Democrat Joe Biden crept nearer to victory over Donald Trump on Thursday in an exceedingly close U.S. election that hinged on razor-thin margins in a handful of states, while the Republican president escalated his legal efforts to influence vote counting and made fresh unsubstantiated claims of voting fraud.

Biden, the former U.S. vice president, was chipping away at Trump’s leads in Pennsylvania and Georgia while retaining slim margins in Nevada and Arizona.

 Biden issued a very short statement on the current state of play in the presidential race, speaking at the Queen Theater in Wilmington, Delaware.

The Democratic nominee noted the country is nearing 240,000 deaths from coronavirus and expressed sympathy for Americans who had lost loved ones to the virus.

Pivoting to the results of the presidential election, Biden once again emphasized election officials must count every valid vote that was cast.

“In America, the vote is sacred,” Biden said. “Each ballot must be counted.”

Biden noted he and his running mate, Kamala Harris, “continue to feel very good” about the ultimate result of the race.

“We have no doubt that when the count is finished, Senator Harris and I will be declared the winners,” Biden said.

As Americans remains on edge as they await the declaration of a winner in the presidential race, Biden said, “I ask everyone to stay calm.”

Ballot tabulation dragged on in those battleground states two days after polls closed, while protesters from both sides staged demonstrations in major cities over the vote counting.

After an acrimonious campaign waged during the coronavirus pandemic, the election appeared to be moving toward a nail-biting conclusion in the coming hours and perhaps days.

There is still a narrow path for Trump to win if he holds on in Georgia, where he leads by 12,800 votes, and Pennsylvania, where he is ahead by 108,600 votes, and overtakes Biden in Arizona, where he trails by 68,100 votes, or Nevada, where he is 11,400 votes behind.

But many of the outstanding votes in Georgia and Pennsylvania were clustered in places expected to lean Democratic, such as the Atlanta and Philadelphia areas.

Trump, who attacked the integrity of the U.S. voting system during the campaign, again on Thursday alleged voting fraud without providing evidence and accused Democrats of aiming to “steal” the election.

His campaign has filed several lawsuits in battleground states and called for a recount in Wisconsin, though some legal experts said the court challenges were a long shot unlikely to affect the election outcome.

Meanwhile, in brief remarks from his hometown of Wilmington, Delaware, on Thursday afternoon, Biden again urged patience and called for every vote to be counted.

“We have no doubt that when the count is finished, Senator Harris and I will be declared the winners,” said Biden, referring to his running mate, U.S. Senator Kamala Harris. “So I ask everyone to stay cool, all people to stay calm. The process is working, the count is being completed. And we’ll know very soon.”