hello there on the clock this is al jazeera live from doha it is the 900 g.m.t. that is 4 am in washington d.c. and off to one of the most divisive and unpredictable u.s. elections in memory the nation in the world still awaits a final result both candidates have spoken in the early hours of wednesday u.s. time joe biden says when all the votes are finally counted he does expect to come out on top the president donald trump he declared himself the outright winner and says he plans to alston supremum coat to help keep democrats from trying to quote steal the election we want to all voting just. we don't want them to find any ballots at 4 o'clock in the morning and then that the list ok. it's a serious. it's a very sad moment to me this is

a very sad moment and we will win this and far as i'm concerned we already have. i'm her terrier night we believe we're on track to win this election. because of the on pressure down early voting a mere one vote that's going to take a while we're going to have to be patient until we the hard work of tally of votes is finished and then over to every vote is counted every ballot is counted. but we're fairly sure. and what this means is that we've had to work. extremely hard i mean. so tell us where were the numbers ok ok i'll do that. sometimes because they did it straight into it don't let's have a look at the state of the race right now to 38 against to 13 the most recent polls

have been for joe biden up in the northeast corner in maine and then in arizona as well arizona was the important one right here because it flipped and it was the 1st state to do that and nevada we're still waiting for the expectation is that that would go blue as well what we're going to do though is have a little focus on wisconsin at this point because wisconsin one of the states that put down a well it was the state that put donald trump over the top 4 years ago it's too close to call with its 10 electoral college votes and that's why it's too close to call the margin is only about 100000 votes now to put that into some sort of perspective and again for those using our split if you like between rural and urban areas urban area milwaukee county biggest urban area blue area joe biden is doing well the i think he's about $60000.00 votes ahead of donald

trump at the moment but there's still about half to be counted there so that's why we can't call us at the moment because we're still waiting to hear from well see what a large part of the population is done in other parts that is green bay and in commercial wisconsin can i should we know about that of course from the protests earlier this year those areas donald trump is doing maybe a little better than expected but not running away with it in those areas as well so that's the that's the difference in wisconsin that's why we can't call it because that's just too close let's have a little look at how wisconsin has looked in the past that we hop out the way and we'll get the shot of. what happened in 20164847 in fact i think it might have even been less than that in the end less than one percent and that was how donald trump actually became president went past to 70 it was 23000 votes in the end which proves the difference. look at the change from 2012 where. barack obama my goodness

for 7 percent. to 7 percent was the difference he had there and it came down to less than one percent so clearly still very tight again this year in wisconsin. just reminding you of the state of the rice at the moment to 38 other little things we can think about at the moment. alaska which will be 3 electoral college votes for donald trump when the time comes and then yellow states nevada i would expect that to be blue and then the rest make a less your guess is as good as mine. is where it's going to be just to be clear the county has stopped right now in those states or is it still going on in wisconsin still still still really what is going on. tomorrow and we'll get to you tomorrow exactly and because it is such a densely populated urban area there's going to be this is why i must admit i was talking to go to produce about this early it can be confusing you know when you see something say 98 percent reporting you think well why can't we call that it's more

a case of 98 percent of precincts now 2 percent of precincts that might be really big precincts so it could change completely on those precincts reporting which is why we can't make right call and we're going to make the call will take some time thanks a lot thank you for that now we have reporters reynolds is in los angeles mike hanna is in biden's home state of delaware but 1st let's go to our white house correspondent can be helped in washington d.c. kimberly a lot of people were talking about the blue wave that was going to sweep the united states it didn't happen that it. no it didn't and the fact that we still don't have a winner it is remarkable what the sort of the headline that is on the washington post as americans wake up and learn that there still is no winner in the 20 twentieth's presidential election the headline is a nation divided and i think that sums things up pretty nicely now we know that the

u.s. president does not have any public events on his schedule for wednesday it's clear that there is a lot of. strategizing but there we go that is going on in the white house in the trump campaign ad we suspect joe biden's as well which mike hanna will talk about that really this is a race that is too close to call we knew that this would be decided on a razor's edge but what shocked the nation was the fact that the u.s. president came out and claimed victory and the reason he's doing that is because he is trying to build a case that the voting needs to stop and the counting needs to stop because we know that when it comes to counting ballots if you stop that favors donald trump he believes that he has won this election he has declared victory but of course this is something that will be contested the question becomes the path that it will take now we know that one of those paths could ultimately end up in the house of

representatives that would not favor donald trump because that is controlled by democrats and it appears that is the case still so the president has already said that he's going to go straight to the supreme court where we know that the supreme court is. just sidedly conservatives so donald trump in his mind has already plotted the path to victory but there is the stablished path that he is trying to circumvent and certainly the battle becomes now. in an effort to try and do that how things end up rather what actually happens now where would we look for next. we 1st have to look for an initial result and then if it's close what will happen is that we will see either kept challenging those results so what we saw in 2000 was a recount to add but this time in 2000 it only involves one state the u.s. state of florida in 2020 we know that the u.s.

state of florida has gone for donald trump but instead we have a number of battleground states michigan pennsylvania where this counting could go on for some time and if it's challenge there would be multiple recounts going on so that is going to be the 1st step i'm almost nervous to kind of look into the crystal ball decide what goes beyond that because we already know that what's going to happen are legal challenges perhaps in tandem so this is very much going to go to the courts which after covering dollars for 4 years i should tell you is a standard piece of page from donald trump's playbook whether it's his tax returns whether it was preventing members of his administration from testifying before congressional committees in the probe and whether or not his. 26 presidential campaign colluded with russia donald trump goes to court because he knows if he can drop things out look or it's there is a chance of winning it appears that the strategy yet again as this president tries to win reelection yeah ok just another quick one can believe some of those meeting

too with camilla just discounting just continue through the night will do they still be taken. they stop and take a pos we know for a fact that in a number of places like philadelphia for example they said look at let everybody go home we can count this in the morning we know that this is going to have a significant impact on the result in pennsylvania a key battleground state which i've been saying for days and weeks could ultimately decide this election so yes they all go to bed they pick it up in the morning and we know that what they're counting for the most part of these mail in ballots that are still also being received in some cases and we know that there was an effort by the trumpet ministration to try and stop the counting of ballots received after november 3rd but in most cases what the courts have decided i'm speaking very broadly 'd is that if there is a postmark by november 3rd this ballot will be counted in some cases this went to court particularly in north carolina another important state and we know the

counting could continue up until november 12th so this is really going to have an impact we're going to be watching very carefully but again the longer the counting goes more this favors joe biden that's what democrats are counting on that's why we heard donald trump say he wants to go to the supreme court to stop all of it because he knows that the in person voting favors his case you know we can see county doing all right now going to the u.s. but kimberly thank you for that can be hard at that washington in philadelphia really ok all right just as well as i know you later are going to show more places they have actually kept i'm sure i'm sure they'll be retired sitting back at it a little bit later let's say of course i would like to my kind of in wilmington delaware about so joe biden's home state of course and joe was he came out and joe biden came out and spoke to his supporters kind of pretty empty what he was to come from the president.

well joe biden came out basically calling on his supporters to be patient where there the same result is going to take a lot longer than may have been predicted certainly at least until friday it would appear at this particular state stage in a state like pennsylvania but the claims of donald trump to victory in a number of states where votes have not been completed where the counting is not being completed as the world is with his threat to plead to the supreme court to stop all voting immediately all that's being contested very strongly by the trump campaign within the last half hour they've released a statement from joe biden's campaign manager saying that the president's statement tonight about trying to shut down the counting of daily judy cast ballots was outrageous and precedented and incorrect it's outrageous continues the statement

because it's a naked the effort to take away the democratic rights of the american citizen so certainly a hard hitting statement from the biden campaign there the campaign's been largely quiet during the counting of the votes but then shortly after midnight we had the statement from joe biden arriving here at the by them campaign headquarters in a convoy and then making a short address asking them as i said to be patient but also expressing confidence still winning the selection of still taking a number of states one of them arizona which it does appear you may have taken the prediction there is certified in one arizona absolutely critical in the wider context of the election and to take that wider context a little bit further nick one must understand that it's about 130000000 votes that have so far been tallied now according to most projections this stall 30000000

votes out there way to. to be apportioned to one of the candidates now this is significant because a vast majority of those votes are the early voting for the absentee voting forms these are the ones that are taking all the time to count now the one thing that has become clear in this election as in past ones is that those mail in both those absentee votes tend to come from democrats in person vote comes from republicans that's been shown very clearly in the results through the day so the key issue here is when the votes are counted what is the result going to be and we're still coming down to that blue wall of michigan wisconsin pennsylvania as we've been saying through the evening the place where there are a lot of absentee votes where the counting is still going on and certainly this is going to be critical in the hours and days ahead along with the myriad of legal

challenges that are expected as the counting continues and concludes this could well be that joe biden could yet win but there must be a no doubt there will be a great deal of disappointment in the democratic ranks that this is ended up where it is right now. indeed yes there had been the hope among democrats said states like florida were in play that states like georgia who still awaiting results may have been declared dead by it and states even earlier democrats were hoping for a virtual landslide they were hoping for the results to put them in a place where victory could be claimed fairly early on in the evening rather than dragging through in the right into the early hours of the morning and in days ahead that being said only one state has flipped it and that is arizona it would appear

according to the projections so in that the democrats can take some comfort but still that the great disappointment in this showing in florida there would be some hope for the future in this showing in texas where they've narrowed the margin of trump's apparent victory but overall this is less than what the democrats had been expecting in terms of the result of this particular point in time where with hours after the polls have closed so all no clear indication of who is going to win the selection but still democrats hopes are open and the one thing that did that was that projected victory in arizona that biden not only alive but with more options to get the necessary total of electoral college votes to see all of the presidency more options and then president trump even at this particular stage.

thinks about mike hanna reporting from delaware. let us now cross to california los angeles in fact reynolds is there the state with the biggest number of electoral votes he's outside the staples center which is a stadium that was turned into a voting center earlier in the day so 1st i'm going to talk about the blue wall in a moment but 1st let's just quickly talk about arizona the state that flipped. yes well arizona has been undergoing a great deal of demographic change over the past 4 years and over the past decade phoenix is one of the larger the fastest growing cities metropolitan areas in the country so a lot of people have come into what was formerly a solidly red state with their own political beliefs and that changes the makeup of arizona in addition there are demographic changes

a rising number of young latino and latino voters who tend towards the democrats in part that is because of president trump's behavior with regard to immigration with regard to the separation of families and the whole story that we've seen play out including the border wall and all of these things have energized the latino population in arizona so these are some of the reasons why it has flipped i think there's another reason that little more hard to quantify but we all remember john mccain he ran against barack obama on successfully in 2008 but he was a target of criticism by then candidate donald trump and.

even to trump's presidency and some disrespect shown to a man who was a real hero in arizona politics and that i think may have soured a number of arizona republicans who are mccain supporters and have fond memories of the late senator and who may have decided that trump was no longer acceptable as their leader. as i say a little hard to quantify mick but all of these factors i think coming together in arizona resulted in what looks like a flip the only form of any state that we've seen in this election cycle and perhaps a sign of how things are going in the sunbelt which was formerly and has been a democrat a republican area of the united states all right thanks to that we all talked about the bill will but later we just run out of time to move on to gas but thanks for

that in the meantime let's speak to peter matthews is a professor of political science at cypress college and the author of dollar democracy joins us now from los angeles how do you assess the current situation given everything that's unfolded in the last couple of hours. pretty remarkable but not entirely unexpected but i was we knew in the very close we thought possibly that biden could take a swing state like north carolina but the lower yet the counting is still going on but the states you have to watch that one they still haven't counted the absentee vote in the early vote and that's those states and if trump win one of those it will make it difficult for biden to win but i think there's a chance that biden with all those 3 states and also the one arizona as you pointed out and you've got some more electoral votes out of maine i believe so he's getting pretty close but it's very unpredictable still and you know we didn't it's not totally unexpected you know this is going to be very close what do you make of the

president's intervention that face me giving it a victory speech saying the. people voted for him so he should should be president and j. bunch of except that totally unconscionable unprecedented normally canceling democrat or republican governors that this rule in our history before and it's just unacceptable and he's really do it's amazing the american system and put it out and try to destroy franchise so many. millions of voters who voted in those early days legitimately and i want to clarify something there's not an on going to vote is an ongoing count in the count that legal in most states voting is already ended it ended today so we need to make that clear to people getting through to the president try to conclude by saying there's ongoing voting past the deadline is not true so it's possible he's doing we need to settle down in the end we work arm about it and be part of the rule of what principle this country is based on and to accept and accept defeat it gets defeated except victory be really with the victory

that would be fine too but you have to win it and it's grabbing what we've seen his not being the democratic blowout that some polls were predicting but do you think that the democrats went wrong with this. talk to answer the earlier we have 2 allies the actual exit polls for example we have to look at the intricacies of the polling and where we have gone wrong in the sampling where there are some hidden from voters there was also a big theory for a long time and some of us thought it may be legitimate many travelers not want to admit they're going to vote for trump but they would vote for many with back in 2.16 that could be have could happen again so we don't know yet until we analyze it more carefully and it is disappointing for some democrats that's not why and lisa stay away north carolina and possibly even georgia which could still happen to you don't forget so if there is a urban areas this is we have to vote about how many start coming tomorrow morning that we have is an urban area it's heavily african-american it is more progressive

midwest the stain of those votes i mean and president topping out at 2 percent ahead of joe biden in georgia it could make a difference and democrats were looking at a little disappointed in not taking in georgia or not taking florida and sorry texas look pretty close there were out but i wouldn't be completely supportive because of the biden getting up a little those 2 when it's still very legitimately won the election and i would probably going to predict that you probably win the popular vote as well therefore it was interesting listen it seems as if the donald trump message that a wave of socialism was about to sweep the united states resonated with latinos in florida. primarily but you know those who are the better as well in that you know immigrants and the immigrants that it was who were from cuba who are mostly very conservative right wing very anti-communist in their own thinking in the i think from played up to this and try to call biden supporters socialists or in some cases

who don't maybe even communists it was egregious to mislabel someone like that but you know if you were going to go back to the era when people debated each other parties actually differences in real issues might be ology and they debated it and accepted the defeat or accepted the argument one way or the other that kind of democracy as to be returned to the country we stood in a long way from that and become namecalling and i take campaigning and advertising in madison avenue and you know underhanded tactics to win at any cost and that really causes democracy to suffer it causes quality to suffer and because the american people suffer a lot that's not right i hope it changes. my thesis thank you for that criminalises thank you. thank you so much so minnesota has been at the center of protests over racial injustice since the killing of george floyd while in police custody back in may the touch a good name is there and has this reaction from voters in minneapolis. we spent

part of election evening here at the george boyd memorial as you can hear there was music some dancing food and al jazeera english projected on a screen many of the young voters we spoke to say they voted for biden but only because they no longer want president donald trump in office they don't believe that biden will do much to address concerns over police brutality in advance of racial equality in this country minnesota has been a democratic reliable democratic source of support for almost 50 years but trump has been hoping to grab those 10 electoral college votes he lost the state in 2016 by less than 45000 votes he used that as a missed opportunity and campaigned aggressively in the state wallpaper the airwaves with his advertising the republican party's strategy was to minimize

losses in the progressive cities of st paul and minneapolis as well as the suburbs and to drive up voting really trying to get out the vote in the more whirl white conservative parts of the state you have 70 percent of the population of minnesota living in urban areas 30 percent of the population living in the more conservative homogeneous areas of the state there were many voters that those who were sympathetic to the largest protest movement in his to respond by the death of george floyd while in minneapolis police department custody were concerned about the violence and the looting that they saw in minneapolis and trumps law and order message resonated with many of the voters that we spoke to when we went into rural minnesota one thing is certain expected minnesotans to be extremely in gage when it comes to voting in the last election more than 74 percent of eligible voters turned

out to vote it was the highest in the country where as we've been hearing has now become pretty clear that the races that will decide this election are the most remote in the midwestern states with him now from john hendren who's following them from chicago. once again it seems to come down to those blue wall states those are the states that barack obama won in from pennsylvania in minnesota and in between are the key states of wisconsin and michigan all of those states wisconsin michigan and pennsylvania were democratic states that went for donald trump in 2016 they put him over the top michigan was won by just 10000 votes and the votes that are left to be counted are the votes in the early voting that happened before the election the democrats believe that those heavily tilted toward joe biden and that that will help put them over the top in the end and in wisconsin it's the urban votes that

haven't yet been counted the biggest city milwaukee also can no show 'd the city of can osha has yet to be counted while the county around it has been counted and then there are those suburban in swing areas like door county which tends to vote for the eventual winner those votes have yet to be counted and those are states that until donald trump was elected had not voted for a republican for president since the 1980s so it could be days before we hear what happens in michigan in wisconsin there is a law that says the poll workers have to stay there and count every vote until all the ballots are counted and the folks there have told us that they expect to have an answer early wednesday that is 567 'd in the morning that could be 11 greenwich mean time or slightly later than that so we're still waiting on those votes but in the end it comes down to the blue wall that decided it for obama decided it for

trump and will decide likely this election as well. well let's turn our attention to foreign policy now on the type of relationship between donald trump and north korea's leader its range from insults and threats in 2007. to the historic meeting in 2018 with robert bride reports from south korea's captain so installed after trump rejected kim's demand for relief from u.s. sanctions she it looked at one point as though the historic summit diplomacy of u.s. president donald trump and kim jong un of north korea would lead to a major breakthrough but as negotiations stalled it's become obvious north korea's strategy now is wait and see north korea has been already on the waiting mode when it comes to dealing with the united states because there is no hope for the trump administration to make any important changes prior year. election on

november 3rd most analysts believe north korea would prefer a trump victory they see his impulsiveness such as when he unilaterally canceled joint military exercises with south korea but will be saving a tremendous amount of money plus i think it's very provocative as their best chance of getting relief from sanctions he put trampled elective maybe it's cool. because they still love each other they hear showing they are or could personally live in contrast a presidential victory for joe biden would likely be a return to the more traditional policy of strategic patience of sanctions pressure and international isolation biden has described kim as a tyrant and to thug north korea in turn called biden a rabid dog significantly kim has called for a ruling party congress for january 2021 to announce a new 5 year plan for the crippled economy where he is also likely to map out the

future u.s. strategy based on the election outcome kim will also be mindful of his changing relations with his neighbors namely south korea china and russia with whom he's also held. pl summits in the past few years he and his regime no longer look as threatening and reclusive as they once did that more statesman like stature was evident at the recent military parade in pyongyang which also featured new missiles presumably capable of reaching the united states kim knows that if he returns to testing those weapons in defiance of a new u.s. administration he risks becoming an international pariah once more of the pride al-jazeera sold well chinese leaders a once in the u.s. election closely after relations deteriorated to their lowest point in decades and the president trump there have been divisions over trade and technology.