Updated: November 5, 2020 1:06:07 am
Biden told his supporters a little after 12:30 am: “We think we are on track to win this election.” But he emphasized the ballots that remained to be counted and did not declare victory.
As of Wednesday morning, eight states that will decide the next president remained without calling, as did a handful of Senate elections that will determine who controls the chamber.
This is where things are, when you can expect the final results, and how to move forward as these extraordinary elections unfold.
What are we waiting for?
In the presidential race, we still did not know who won Alaska (3 electoral votes), Arizona (11), Georgia (16), Michigan (16), Nevada (6), North Carolina (15), Pennsylvania (20), Wisconsin (10) or the second Maine congressional district (1).
Joe Biden has 227 confirmed electoral votes and would need 43 more to win. President Donald Trump has 213 confirmed electoral votes and would need 57 more to win.
Six Senate elections were not called in five states: Alaska, Georgia, Maine, Michigan and North Carolina.
Georgia has two races, involving Republican representatives whom Democrats hope to overthrow. One, between Senator David Perdue and Jon Ossoff, could be decided in the next few days or it could go to a runoff in January, depending on whether a libertarian candidate gets enough votes to keep both candidates from the major parties below 50%. . The other race will require a runoff between the starter, Kelly Loeffler, and Raphael Warnock, a Democrat.
When will we know the results?
This will likely vary significantly from state to state. Let’s take them one at a time.
Alaska
Alaska may well be the last state to be called, because officials there won’t even begin counting ballots by mail, or the first ballots cast in person after October 29, for a week. That being said, it is a red state and it is not really competitive. Trump will probably win here pretty easily, and Senator Dan Sullivan, a Republican, probably will too.
Arizona
Soon he could call Arizona. Biden leads by 5 percentage points with more than 80% of the estimated votes counted, and some media outlets, including The Associated Press and Fox News, have already called him out. The New York Times and others have not, but Arizona officials hope to finish counting the ballots on Wednesday, so we shouldn’t wait too long for a response.
Georgia
Georgia could have been called by now if it weren’t for a broken pipe at a site in Fulton County where elections officials were counting absentee ballots, delaying the counting process in and around Atlanta.
Trump was ahead in state by just over 2 percentage points with 92% of the estimated vote counted, but uncounted votes from such a heavily Democratic area could close the gap, and the secretary of state’s office cautioned against relying on current results given that fact.
The count must be completed on Wednesday.
Maine
Maine has already been summoned by Biden, but the race between Sen. Susan Collins and her Democratic rival, Sara Gideon, is still open. Additionally, Maine is one of two states that divide their electoral votes by congressional districts, and the second district, which is worth one electoral vote, has yet to be called.
Michigan
Michigan is one of the most important states left on the map. Biden had been behind Trump on election night, but around 9 a.m. ET Wednesday he took the lead as Oakland County and Wayne County, which includes Detroit, reported more votes.
Most of the remaining votes are in strongly Democratic areas, including Detroit and Grand Rapids. We should get most of the outstanding results on Wednesday.
Those results will also tell us who won the Senate race between Democratic incumbent Gary Peters and his Republican challenger, John James. Peters is currently a little behind Biden, but the race is still too close to call.
Nevada
Biden has a slight edge in Nevada, but it’s much closer than experts expected, and the state will accept mail-in ballots received through Nov. 10, as long as they are postmarked by Election Day.
Because mail-in ballots tend to lean toward Democrats, they may be able to expand Biden’s margin, but we may not know it for a week.
North Carolina
Trump is way ahead in North Carolina with 95% of the estimated votes counted. But North Carolina will accept mail-in ballots that arrive through November 12, and the race may not be called until then.
Pennsylvania
As in Michigan and Wisconsin, there are many uncounted votes in Pennsylvania’s major metropolitan areas, including Philadelphia and Pittsburgh, which could allow Biden to make up for his current deficit. But it will be close.
We’re sorry to say that we’ll probably have to wait longer here than in Michigan and Wisconsin. While other states are counting through the night, election officials in Pennsylvania are resuming the count Wednesday morning. The Trump campaign is also fiercely challenging Pennsylvania’s ballots in court, which could drag out the process for quite some time.
Wisconsin
Around 5 a.m. EDT, Biden got ahead of Trump in Wisconsin thanks to a fresh batch of votes from Milwaukee, and cities like Green Bay and Kenosha are still counting mail-in votes, which tend to lean toward the Democrats.
What do the candidates say?
Biden told his supporters a little after 12:30 a.m. M .: “We believe we are on our way to winning this election.” But he emphasized the ballots that remained to be counted and did not declare victory.
Trump, by contrast, made reckless claims at the White House in which he falsely declared victory and threatened to go to the Supreme Court to close the election before every valid vote is counted.
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