By Nikhila Natarajan

New York, Nov 6 (IANS): After three full days of waiting patiently for the slow march of vote counting to work itself out, Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden finally stormed into the lead in battlegrounds Pennsylvania and Georgia on Friday morning, closing in on the White House which continues to turn on a handful of incredibly tight contests.

The Biden campaign believes that it has crossed the Pennsylvania challenge and is "joyous", according to reporters on the ground in Delaware, the Biden headquarters.

Biden leads Trump by nearly 6,000 votes in Pennsylvania and over 1,000 in deep red Georgia.

Millions of votes are still to be counted but even before we have the final tally, Biden has already 73 million votes nationally, the most in American political history. About 130,000 votes remain to be counted in Pennsylvania.

Trump is fuming, he remains defiant and continues to allege "fraud" in Pennsylvania and other battlegrounds. His children have chimed into the overall White House meltdown, in terms that generally occupy the wide arc between what's "legal" and "illegal".

Biden leads Trump 253 to 214 in the electoral vote tally. A victory in Pennsylvania means it is game over for Trump, who ran a wild campaign in 2016 and has transformed the White House in the strangest of ways in the last four years.

Biden is a sharp contrast to Trump, both in the personal and political realm. The last three days have shown Americans glimpses of that very difference.

Biden spent every day since November 3 trying to ease tensions and delivering his messages with little outward show of anxiety.

"I ask everyone to stay calm. The process is working," Biden has said repeatedly. "It is the will of the voters. No one, not anyone else who chooses the President of the United States of America."