With record high turnout and more than 155 million votes cast, the race for the presidency between Republican President Donald Trump and Democrat Joe Biden will ultimately be decided by just a handful of states where it remains too close to call a winner.
As of Wednesday afternoon, Biden is ahead in electoral votes 248 to 214, according to Associated Press projections. Trump’s early leads in the Rust Belt states of Michigan and Wisconsin evaporated, and the AP called Wisconsin for Biden on Wednesday afternoon. The Trump campaign is seeking a recount.
Trump still leads in Pennsylvania, but the margin is shrinking. Biden is threatening to trim the president’s leads in North Carolina and Georgia.
Here is an update on the status of the race and the ballot counting in the six states yet to be called by the AP.
Alaska
President Donald Trump will almost certainly win Alaska’s three electoral votes, but as of Wednesday afternoon the Associated Press has not officially projected a winner because only 50 percent of the state’s votes have been counted.
Trump has a big lead with 114,814 votes, or 63.6 percent, to Biden’s 58,519 votes, or 32.4 percent.
Trump defeated Democrat Hillary Clinton in 2016 with 51.3 percent of the vote to Clinton’s 36.6 percent.
The reason for the delay: on Election Day, Alaska only counts votes cast on Election Day and early votes cast at physical early polling locations through Oct. 29.
According to the Anchorage Daily News, at least 122,233 absentee ballots and early votes will not be counted until at least next week. The results will be released in batches “as election officials verify the information on ballot envelopes and open them one by one, feeding the ballot inside through a scanner.”
Georgia
An unexpected battleground, Trump is maintaining a lead in Georgia with 2,391,911 votes, or 50.2 percent, to Biden’s 2,314,975, or 48.6 percent, with 95 percent of the state’s ballots counted as of Wednesday afternoon. But that roughly 100,000 vote margin could shrink quickly.
Vote counting was delayed in the Atlanta area when a pipe burst at Fulton County’s State Farm Arena and elections workers were temporarily removed from the arena.
Fulton County is a Democratic stronghold, so Biden could pick up votes as the counting continues. Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger told NBC’s Good Morning America on Wednesday that he expects the counting to wrap up soon and added that he did not expect the remaining outstanding ballots would flip the preliminary results.
“By mid-day we should be pretty much through it,” he said.
Georgia has 16 electoral votes. Trump won Georgia by a 5-point margin in 2016.
Candidates within a half percentage point can request a recount.
Michigan
Trump was ahead in Michigan when he addressed his supporters and the media just before 2:30 a.m. on Wednesday. But since then the race has tightened and Biden now has a slim lead that Trump will likely struggle to overcome.
As of Wednesday afternoon, Biden had 2,672,896 votes, or 49.8 percent, compared with Trump’s 2,611,661 votes, or 48.7 percent. That’s a margin of over 28,000 votes, with 99 percent of precincts reporting, according to Associated Press projections, but the numbers are moving in the wrong direction for Trump.
Trump’s campaign on Wednesday said it had filed a lawsuit in an attempt to halt the vote count in Michigan, arguing that the campaign hasn’t received meaningful access to counting locations to observe the opening and counting of ballots.
The vote counting was slow, in part because election officials were only allowed to begin counting the record number of absentee ballots on Monday, 10 hours before the election.
“Big numbers of ballots remained to be counted in Michigan’s largest counties, including Wayne, Oakland, Macomb and Kent as of Wednesday morning,” The Detroit Free Press reported, which could be good news for Biden considering the left-leaning makeup of those counties. Michigan has 16 electoral votes.
Trump squeaked out a win in Michigan in 2016 with 47.3 percent of the vote, compared to Clinton’s 47 percent. Along with Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, Michigan is part of the Democrats’ so-called “Blue Wall” that Trump broke through in 2016.
Nevada
Biden has maintained a razor-thin lead in Nevada, but the actual winner won’t be known until Thursday at the earliest.
As of Wednesday afternoon, Biden had a less-than 8,000 vote lead, with 588,252 votes to Trump’s 580,605, or 49.2 percent to 48.6 percent, according to Associated Press projections.
The state’s election division tweeted Wednesday morning that additional updates won’t be provided until 9 a.m. on Thursday. Election officials have finished counting all in-person early votes, all in-person Election Day votes, and all mail ballots through November 2.
Still to be counted: mail ballots received on Election Day, mail ballots that will be received over the next week, and provisional ballots, according to the tweet.
https://twitter.com/NVElect/status/1323939478403076096
Nevada has a hybrid election model. All registered voters received ballots in the mail, though voters could choose to vote in person. Ballots sent through the mail must be postmarked by November 3 to be counted, according to the Nevada Secretary of State’s website.
Nevada has six electoral votes.
Clinton won Nevada in 2016 with 47.9 percent of the vote to Trump’s 45.5 percent. It is the one state that hasn’t been called yet that Trump still has a chance to flip.
North Carolina
Trump has held onto his lead in North Carolina, where he has so far racked up 2,732,084 votes, or 50.1 percent, compared to Biden’s 2,655,383, or 48.7 percent, according to Associated Press projections.
But the state is still accepting and counting mail-in ballots.
According to the Raleigh News & Observer, there are still roughly 117,000 outstanding absentee mail ballots. It’s unclear how many of them have actually been cast.
Last week the Supreme Court allowed North Carolina to continue accepting and counting mail-in ballots up to November 12, as long as the ballots are postmarked by November 3.
In 2016, Trump won North Carolina with 49.8 percent of the vote to Clinton’s 46.2 percent. North Carolina has 15 electoral votes.
Pennsylvania
This is looking like the big one.
Trump has held a seemingly large lead in the Keystone State into Wednesday afternoon, with 3,109,048 votes, or 52.2 percent, compared to Biden’s 2,783,323 votes, or 46.7 percent. But only 86 percent of ballots have been counted, and again the numbers are moving in Biden’s direction.
Pennsylvania counts in-person votes first, where Trump dominated. But there are still over 1 million absentee ballots remaining. According to the Pennsylvania secretary of state, Biden has been winning about 78 percent of absentee ballots so far. If Biden continues to win absentees at that clip, he could still overtake Trump, but Trump’s camp remains bullish on their chances.
There are a couple of reasons for the delayed reporting out of Pennsylvania. By law, the state’s election workers were not allowed to begin to process or count absentee ballots until Election Day. Back in the state’s June primaries, several counties struggled to keep up with the record number of mail-in votes.
The Pennsylvania Supreme Court also has allowed state election workers to continue accepting mail-in ballots up until 5 p.m. on Friday, as long as they’re postmarked by Election Day. In the case of a dispute about when exactly a ballot was postmarked, election officials are required to assume it was sent in by election day.
Trump’s campaign has called foul and threatened legal actions to stop Pennsylvania election officials from counting late-arriving ballots. Both Trump and Biden have enlisted high-powered legal teams in case of a drawn-out election battle in the courts, which looks increasingly likely.
“We are up BIG, but they are trying to STEAL the Election,” Trump tweeted just before 1 a.m. “We will never let them do it. Votes cannot be cast after the Polls are closed!”
Pennsylvania has 20 electoral votes. Trump won with 48.2 percent of the vote in 2016, compared to Clinton’s 47.5 percent. Along with Michigan and Wisconsin, Pennsylvania was part of Democrats’ so-called “Blue Wall,” which Trump broke through in his last election.
This story has been updated to indicate that the Associated Press is projecting that Democrat Joe Biden will win the state of Wisconsin.