Millions of legally cast votes are being counted in elections offices
around the country as the presidential race between President Donald
Trump and former Vice President Joe Biden comes down to a handful of
battleground states.
Biden holds the lead in the Electoral College at this stage in the
night, 224-213; 270 electoral votes are needed to become president.
Experts had warned for months that a result may not be known on election
night, or even days afterward, as voters voted by mail in record
numbers. As of early Wednesday morning, it was still too close to call
in Arizona, North Carolina, Nevada, Wisconsin, Michigan, Maine, Georgia
and the potentially critical state of Pennsylvania.
Trump won a close race in Florida, which was one of the states Biden had
hoped to peel away from the President’s 2016 map and has a narrow edge
in North Carolina. The former vice president has taken the lead in
Wisconsin and is hoping that Arizona, where he has a 5-percentage point
lead with 82% of the ballots counted, could be his first victory of the
night that turns a red state blue.
With more than 90% of the vote counted in Wisconsin, Biden holds a
narrow lead over Trump in that state of just more than 20,000 votes,
with all of Milwaukee’s vote counted.
The state of Nevada, which Clinton won by a slender margin in 2016, also
appeared to be a much closer race than Democrats had expected. With 85%
of the votes counted in that state, Biden leads by less than a
percentage point.
Increasingly, it appears that the result of the entire election could
hinge on whether Biden can restore the Democratic “blue wall” in
Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, a scenario that could stretch into
the coming days as large numbers of mail-in votes are counted.
Biden pulled ahead by a slight margin in Michigan Wednesday morning with
90% of the vote counted.
The clerk of the key suburban Michigan county of Wayne, Cathy Garrett,
told CNN election officials are still counting votes, and she would not
estimate when officials may conclude. The county is reporting that more
than 64% of those cast there have been counted. Wayne County is the
largest county in Michigan and includes Detroit and its metro area.
Michigan’s Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson said in a tweet Wednesday
morning that “hundreds of thousands of ballots in our largest
jurisdictions are still being counted including Detroit, Grand Rapids,
Flint, Warren & Sterling Heights.”
The night unfolded as the most unorthodox election night in modern
memory. At times it appeared like one candidate or the other was heading
for an early win in important states. But batches of mail-in and early
votes meant the count often dramatically shifted one way or the other.
Polls are now closed across the US on a nerve-jangling night that will
set the nation’s course for the next four years and cast judgment on the
most tumultuous presidency of the modern age. Results are flowing in
from battlegrounds and it’s too early to make a projection in many key
states.
CNN projects Biden will win Hawaii, Rhode Island, Minnesota, Virginia,
California, Oregon, Washington, Illinois, New Hampshire, New Mexico,
Colorado, Connecticut, New Jersey, New York, Vermont, Delaware,
Washington, DC, Maryland, Massachusetts and one of Nebraska’s five
electoral votes. Nebraska awards two electoral votes to its statewide
winner and divides three others over its three congressional districts.
CNN projects Trump will also win in Montana, Texas, Iowa, Idaho, Ohio,
Mississippi, Wyoming, Missouri, Kansas, Utah, Louisiana, Alabama, South
Carolina, North Dakota, South Dakota, Arkansas, Indiana, Oklahoma,
Kentucky, West Virginia and Tennessee and four of Nebraska’s five
electoral votes.