Election 2020 presidential results

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Democratic hopeful Joe Biden has taken the lead in Georgia over President Trump.

Trump cannot afford to lose Georgia’s 16 electoral votes if he is to keep alive his hopes of a second term.

Trump cannot find a route to 270 electoral votes without Georgia and Pennsylvania, so his chances of securing reelection will hinge on developments in the two states.

With no new numbers coming in for hours, there remains 163,501 uncounted absentee ballots in the state of Pennsylvania, CNN’s Kristen Holmes reported early this morning.

So far, mail-in ballots in Pennsylvania have heavily favored Joe Biden over President Trump even in Republican areas, meaning there are more than enough ballots for the former vice president to overtake the President’s narrow 18,000-vote margin.

“Any Democrat who is looking at this … they’re feeling very good about where they stand right now,” said Holmes.

In Philadelphia Country 305,000 mail-in ballots have already been counted and there are 60,000 left to count. In Allegheny County, which includes Pittsburgh, there remain 36,000 mail-in ballots to be counted.

CNN’s Kristen Holmes has more:

Ballots are still being counted in several key states, with elections officials expected to provide updates later today.

Joe Biden holds a 253-213 lead in the Electoral College. In addition to Arizona, Georgia, Nevada, and Pennsylvania, the races in Alaska and North Carolina remain still too close to call.

If you’re just reading in, here’s what you need to know about the race:

All eyes on the Keystone State: Pennsylvania, the state that could take Biden over the 270-vote threshold needed to win the presidency, could complete most of its outstanding counts on Friday, officials there said. The former vice president is only behind President Trump by a little more than 18,000 votes in the Keystone State after having trailed at one point by more than half a million ballots in the hours after polls closed. Tens of thousands of votes — most of them from strongly Democratic areas, including around Philadelphia — remain to be counted.

Race tightens in Georgia: In Georgia, another state that Trump cannot afford to lose with its 16 electoral votes, Biden’s mail-in ballot advantage has pulled him to within 500 votes of the President, as results came in from Fulton County around Atlanta with 99% of the state vote count reported. Trump cannot find a route to 270 electoral votes without Georgia and Pennsylvania, so his chances of securing reelection will hinge on developments in the two states in the coming hours.

Trump mounts aggressive legal strategy: Trump’s team, seeking to keep his slim path to victory alive, has launched a flurry of sometimes contradictory and scattershot legal challenges, without offering evidence of irregularities, demanding vote counts continue in states where he is behind and wanting them shut down in those where he leads.

Trump stages corrosive attempt to undermine votes: On Thursday night, Trump effectively sent a signal that he has no intention of leaving power without a fight if he ends up losing the election. The President’s speech from the White House briefing room could end up being one of the most dangerous presidential statements in American history. In it, Trump falsely claimed that votes that were cast before and during the election, but counted after Election Day, are illegal votes.

Biden urges calm: The former vice president emerged in Wilmington, Delaware, Thursday for a short speech meant to project optimism, urge patience in the vote counting and to apparently create a picture of a presidency in waiting. “In America, the vote is sacred. It is how the people of this nation express their will,” he said, calling for calm and patience as the vote counting process unfolds.

We’re tracking the narrow margins of votes in key states. Here are the latest figures:

The latest vote totals show President Trump’s lead narrowing in Georgia. He’s leading Joe Biden by 463 votes there.

Biden currently has 253 electoral votes, and Trump has 213.

Remember: Each candidate needs to reach 270 electoral votes to win the presidency.

Get full details and results in CNN’s Election Center.

Clayton County in Georgia has just 3,500 of its 30,000 mail-in and provisional ballots left to count, the director of the county’s board of elections, Shauna Dozier, told CNN early this morning. 

She said her team does not plan to break until every ballot is counted, which should be within hours.

“We are going to stay here until every single absentee ballot is counted,” she told CNN’s Chris Cuomo. “We are going to continue forward … whatever it takes to get that done, we’re going to do it. We’re committed.”

Dozier also asked for patience from the American people, saying her office received just 3,170 absentee ballots in 2016, compared to 30,000 this year.

Once the mail-in ballots have been counted, the only remaining uncounted votes from the county will be military ballots, which are due at 5 p.m. ET Friday. Dozier said she was unaware of how many military ballots officials may receive. 

Clayton County, a suburb of Atlanta which trends Democratic, could put President Trump’s path to the presidency in serious peril, CNN’s John King noted earlier this evening. 

CNN’s Chris Cuomo speaks to Shauna Dozier:

We’re tracking the narrow margins of votes in key states. See the latest figures below, and get full details and results in CNN’s Election Center.

Joe Biden currently has 253 electoral votes, and President Trump has 213.

Remember: Each candidate needs to reach 270 electoral votes to win the presidency.

Even at this late hour, much of the Biden team is up monitoring the results coming in- especially those results from Pennsylvania, a source familiar tells CNN.

The feeling is Friday could be the day that Biden reaches 270. Though it has been said before, the campaign reiterated that when all the votes are counted Biden will have a decisive win in the state.

Why the state matters: There are 20 electoral votes at stake in Pennsylvania. President Trump cannot be reelected if he doesn’t win there, no matter how many other states he wins. Biden currently has 253 electoral votes, and President Trump has 213.

As results from congressional races continue to filter in, here’s how the balance of power in the Senate looks right now.

Republicans have sharply cut Democrats’ chances of taking back the Senate, winning a series of contests across the country on the coattails of President Trump.

Democrats currently have won 47 seats with one pickup in Colorado, while Republicans have won 47 seats with one pick up in Alabama.

There are currently are four undecided races in the Senate. Either side needs 51 seats to control the upper chamber, or 50 if their presidential candidate wins, since the vice president may cast a deciding vote. 

In the House, Democrats have 208 seats and Republicans have 196. The party that has at least 218 seats will control that chamber.

Here’s what we know about the undecided Senate races:

Arizona: The former astronaut Democrat Mark Kelly holds a comfortable lead over Sen. Martha McSally, the Republican incumbent, with a 103,000 vote advantage with 89% of the vote now in. 

Georgia: Republican incumbent Sen. David Perdue is 101,000 votes ahead of Democratic candidate Jon Ossoff with 10,000 ballots remaining to be counted. Perdue has a 2.1% advantage but remains 0.1% short of the majority required under Georgia to avoid a runoff election on Jan. 5.

Georgia special election: Democratic candidate Rev. Raphael Warnock is leading Republican incumbent Sen. Kelly Loeffler by 329,000 but is far shy of the 50% percent majority required to win the seat outright and avoid a runoff. That seat is headed for a special election on Jan. 5.

Alaska: With 47% of the vote in, incumbent Republican Sen. Dan Sullivan leads Democrat Al Gross with 108,488 votes to 54,755.

Police are investigating a potential attack plot at the Pennsylvania Convention Center in Philadelphia, first reported by CNN affiliate WPVI.

“Police got a tip about a group, possibly a family, driving up from Virginia in a Hummer to unleash an attack at the Convention Center,” according to WPVI.  

Philadelphia Police tells WPVI “they recovered a weapon and believed they recovered the Hummer they received a tip about.”

Votes are being counted inside of the convention center.  

Police tell CNN affiliate KYW they were alerted to the threat around 10 p.m. local time on Thursday.

The threat involved a group of individuals from out of state, police tells KYW.   

At least one person has been taken into custody, both WPVI and KYW reports.  

Philadelphia district attorney’s office spokesperson Jane Roh told CNN the office could not comment on the investigation.

CNN has reached out to the Philadelphia Police Department, FBI, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives and the convention center for comment. 

CNN’s Alexandra Field has more:

We’re tracking the narrow margins of votes in key states. See the latest figures below, and get full details and results in CNN’s Election Center.

Biden currently has 253 electoral votes, while Trump has 213. Each candidate needs to reach 270 electoral votes to win the presidency.

Georgia’s Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger will not provide another update again tonight, according to his press secretary Ari Schaffer.

At last update, the state still had 14,097 votes left to count.

President Trump is currently leading Biden in the state by a mere 1,805 votes.

Here is the breakdown of outstanding ballots by county from the last update released at 10:35 p.m. ET:

Chester County election workers process mail-in and absentee ballots for the 2020 general election in the United States at West Chester University on Wedensday, November 4, in Pennsylvania.

Since the beginning of the pandemic, supporters of Democratic nominee Joe Biden have shown a strong preference for mail-in voting. Most of President Trump’s supporters said they wanted to vote on Election Day. States count these different types of votes in very different ways.

As a result, in some states — particularly in Pennsylvania — Trump saw an early lead that is now narrowing as more ballots are counted.

This isn’t a sign of fraud or irregularities. Rather, it’s just a reflection of how states count votes. Some states process early ballots first, while others save them for last.

This phenomenon, known as the “blue shift,” is common in recent US elections and it’s a big reason why Trump, despite election law and common decency to the contrary, has argued that whoever appears to have won on Election Night should be crowned the winner.

That’s not the way it works, of course. Ballots in North Carolina and Pennsylvania can arrive in the days after Election Day as long as they have a Nov. 3 postmark.

In Pennsylvania, election officials couldn’t do anything with early ballots until Election Day. Some counties didn’t even pick them up until the day after Election Day.

Read more here

CNN’s Jake Tapper revealed his own mother is a mail-in voter in Philadelphia County in Pennsylvania, where votes are still being counted tonight, and rebuked those who would suggest her vote should not to count. 

Tapper also skewered President Trump’s allies who are standing by him even as he alleged fraud without evidence. 

“We are seeing some of the President’s most obedient servants… go on TV and say things that are not true, say things that there’s no evidence for, talk about electoral fraud,” said Tapper, referring by name to Republican Sens. Lindsey Graham, Ted Cruz, and House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy.

“This is not accurate,” he continued. “This is not what is actually going on. “The American people are having their votes counted.”

Tapper then went on to reference August 1974, during the Watergate scandal, when Republican congressional leaders Sens. Barry Goldwater, Hugh Scott and House Minority Leader John Rhodes, went to the White House and informed President Richard Nixon the Republican Party would no longer support him. 

“Nixon resigned the next day,” said Tapper. “Those three Republican leaders, two of them were from Arizona and one of them was from Pennsylvania, two of the four states that we’re waiting to hear from today.”

“Let the American people have their say,” concluded Tapper. 

Watch the moment:

Joe Biden is nearing 270 electoral votes as he continues to close the gap in Pennsylvania and Georgia.

Trump is leading Biden in Georgia by approximately 1,805 votes and in Pennsylvania by 23,953 votes.

Trump cannot find a route to 270 electoral votes without Georgia and Pennsylvania, so his chances of securing reelection will hinge on developments in the two states.

Biden currently has 253 electoral votes, while Trump has 213.

We’re tracking the narrow margins of votes in key states. See the latest figures below, and get full details and results in CNN’s Election Center.

As of 10:35 p.m. ET, there are approximately 14,097 ballots still outstanding across Georgia, according to a statement by Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger.

Almost all of the outstanding ballots are absentee ballots, Raffensperger’s office told CNN earlier Thursday.

President Trump’s lead over former Vice President Joe Biden has shrunk to 1,775 votes, CNN’s Wolf Blitzer said.

Here’s a breakdown of the ballots by county:

Shauna Dozier, Clayton County’s elections director, told CNN Thursday evening that Clayton County hopes to complete counting their remaining ballots by midnight.

An attendant talks to a person waiting in their car at a coronavirus testing site at Ascarate Park on October 31, in El Paso, Texas.

The next president of the US is yet to be called, but the coronavirus pandemic looms large.

The US reached a new record high of daily Covid-19 cases. So far today, there have been at least 121,054 daily new coronavirus cases in the US, per Johns Hopkins University data.

This is the highest single day reporting since the pandemic began.

The top 5 Covid-19 case days so far:

Joe Biden attended a briefing on coronavirus earlier today in Wilmington, Delaware. The pandemic’s impact has been a key issue of the campaign, and whichever candidate wins the presidency will have to lead the country through this crisis.

All remaining 4,200 uncounted mail-in ballots and provisional ballots cast in Clayton County, Georgia, will most likely be released by midnight, the director of the county’s board of elections, Shauna Dozier, told CNN tonight. 

Dozier said to expect results posted on the county’s website roughly every 30 minutes until midnight.

The only remaining uncounted ballots will then be military ballots, which are due at 5 p.m. ET, on Friday. Dozier said she is unaware of how many military ballots officials may receive. 

Clayton County, a suburb of Atlanta which trends Democratic, could put President Trump’s path to the presidency in serious peril, noted CNN’s John King earlier this evening. 

CNN’s John King speaks to Shauna Dozier:

Chester County, Pennsylvania, election worker Kristina Sladek opens mail-in and absentee ballots for the 2020 General Election in the United States at West Chester University on Tuesday, November 3.

The presidential race between President Trump and former Vice President Joe Biden remains on a razor’s edge as election workers in key states continue to plow through mail-in ballots.

Most states, with the help of USPS, sent ballot envelopes with a unique set of numbers for each individual voter. Those numbers are often known as Intelligent Mail Barcodes, which allow the Postal Service to track the ballot.

It’s still too close to call a winner in these six states as votes continue to be counted: Alaska, Arizona, Georgia, Nevada, North Carolina and Pennsylvania.

If you submitted your ballot in one of these states and want to check its status, here’s where you can go:

Learn how you can check your ballot in other states here.

And if ballot tracking technology isn’t available where you live, you can contact your local election office if you have questions or concerns about your ballot.