Donald Trump to request recount in Wisconsin

Image via AP.

President Donald Trump’s campaign manager Bill Stepien says the president plans to “immediately” request a recount in the battleground state of Wisconsin, where the race remains close.

Trump and Democrat Joe Biden were locked in a close race as counting stretched from Tuesday night into early Wednesday. With nearly all votes counted, Biden had a lead of six-tenths of a percentage point over Trump.

In Wisconsin, if a race is within 1 percentage point, the trailing candidate can force a recount.

Stepien says in a statement Wednesday: “The President is well within the threshold to request a recount and we will immediately do so.”

The fate of the United States presidency is hanging in the balance, with Trump and Biden, battling for three familiar battleground states — Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania — that could prove crucial in determining who wins the White House.

Trump and Biden were running close as counties around Wisconsin coped with a flood of absentee ballots prompted by the coronavirus pandemic. More than 1 million people resorted to mail-in voting, ensuring they could cast a ballot safely but raising the prospect that counting them all would take much longer than usual.

Biden was hoping to reclaim the state from Trump after the president won it by less than 23,000 votes in 2016. Trump’s victory marked the first time a Republican had captured the state since Ronald Reagan in 1984. Coupled with his wins in the other “blue wall” states of Michigan and Pennsylvania, Wisconsin propelled him to the White House.

Trump’s narrow margin from four years ago gave Democrats hope they could flip the state for Biden, and they mounted an intense get out-the-vote effort, especially in liberal areas that did not turn out strongly in 2016. Polls consistently showed Biden leading Trump as Democrats bashed the president for his handling of the coronavirus pandemic.

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Republished with permission from The Associated Press.