As the United States entered Thursday morning, there was still no certainty about its next President: Joe Biden was closer to the finish line with 253 electoral votes, while Donald Trump was precariously far but not yet out with 214.
Key electoral college votes from Arizona, Nevada, Alaska, Georgia, North Carolina and Pennsylvania remain at play, with Biden currently ahead in Arizona and Nevada while Trump has the lead in Alaska (where he enjoys a significant lead over Biden), Georgia, North Carolina and Pennsylvania. With Arizona already called for Biden by AP, However, other organisations continue to reserve calling it in Arizona, as Biden's lead has shortened as mail-in votes are counted.
If Biden holds Arizona, he will sit at 264 electoral college votes and need just a single state more to win. This state could be either Georgia, Nevada or Pennsylvania based on current leads and margins, with the margin less than 0.5 per cent in both Georgia and Nevada.
In Pennsylvania, the remaining votes being counted are expected to be from mostly Democratic counties and could favour Biden, whose gap with Trump in the state has dropped from over 11 points to just under 2 as of Thursday morning. Trump's latest tweet claimed he was enjoying a "big" legal win in Pennsylvania.
At 10.30am ET, Georgia’s Secretary of State made an announcement about the status of votes being counted: With a little over 60,000 ballots still to be counted, 11,200 are from Fulton County,which includes most of Atlanta. A mostly Democratic region, votes from this region will further chip away at Trump's lead in Georgia. Georgia voted Trump in in 2016, after two terms of voting for a Democrat.
Just shortly earlier, another tweet by Trump was hidden by Twitter as he renewed his attack on the counting of votes after Election Day, tweeting in all-caps, “ANY VOTE THAT CAME IN AFTER ELECTION DAY WILL NOT BE COUNTED!”. 40 minutes prior, Trump had tweeted “STOP THE COUNT!”.
STOP THE COUNT!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 5, 2020
Biden has adamantly called for “every vote to be counted”. Indeed, votes are never entirely counted on Election Day, as mail-in votes and absentee votes, including those by members of the armed forces stationed overseas, can come days and even weeks after the election.
While it is common for a candidate to concede in the period around Election Day, the actual President is not chosen until the Electoral College meets in December.
61,367 ballots are currently outstanding in Georgia, where Trump was over 18,000 votes ahead of Biden in the morning. That gives him 49.6 per cent of votes against Biden’s 49.2, with 96 per cent of votes already counted. More votes are to be counted in the state, including provisional votes, votes by members of the military, and absentee ballots that were missing or signature or were rejected for other issues, the deadline for which to count is on Friday evening.
Trump’s campaign is expected to announce a lawsuit alleging voter fraud in Nevada, CNBC reported a source as saying.
