EDMONTON -- The longer Americans wait to hear who will be their next president, the more their anxiety grows.

“I slept in three-hour increments last night,” Diana Keto-Lambert, a U.S. expat living in Edmonton, told CTV News.

She watched, unsurprised, Tuesday night as her home state of North Carolina turned from blue to red.

But as more ballots were counted, she slowly regained optimism.

“Once I saw that Wisconsin was starting to lean and that Michigan was starting to lean, I started to feel a little bit better.”

But the race is far from won.

Twenty-four hours after polls closed, Democrat candidate and former vice president Joe Biden appeared close to an electoral college win with 264 electoral votes opposite Trump’s 214.  

However, votes still needed to be tallied in several states, including Pennsylvania, Nevada and Georgia.

Both Biden and incumbent president Donald Trump have expressed confidence they’ll win after the final count – but the Republican candidate is already promising to challenge election results.

Trump’s campaign launched multiple lawsuits in hopes of stopping vote-counting in Michigan, which flipped Blue on Wednesday, and Pennsylvania, where votes are still being counted.

He also called for a recount in Wisconsin, which Biden won by more than 20,000 votes.

Steven McGowan, a U.S. army vet and registered Republican also living in Alberta’s capital city, voted for Biden.

As results come in – and continue to suggest a tight race between the presidential candidates – McGowan feels the election wasn’t the reckoning for the Republican Party he had hoped it would be.

“That changed things from being exciting to being anxious.”

The ex-pats weren’t confident in making any predictions.

“If you held a gun to my head right now and said, ‘Pick one,’” Keto-Lambert laughed, “I’d say Biden.”

McGowan noted, “This could take days. This could take weeks.”

But they agreed that the close race could be symbolic in more ways than one.

“Because things were so close, I think that Trumpism will continue to run rampant,” McGowan commented.

Keto-Lambert said, “Biden winning would show that the heart of the nation still is inherently good.”

With files from CTVNews.ca