What We Need To Know:
The voting is over, but the counting of votes continues. The Joe Biden-Kamala Harris ticket set a new record with more than 69 million votes cast for them in the 2020 presidential contest. As of 9:30 a.m. Wednesday, Biden has received 69,544,968 votes across the country. President Obama set the previous record in 2008 with 69,498,516.
Meanwhile, Donald Trump received 67,120,277 votes as of Wednesday morning, surpassing the 62,984,828 votes he got when he captured the presidency in 2016. And the numbers are still on the rise.
Some of the leads Donald Trump had over Joe Biden have diminished in several states that could mean victory for the Biden campaign. And although Biden leads are razor-thin, analysts are poring over the election numbers counted and those waiting to be counted, in an effort to determine which candidate will reach 270 electoral votes first.
Official Results are still a day or two, or more days away.Here’s what‘s happening the day after the most active election period in history. Midwest battleground states of Wisconsin and Michigan were won by Joe Biden. The counting of ballots continue in several other states. While the count continues, the Trump campaign is “lawyering” up for recount challenges in a number of states.
Wisconsin
Wednesday afternoon the Associated Press and other news organizations put the battleground state of Wisconsin in the Biden column. Even before Wisconsin results were announced, the Trump campaign said it would demand a recount. Donald Trump and Joe Biden were separated by less than 1%. According to Wisconsin election laws, if the race stays within 1 percentage point, the losing candidate can force a recount. If the margin is larger than that, there’s no chance for a recount.
Michigan
Biden pulled ahead overnight Tuesday into Wednesday morning. By Wednesday afternoon, news organizations called the state for the Biden team. The late votes came in from heavy Democratic areas.
The Trump campaign said Wednesday that it had filed suits to halt the counting of ballots in Michigan and Pennsylvania, as the campaign demanded increased access to observe the tallying process at numerous locations in those battleground states.
Pennsylvania
As a result of precautions taken during the Coronavirus pandemic, there are as expected, more mail in ballots than ever. State election officials said they hope to have results by Friday. As of midday Wednesday, there were about one and a half million mail-in ballots were still out. Most are expected to come from blue strongholds: Philadelphia, suburbs of Philadelphia and Pittsburgh.
Arizona
This is an interesting state as it could flip from Republican to Democratic in one four year cycle, from 2016 to 2020. How long this change will continue remains to be seen. Joe Biden had a slim lead in a state that has been counting early votes for a couple of weeks.
Nevada
While the state of Nevada appeared to be leaning toward Joe Biden going into election day, the race as of Wednesday morning was, according to most news sites, too close to call. Nevada election officials said they would not announce any further results until Thursday morning, leaving the fate of the state’s six electoral votes in the balance.
Georgia
Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger said Wednesday that the state has roughly 200,000 ballots left to count, and he was pushing counties to complete the count by Wednesday. But he later acknowledged that counties may not be able to complete the process by the end of the day, even though his office is “pushing really hard” for that.
“If we don’t get it there but we get the numbers so small that then there’s no question of who actually the winner is, I think that will be helpful,” he told the Associated Press.
The state’s top election official also said that ballots that usually aren’t counted until after Election Day, such as those sent by military people and other citizens living overseas, will eventually be incorporated into the final totals.
North Carolina
As of Wednesday afternoon, the presidential race was still too early to call. That’s largely because of absentee and provisional ballots. Trump was leading Biden by about 7o,000 votes in North Carolina and there are still about 117,000 mail-in ballots left to count.
Why We Need To Know:
Some people like to see how the sausage is made, especially political sausage during a presidential election year. There were warnings leading up to Election Day that results would not be available by night’s end. Now it may be by week’s end.
