[ad_1]
State officials say there are still about 450,000 votes to be counted in Arizona, a western state on the presidential battlefield, where Democrat Joe Biden has a 2.35 percentage point advantage over Republican Donald Trump, an advantage of about 68,000 votes.
The Associated Press (AP) has called for the Arizona race for Biden. The AP said Thursday it is monitoring vote counting in the state as ballots continue to be counted.
“The Associated Press continues to observe and analyze the results of Arizona’s vote counting as they come in,” said Sally Buzbee, AP’s executive editor. “We will follow the facts in all cases.”
The vast majority of ballots still counted are from Maricopa County, the most populous area in the state. The next update from election officials in Arizona is expected around 9pm EST (Friday, 10am Singapore time).
Live Updates: US Elections Approaching Tipping Point As The Race Tapers In Key States
The Trump campaign says it is confident the president will surpass Biden when all the votes in the state are counted.
The AP called the Arizona race for Biden at 2.50 a.m. EST Wednesday after an analysis of ballots cast across the state concluded that Trump was unable to catch up on ballots that remained to be counted.
Arizona has a long political history of Republican voters. It is the home state of Barry Goldwater, a five-term Conservative senator who was the Republican nominee for president in 1964. John McCain, the party’s 2008 presidential nominee, represented the state in Congress from 1983 until his death in 2018.
But demographic changes, including a rapidly growing Latino population and a boom in new residents, some fleeing the soaring cost of living in neighboring California, have made the state more democrat-friendly.
Many of the gains have been driven by the changing politics of Maricopa County, which is home to Phoenix and its suburbs. Maricopa County accounts for 60 percent of the state’s votes, and Biden leads there by 4.2 percentage points in votes that have already been tabulated.
