Here are updates in the presidential race from Arizona, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Georgia as of 5 am ET.
Biden has 253 or 264 electoral votes (depending on whether you count Arizona, which some networks have called) to Trump's 214. 270 are needed to win.
ARIZONA
The NYT reports: “As of early Thursday, Mr. Biden led Mr. Trump in Maricopa County by 74,514 votes, almost 11,000 fewer than the previous update on Wednesday night. About 5 percent of the total vote remains to be counted there. Statewide, Mr. Biden leads Mr. Trump by less than three percentage points. Maricopa County's next update will come after 9 p.m. Eastern on Thursday.”
Biden is leading by 68,000 votes across the state.
The Arizona Republic: “As Maricopa County released the results from 140,000 more ballots on Wednesday night and Thursday morning, President Donald Trump received almost the exact share he would need to charge back to win Arizona's 11 electoral votes and potentially reelection. Trump won the batches of ballots from Maricopa County counted Wednesday and early Thursday by a roughly 57-40 margin over former Vice President Joe Biden. … But the problem for Trump is that he needs to replicate that performance across all of the remaining 470,000 votes left to count in the state. And he needs to do it across all Arizona's 15 diverse counties, which include areas that are very blue: Pima,Coconino and Santa Cruz counties.”
NEVADA
Biden holds a slim lead over Trump in Nevada with more results to be announced after 9 am, KOLO reports. There are an estimated 200,000 ballots outstanding.
The Nevada Independent: “A Republican victory in Nevada is still less likely than a Democratic one at this point, not just because of Biden's lead, albeit narrow, but because almost all of the outstanding ballots are mail ballots, which heavily favor Democrats simply because they are far more preferred by Democrats than Republicans. Of the nearly 600,000 mail ballots that have been returned by voters statewide, nearly half of them have been from Democrats while only a quarter have been from Republicans and the rest from nonpartisans and those registered with minor political parties.”
GEORGIA
In Georgia, Biden has pulled to within a point of Trump. There is a pathway for him to overcome Trump's lead, according to CNN.
Forbes reports: “Trump currently leads Biden by about 18,500 votes in Georgia, 49.6% to 49.2%, a significant tightening from the 2.5-point lead Trump held at 2 a.m. Wednesday, and the race is likely to tighten further over the next day, with the bulk of outstanding ballots in the Atlanta metro area.”
CNN reports: “Overnight, Fulton had about 20,000 absentee ballots to be counted. The county just reported the results of 8,351 of those, with Biden getting 6,410 of those votes and Trump getting 1,941 of them. County election workers have been processing and counting those votes all night and continue now. 4% of the vote in Georgia still remains to be counted.”
Said CNN's Phil Mattingly: “To give you some context here, the vote that was coming in out of Fulton County over last couple of hours has been coming in at a rate of 80% to 20% Biden. That is above that 60 to 62% range. Will that hold? That will dictate whether or not Joe Biden ends up overtaking Donald Trump in the state of Georgia, but there's a pathway right now for Joe Biden in Georgia.”
An update is expected from the Georgia Secretary of State at 10:30 am today.
PENNSYLVANIA
In Pennsylvania, as of 11 pm Wednesday night, Trump was leading Biden by 51 to 48 percent, according to the AP.
The Philadelphia Inquirer reports: “As of 9:15 p.m., Pennsylvania had 99% of precincts reporting but only 71% of mail ballots counted. Of the mail ballots counted so far, 77% were cast for Biden. Mail ballots that were dropped off or postmarked by Nov. 3 and are received by 5 p.m. Friday should be counted, unless the U.S. Supreme Court intervenes.”
The state still has 488,000 mail-in ballots to count. At least 120,000 of those are in the Philly area. Plenty of Biden votes left to count.
The Trump campaign has filed lawsuits in Pennsylvania, Nevada, and Michigan.
The Arizona Secretary of State on Wednesday said that Trump has no “legal pathway” to sue the state.
“They don't have a legal pathway to challenge. We are legally counting valid ballots, and there's not a way to stop that,” Katie Hobbs (D) said on CNN.
