Mr Trump did not take any questions, telling a briefing without evidence that he would "easily" win if only "legal" votes are counted in what he termed a "stolen" election. Many networks including NBC, CBS and ABC decided to cut away before the 15-minute speech was over, before warning viewers that the claims were unfounded.

If you are just joining us, here’s everything that happened overnight in the race to the Oval Office.

The race now centres on Georgia, Pennsylvania and Nevada, while North Carolina and – according to most networks – Arizona also remain in play.  Mr Biden now appears certain to win Wisconsin and Michigan, two swing states that Mr Trump led in for a long portion of the count. 

The president’s lead in Georgia has dropped sharply to just 1,797 votes, with around 14,000 ballots still remaining to be counted.

Mr Trump’s lead in the key state of Pennsylvania, with its 20 electoral college votes, has also dropped. He now leads by about 25,000 votes, with counting expected to go well into Friday.

The initial leads in these states hinted at a Trump victory, however, as mail-in ballots are counted, Mr Biden seems to be making big gains.

The opposite has been seen in Arizona, however, where a number of networks called the result for Mr Biden. Since then, mail-in ballots have been leaning in favour of the president, and Mr Trump now only trails there by about 46,000 votes. AP, which was among those declaring this result early, has confirmed it is still monitoring it for changes.

After already losing legal battles in Georgia and Nevada, the Trump campaign has filed another lawsuit in Nevada alleging that there have been voting irregularities in the populous Clark County, which includes Las Vegas, seeking an injunction to or signature verification machines for ballots be hand-checked.

The campaign claims as many as 100,000 people voted in the state despite no longer living there.

It seeks injunctive relief claiming the signature verification system “is improper and that each mail ballot shall and must be checked by the clerk or an employee of the office of the clerk before it can be verified as a valid ballot for counting”.

Trump is behind Biden by 11,438 votes in the state with 190,000 remaining to be counted.

President Trump, in his first appearance since election night, repeated a series of false and inflammatory claims that began with the assertion that he "easily" wins if only "legal votes" are counted.

States like Georgia, Nevada and Pennsylvania are taking longer to count votes because of the large number of absentee ballots, however, the president and his family and aides have repeatedly claimed the delay points to widespread voter fraud.

"If you count the legal votes, I easily win," the president claimed, without any evidence. "If you count the illegal votes, they can try to steal the election from us, if you count the votes that came in late, we're looking at them very strongly."

Mr Trump claimed he has already "decisively" won many states, including Iowa, Ohio, Florida and Indiana. He has claimed victory in other states - ones projected to go to Mr Biden or which are still undecided - in messages on social media.

Many US TV channels who were airing the White House briefing live eventually cut away, before he had finished speaking, to emphasise that the president’s claims were unverified.

For the latest results and live reaction, follow our live blog here.