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(Reuters) – On Wednesday, President Donald Trump and Democratic challenger Joe Biden faced narrow paths to a possible victory in a close US presidential election that will be determined by a very narrow margin.
Five battle states remain to be named: Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina and Pennsylvania, and Biden needs to bring at least two to win, while Trump would need at least four. (No winner had been projected in Alaska on Wednesday afternoon, either.)
The result will almost certainly come down to millions of absentee votes that were the first to be cast in this election and often the last to be counted.
At 3:30 p.m. EST (2030 GMT), Biden had small advantages in Michigan and Nevada. Trump had the upper hand in Georgia, Pennsylvania and North Carolina, though tens of thousands of ballots remain to be counted in those states, many of them cast by mail in areas around major cities, which traditionally favor Democrats.
These are Trump and Biden’s paths to victory:
TRIUMPH
The most likely path to Trump’s victory is through Pennsylvania, a state he dominated in 2016. If he wins there, he will have to win three of the other states on the battlefield to secure 270 electoral votes. If Pennsylvania doesn’t win, it will have to sweep Georgia, Michigan, North Carolina and Nevada.
Trump led the vote in Pennsylvania between 53% and 46%, with about 82% of the vote likely tallied.
The state’s largest cities, Philadelphia and Pittsburgh, have reported a smaller proportion of their election results so far, and those results traditionally favor Democrats. Beyond that, many of the ballots that remain to be counted were submitted by mail, and the state has said that many more Democrats than Republicans cast votes by mail this year.
Pennsylvania offers another wrinkle: Its state courts have ordered officials to count absentee votes cast before Tuesday whenever they arrive in the mail on Friday. (Trump has criticized the US Supreme Court for allowing the change and the case could return to court after the election.)
BIDEN
Biden’s most likely path to victory is through Michigan, where he held a narrow lead Wednesday as officials worked to count final votes. If Biden wins there, a victory in any of the remaining states would give him enough to win.
Biden had an advantage of about 37,000 in Michigan, and many of the votes that remained to be counted were mail-in ballots from the greater Detroit area, where Democrats have historically enjoyed an electoral advantage.
Wisconsin officials said Biden was ahead by about 20,000 votes when they concluded their unofficial recount on Wednesday. The Trump campaign said it would seek a recount there.
Officials in Nevada, where Biden held a 49.3% -48.7% lead with an 86% expected vote count, said they would not resume ballot counting until Thursday morning.
(Reporting by Brad Heath in Washington; Editing by Scott Malone, Cynthia Osterman and Daniel Wallis)
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