Joe Biden has managed to maintain a steady but slightly narrowing lead in the key battleground state of Arizona.
With the help of Latino voters lining up behind him, the former vice president is now leading the state which went to Donald Trump in the 2016 presidential election.
As of early Thursday, Biden led Trump by 68,400 votes in Arizona, accounting for less than three percentage points, reports New York Times.
Biden, in the votes so far from Maricopa County, which includes Phoenix, leads by five percentage points, with about 5% of the total vote still outstanding.
His narrow edge underscored a profound political shift in the longtime Republican bastion Arizona that has lurched left in recent years.
This was fueled by the rapidly evolving demographics and a growing contingent of young Latino voters who favour liberal policies.
Also Read- Trump supporters protest outside Arizona vote center
Meanwhile, vote counting in the Maricopa County election office was delayed in the early hours of Thursday, forced by a demonstration carried out by Trump supporters.
In one of the brightest spots for Democrats so far, the former astronaut Mark Kelly defeated the state’s Republican senator, Martha McSally, in a special election, making Kelly and Kyrsten Sinema the first pair of Democrats to represent Arizona in the US Senate since 1950.
Only a handful of "toss up" states are left in play as he and Donald Trump vie for the crucial 270 Electoral College votes needed to win the US presidency.
As counting continues in a series of knife-edge elections, Biden so far is the closest on 253 -- also leading in the popular vote and breaking the record for the most number of votes ever cast for a presidential candidate.
Trump has 214 Electoral College votes, also surpassing the number of total people who backed him in 2016 by more than three million.
Also Read- Biden closes in on Trump in battleground of Georgia
Despite election administrators appeals for patience and calm, the stakes have been significantly raised by Trump's campaign launching legal challenges.
Poll watchers have amassed outside some counts, with the mood febrile as they chant and demand access to the counting halls, while protests against Trump raged in New York and Pennsylvania.
And the president himself has threatened to take his fight to the Supreme Court, with his lawyer Rudy Giuliani wildly speculating, without evidence that Biden may have voted illegally 5,000 times.
Trump himself has already claimed victory in the election overall and in states where no result has been announced - Pennsylvania, Georgia and North Carolina.
