be the hero world it's right. the. counting continues in the u.s. election joe biden says he's won enough electoral votes to win the white house but stopped short of declaring victory when the count is finished we believe we will be the winners. in our intent of this is al jazeera live from london also coming up biden adds wisconsin to his haul of states once held by donald trump the president's campaign says it will challenge results there and in other crucial battleground states. and

a military escalation in northern ethiopia as tensions between the government and local groups threaten to spill across the border. it's $2200.00 g.m.t. 5 pm u.s. eastern time and 16 hours after the last polls close to the presidential election result is still on a knife edge but it seems it could be tilting the way of former vice president joe biden and his democratic party speaking a short time ago biden said he was confident that he would win enough seats to take him over the line after a long night of county it's clear that we're when you know states to reach 270 electoral votes needed to win the presidency i'm not here to clear that we've won but i am here to report the count is finished we believe we will be the winners all the votes counted. we have won wisconsin by

20000 verse votes virtually the same margin of president trump won that state 4 years ago in michigan we lead by over 35000 votes and it's growing a substantially bigger margin and president trump won michigan in 2016 michigan will complete his fote soon maybe as early as the day and i feel very good about pennsylvania virtually all the remaining ballots to be counted were cast by mail and we've been winning 78 percent of the votes by mail in pennsylvania we flipped arizona and the 2nd district of nebraska of special significance to me is that we've won with the majority of the american

people and every indication is that that majority will grow well tom campaign is announced it has filed a suit to hold a vote counting in the states of pennsylvania and michigan it also requested a recount in wisconsin as the polls closed and results started to come in so we're trying to falsely declared himself the winner while this was still being counted within the last half outruns know every day giuliani told journalists they were particularly concerned about 9 minutes. not a single republican has been able to look at any one of these mail ballots they could be from mars as far as we're concerned or they could be from the democratic national committee joe biden could have voted 50 times as far as we know with 5000 times the ballots could be from camden philadelphia unfortunately and say this about my own city has a reputation for voter fraud you have a reputation the dead people voting and we're going to go look at just how many dead people voted here i don't think we have to do that but we will. alan fischer

in washington d.c. so perhaps as predicted the noise of being brought in and this is going to continue but is there is there a ripoff now potentially to $270.00 for joe biden. well there is even with pennsylvania i mean given that wisconsin is no in his camp as far as you see to press and others are concerned just in the last 20 minutes or so that a number of news organizations are saying that michigan will go for joe biden given that arizona was called on tuesday night early whedon's the morning for joe biden if he wins nevada he's over the 270 limit that is why the republicans are fighting so fiercely because they see that is the potential that they could lose this election to joe biden you know as far as pennsylvania is concerned is speaking to the biden campaign they think they are well ahead but we know the campaign is going

to go to court for 3 issues in pennsylvania one is to join a suit that's already at the supreme court which bans sensually 1000000 votes being counted after 3 days also questions whether or not they have the right identity for those who sent in the mail in ballots and they're also asking the courts which could eventually end up at the supreme court to haul the counting of ballots to allow republicans to view what is going on so we have from donald trump for weeks before the election he did in the words of one democratic operative say the quiet part that he wants the supreme court to be in place that he's going to challenge anything that doesn't give him victory in the court and that seems to be the pattern that we're seeing certainly we knew that he's he wanted. installed in the supreme court before the election that happened just last monday yet just last monday. and so it happened really recently and that would give the

supreme court a $63.00 conservative majority so is this going to end up in the courts it already highs will it continue to go through the courts it probably will it will get a result in the next couple of days it's very unlikely what are the risks association with delays like this. that people get angry that they get upset that we see things that we saw in 2000 when there was what was called the brooks brothers riot where republicans went into the courthouse in miami dade county and stopped physically before the supreme court stopped this. legally so there are many many issues people people are on edge they were worried about the election anyway their know being built up with the statements that the. votes are being found with statements that can't be backed up by rudy giuliani and

others you know when he says joe biden could have voted 50 times he knows joe biden didn't vote 50 times and he is being upset about that but it sure so is division issues so is concern and therefore that is what they are playing with it's a very potentially volatile situation someone even see dangerous situation but be under no illusion both sides know exactly what they're doing when they do this and be under no illusion donald trump knows exactly what he was doing for weeks before this when he talked up the potential of this and the potential of the votes being stolen from him because he was looking at the polls and things were not looking good if you looked at the returns no he sees the exact same thing his path to 270 is restricted. thank you very much. mike hanna joins us live from wilmington delaware and that's where we heard from joe biden

a short time ago and he felt confident he was saying that his path to victory was assured but he wasn't actually declaring victory how long do you think it will be before we get. you know get a clear idea of whether he's made it to $270.00. well within the last half hour a very very important development a number of news outlets as my colleague alan fischer just mentioned are calling michigan for joe biden now this would be a huge step towards getting that 270 electoral votes because that means if he also won nevada he would not need pennsylvania at all he would get to that magic number to get the majority in the electoral college so there's obviously the campaign headquarters here at salute to be watching this like hawks and that is why the trump campaign is contesting the vote in michigan it's contesting the vote in pennsylvania but biden sounding confident but making very clear that he's not

claiming victory however he's confident that when the votes are fully come to his campaign will wind pointing out as well that this would be only the 4th campaign in history that has successfully defeated an incumbent president but it wasn't just about him winning or losing by then made an absolutely impassionate call for unity drawing on the constitution referring to we the people as stated in the constitution as saying that there's more that brings americans together than drives them apart saying that now is the time for unity coming together and to heal so with all of the after this viciously contested election still going on in terms of all the legal challenges happening from the trump campaign to joe biden still calling for unity still insisting that this is an election that is not about republicans or democrats in the end it's about the country itself it's about the

democracy which is the very stone on which this country is bill and mike i mean once again the polls were pretty wide of the mark and although the democrats seem to be kind of edging ahead at the moment they hadn't appeared to get to have a sort of much better picture in place for several months now what's the kind of discussion about how. those things went wrong again for the pollsters. well there's a lot of soul searching going on among democrats the polls did indicate very handy leads in a number of areas that have gone to trump florida comes to mind in particular but there's no doubt that what we've seen here is a pattern that we've seen in the past and it's a pattern that appears that continues to befuddle the pollsters and that is the mail in votes and the absentee votes trend towards the democrats voting on the day of people going into the booth and putting their ballot in on the day of the

election tends to go towards republicans so this is something that has skewed the polls every single time it skewed them in 2016 and everybody threw up their hands in horror it skewed them now it would appear from the results that we've seen all of that being said though the one thing that has held is that the polls indicated an absolute majority for joe biden in terms of the popular vote well he's got a handy lead in that particular issue unlike president trump in 2016 who did not win the popular vote he lost the popular vote to clinton although got the required number of votes in the electoral college so for bitin this is the key issue in terms of the legitimacy of his victory should he indeed be declared victory in the end and that is the fact is not only did he get a majority in the electoral college that many democrats coming is skewed anyway by the gerrymandering that has happened over many years but that he also got the majority of votes from the american people now this would be critical to the

legitimacy of his standing and would also be critical in terms of carrying on what are likely to be months of contestation by the trump campaign we're seeing that now the legal actions going on in michigan going on in pennsylvania threats of going to the supreme court to join as an applicant in the cases that the supreme court has already decided in terms of how long a period will be allowed for the count of hopes so. these are all the issues that we are still struggling with but for joe biden and the biden campaign here in warmington the key issue is that he is so close or predicted to be so close to an electoral college victory but most importantly it is that he's projected to be very very close to an absolute majority among the american people and i can i thank you very much indeed. obama has moved closer to the magic total of $270.00 votes actual college votes for the white house adding the 10 actual college seats

in the state of wisconsin but the trump campaign is already demanding a recount in that state and his father lawsuit to try to stop the counting of votes in another key swing state michigan which is looking like it might go to. let's go to john hendren who's live in non-singing mission to michigan so president tom is now seeking to hold counting in michigan what's was he trying to shave. the president trump is trying to stop the counting of the vote in michigan and a lot of self appointed poll watchers have sort of crushed in on this central counting going on in detroit police have been called in to keep them out but with 97 percent of the vote counted joe biden is $1.00 percentage points ahead and the votes that remain to be counted are apparently early votes and those break very heavily for joe biden sometimes $3.00 to $1.00 form and there are also many of them

in wayne county that's the area around detroit detroit is a heavily democratic area majority african-american so the horse may have left the stable here for the trump campaign but he is trying to stop the count and he just tweeted that he declares that he has won michigan i'm not sure that's how it works but that's what the president is saying he's claimed a number of states and he's hoping to stop what's going on here but just to put it into perspective 4 years ago donald trump won michigan against hillary clinton by 10000 votes well this gap is more like 60000 and last time around hillary clinton did not shoot a challenge that the green party candidate did and she was told that she couldn't challenge it because she hadn't got enough votes to make a credible run of it. so this is a pretty uphill battle for donald trump and he did have to go through the state

courts before getting it to the supreme court which is apparently his preferred venue to have this resolved but the bottom line is michigan seems to be leaning very heavily toward biden by a small margin but by what appears to be an almost unrecoverable margin we expect that vote to continue to be counted and the state of michigan says they will finish counting it later the attorney general has said that the trump campaign has had meaningful access to the counting that is the basis of that challenge the truck campaigns as they want to see the vote counting go on the attorney general says they have had access and in fact poll watchers from the trump campaign have been seen especially in detroit those heavily democratic areas john hendren thank you very much indeed. or he's back now to live in miami it tests on the count in georgia. well it's creeping along extremely slowly about

94 percent of the votes have now been counted and that gap hours talking about earlier between biden trump is narrowing now the key thing about georgia with its 16 electoral college votes is the ballots that haven't been counted a mail in ballots which normally favors joe biden and the other important thing is where those ballots are from there from the atlanta area the biggest city in the state of georgia a lot of african-americans in that community who also lean towards joe biden so this is really narrowing the gap in a state that really shouldn't be in play the last democratic presidential nominee to win in that state was bill clinton back in 1992 so it is on a razor's edge like many other states but this would be a big win for joe biden it may not matter if nevada and arizona go biden's way but it certainly would be a huge feather in his cap given how close he is to that magic number of 270 now

officials in the state of georgia say that counting is under way we've been waiting all day it still hasn't come through and it's 5 15 in the evening here on the east coast so a nail biter once again we are hoping to get those results in the next few hours and you're in florida and then the next why was it so important for trump to hold florida and what are the democrats sort of talking about the disappointment in not holding and not winning florida. yeah i think they are i mean let's address the 2nd point 1st if you like and that is if you look at what happened here in miami dade county joe biden just didn't manage to get any enthusiasm among latino voters and there are a 1000000 cuban americans in this city alone so that's just how important they are in this state and that was essentially because the campaign pushed this idea that joe biden was a socialist and when he say things like that to people from cuba that does not go

down well there is a great deal of fear for that kind of political leaning despite the fact it's not true now the other point is there are various paths for the president which are closing rapidly if these projections are right and he really needed to keep the state of florida he won it by about 112000 votes back in 2016 a very narrow margin but at the end of the night it was over 300000 votes as 29 electoral college votes to trump it was a state he really needed to win and of course the state he calls home since he changed his residency tomorrow largo the winter white house nonetheless in the bigger picture we are still waiting for georgia to come back with just those last couple of 100000 ballots and what was your impression as to the kind of the way people talk to the polls and i remember reading about one outlying poster who was still calling it this year for trump he was he called it for trump last

time around he seemed to be anyone and one of his theories was that people always lie to the pollsters and particularly trump that is what is that is that your impression that people were kind of not prepared to admit to voting trampled you think it would be something different that would have skewed the results of the post as we're getting. well i mean let's let's go back in time over the past few weeks here in florida the lead was for joe biden by about 3.84 percent the margin of error is around the same but they got it wrong and after 2016 we all went through it i'm sure you did too and it was really wrong so people just simply don't trust the polls for various different reasons the pollsters may not be reaching the people that they need to reach people may not be giving honest answers but i think 4 years into the trump presidency if you're a trump supporter you're pretty loud about it so you know throughout this entire process i certainly haven't been trusting all making any kind of predictions based on the polls it's hard facts votes and results that really matter at the end of the

day and they got it wrong here in florida although i have to say it was within the margin of error so perhaps not unexpected but trump you know he he made the lead from 2016 was 100000 or so votes it now was over 300000 votes so they really did get it wrong outside of that margin of error and again i thank you very much indeed . now as we reported earlier biden has been declared the winner in wisconsin taking the state from donald trump last kitchenette national name live in madison took us through the gaps that mean biden has been talking about how the margin this time is is similar in his favor as it was for trump last time around. but time doesn't seem to want to listen to that particular argument of the station is going for litigation. correct once again and it is a very tight race in the state of wisconsin by even though appears to have won the

state's 10 electoral college votes by 20000 votes he edged ahead today as absentee ballots were counted in the cities of milwaukee green bay and no show now this was a priority for the biden can't win trump one wisconsin in 2016 he did so by less than 23000 votes and he has the distinction of being the 1st republican presidential candidate to win the state of wisconsin in more than 30 years so wisconsin that was a priority for the democratic party and this story as far as the party is concerned is one of a comeback in the 4 years since 2016 the party has pumped in quite a bit of resources in an attempt to get the state back in the democratic column reacting to the fact that biden appears to have won wisconsin it was constant

democratic party chairman said that trump leaned in personally and voters who don't like voter suppression. rose up organizers worked magic that is a quote now a trump campaign manager is calling for a recount he also said without citing any specific evidence that there were quote voter irregularities in several key. in wisconsin he also said that quote public polling is a voter suppression tactic tactic now about that recount in the state of wisconsin you can call for a recount if the gap between the 2 top vote getters is less than one percent so what would happen in this case is the trump campaign would pay for that recount they'd have to pay for it unless the margin ended up being a less than $1.00 quarter of one percent recount in the state of minnesota during a presidential election are not new in 2016 a green party candidate paid 2 and

a half $1000000.00 for a recount was constant like other states around the country has had legal challenges going into election day last week the supreme court ruled that unlike it had play and the state was not going to be able to continue to count absentee ballots through november 6th even if they were postmarked by the end of the polls closing on november 3rd the reason for that was because we are in the midst of a pandemic and the u.s. postal service has had a lot of delays it's worth noting that was scots in is having ever serjeant's of the pandemic right now it's considered a red zone but in any event you talked at the beginning about the gap in 2016 being very similar to the gap this year in 2016 tromp one the state of michigan or wisconsin rather by less than one percent.

thank you very much indeed however this election is decided it's going to have an impact on international relations michael bush is a global affairs analyst he says if biden wins he'll have a unique opportunity to reshape his foreign policy. i think president trump will go down in history for an interesting thing he did and that is he basically broke up the old international order he broke up a lot of the gridlock that he inherited from previous presidents and from the obama administration things like the. gridlock within nato our approach to china to russia so i think biden will have a very interesting opportunity now to come in and restore that kind of order but in a more kind of a sufficient proactive way and let's see how that works for example with like him or putin and russia who always seems to be one or 2 steps ahead of any american president that often gets his way so it would be interesting to see what happens in

the next few weeks and months whether biden presidency has been to juvie no one letter in politics and international relations at university college london thanks very much indeed for being with us i just want to pick up on area that if it is a presidency which we don't often don't yet know but if it is what kind of areas of difference do you see shaping up in the next 4 years. well and i think there will be a couple key areas and terms of foreign policy where we'll probably see it 1st is in 2 areas 1st in terms of by its commitment to climate change agreements especially rejoining the paris climate accords and secondly in terms of the u.s. is engaged with the j c p a way and the iran nuclear deal but in other areas of foreign policy i think we won't see as much of a shift in policy substance as much as style right now will still expect biden to follow trump in terms of being tough on china and pushing for better relations in

the middle east and also for engaging with our nato allies but in a way that's much more cooperative one that's focused on multilateralism and one that's just a bit more stable and predictable in general and just to go back to the race in hand where do you see this going when do you think this could all end up at the supremes cool tool or what's your prediction for the next to few days well that's certainly what everyone is waiting to find out and we heard from president trump today that he would not be shy about pushing this to the courts and indeed is already instigating some challenges in the states of wisconsin and michigan however that would really only go to the supreme court in a rare instance of a state level court's decision going up to the supreme court and that would probably only be if it was just wind the state just coming down to one state. and so i think it's unlikely right now biden is just got michigan got

wisconsin earlier tonight so it looks like arizona and nevada are viewing towards him in which case he would hit that crucial $270.00 mark but of course we won't know until all the votes are counted how surprised are you the performance of trump in these these in this particular race. well not too surprised in fact this is one scenario that was expected obviously the polls suggested that biden would have a stronger leader especially in some of the battleground states but in fact if you look at the margin of error that was in some of these polls if we remember the voting the margin of error errors from 2016 it was pretty known that some of these races would be quite close and so many expected that we would not have an answer on election day and would really be facing what we're facing now waiting for some of these final battleground states to finish counting those mail in ballots before we

have a decision and tell us about the picture in the senate. well indeed it was a disappointing day and night for democrats and terms of senate races democrats were hoping to retake the senate and in fact have not really seen much success there republicans are still holding on with a very slim majority there were a few races are still yet to be called but democrats were hoping for a decisive shift in power there it's looking more likely that republicans will still hold on to the senate and democrats also lost in seats in the house even though they're maintaining control of the house so in terms of congressional races that democrats were hoping for a strong showing a bit of a disappointment what about the future the whoever wins it's an incredibly divided country just in these results the tightness of the results would suggest or illustrates that perhaps. when do you think the priority will be for whoever wins in terms of trying to heal some of those divisions. well i think that's such a crucial question because what this election shows is that the country really is

split 5050 between people who have supported trump and people who are critical of him in the way that americans are really just living in kind of 2 political sphere is right now and whoever is victorious will need to take that into account and terms of being able to recognize that there is a need to heal the country kind of overcome some of the polarization that we've really seen manifest in this election and try and move things forward from this rather low point that we. thank you very much indeed professor judy norm thank you for joining us thank you. still to come on al-jazeera and men's prompts a call last on this as a country had interesting and lockdown to drive down coronavirus cases.

hello the harvest is underway bumper harvest in new south wales it might temporarily have to halt as this cold front is on its way through and it's a bit more active than that might suggest significant rains going through victoria new south wales heading towards sydney it's already dropped the temperature in melbourne by 15 degrees compare with a couple of days ago for carson city will see some drop in temperature with the wind will be most noticeable with that right in the wind on the coast tends to whip up the surf as well really surround the bay that's going to be coastal the south wales the benefits of that southerly breeze anyway all the way up to the border with queensland leaving behind cooler weather was sunshine. cool words used to describe pursed despite the showers it's been up to the thirty's and it's there again and that's during friday. the change of seasons slowed in the eastern parts of asia north of the equator although we've got active weather at sandia typhoon.