Joe Biden For President: Where things stand
Just hours ago, Joe Biden took the lead in Georgia, where President Trump’s advantage dissolved steadily as votes were counted late into the night. The race remains extremely tight, with Biden ahead by 1,096 ballots as of early Friday morning.
Perhaps more immediately ominous to Trump’s electoral math, Biden is also quickly catching up to him in Pennsylvania, now trailing by only 18,229 votes. The state, whose 20 electoral votes would hand Biden the presidency if he won it alone, has far more uncounted ballots than Georgia, and they are expected to favor Biden.
It’s unclear when each race might be called. More votes are expected to be counted today.
Georgia carries 16 electoral votes, and if Biden were to win it before Pennsylvania, it would put him at 269, just one away from the presidency. And Trump, of course, could still well win Georgia.
Arizona, Nevada, North Carolina and Alaska also remain up for grabs. Newly counted ballots in Maricopa County, Ariz., last night cut into Biden’s narrow lead there; more than 200,000 ballots remain to be counted in Maricopa, and just over one percentage point divides Biden and Trump in the state.
Things look more favorable to Trump in North Carolina, which is close, and Alaska, which isn’t particularly. But those states would not be enough to put him anywhere near the necessary 270 electoral votes.
Trump’s legal team has been in courtrooms across the country, challenging vote counts and demanding the right to send supporters into ballot-counting locations. Judicial decisions came down on those cases in a range of states throughout the day, most of them bearing bad news for Trump’s team.
A judge in Pennsylvania shot down his campaign’s attempt to halt the counting of ballots there, but ruled that poll watchers could move to within six feet of officials as they counted ballots, allowing the observers a better vantage to look for absentee ballots lacking the required signatures.
In an address to reporters last night, Trump continued to falsely argue that ballots that haven’t yet been counted are illegal. Speaking from the White House briefing room, he marshaled the optics of the presidency to his advantage even as he unleashed a string of falsehoods intended to undermine a legitimate election.
“If you count the legal votes, I easily win,” he said, offering no evidence.
While the president’s claims were echoed by a number of allies, including Lindsey Graham and Kevin McCarthy, he appeared to be increasingly isolated.
After his briefing room appearance, wrote Peter Baker and Maggie Haberman, “several advisers conceded that the clock on the Trump presidency was almost certainly winding down.”
Biden, by contrast, gave a terse, two-minute update from Wilmington, Del., reassuring the country that it could have faith in the election. “The process is working,” he said.
Standing beside his running mate, Kamala Harris, Biden stated in the strongest terms yet that he was confident of reaching 270 electoral votes. “We have no doubt that when the count is finished, Senator Harris and I will be declared the winners,” he said, while clarifying that he was not yet declaring victory.
Biden, too, sought to convey a presidential mien. He started his speech by saying that he and Harris had just received briefings on the coronavirus pandemic and the economic crisis; it was both a power move (in another, Biden’s team has already unveiled a transition website) and an acknowledgment of what exit polls had indicated: that economic concerns dominated many voters’ attention, particularly those who hadn’t voted for him.
The New York Times