Biden vote tally getting close to 80 million

President-elect Joe Biden’s vote tally is getting close to a record 80 million votes as ballots continue to be counted across the country, The Associated Press reported Wednesday.

Biden already broke the record for the most votes for any presidential candidate in history after he reached beyond 70 million votes as of the day following Election Day. The record was previously held by former President Obama, who received more than 69.4 million votes in 2008.

President Trump also beat a record for the most votes received for a losing presidential candidate with more than 70 million votes. 

More than 155 million votes have been counted as tallies are still going in California and New York. Turnout currently is estimated to be 65 percent of all eligible voters, the highest since 1908, according to data from the AP and the U.S. Elections Project. 

Biden’s lead over Trump is almost 6 million votes, but the president has insisted that he won the election and has refused to concede. His campaign has filed several lawsuits in battleground states contesting the vote arguing largely unfounded widespread claims of voter fraud. 

Several news organizations have finalized the electoral vote for Biden at 306 compared with Trump’s 232. The president won by that margin in 2016 and at the time called it a “landslide.”

Biden’s win depended on about 45,000 votes in Arizona, Georgia and Wisconsin, according to the AP, while Trump’s 2016 victory relied on 77,000 votes across three swing states.

The margins, though, are not enough to trigger recounts in several states, including Arizona and Wisconsin, as recounts usually change the tally by only a few hundred votes. Georgia is manually recounting the votes as part of an audit required by state law because of close margins in the race.