Biden Is Projected To Be The President-Elect. Here’s How It All Went Down.

This item — flagged by Nate Cohn of The New York Times — is important. The Allegheny County executive says provisional ballots in the county are trending 3-to-1 toward Biden. We cited evidence on Friday that provisional ballots are red in red counties, but we hadn’t had any provisional ballot results from blue or purple counties yet so we couldn’t be sure what they would look like in those areas. But if provisional ballots are blue in blue counties, as this data point suggests, Trump is unlikely to make many gains with them statewide. In fact, he’ll likely lose further ground, since there are more provisionals in blue counties than in red ones.

As Geoff just mentioned, ABC News is now projecting that the Georgia Senate race between Perdue and Ossoff is headed to a runoff. It had been clear since election night that Georgia’s other Senate race — between Loeffler and Warnock — was also headed to a runoff. And while these races have not yet been projected, it’s likely incumbent Sens. Dan Sullivan of Alaska and Thom Tillis of North Carolina will win reelection. That would give Republicans 50 Senate seats and Democrats 48 going into the next Congress, with Democrats needing to win both races in Georgia on Jan. 5 to take control of the Senate.

So while I know we’re still wrapping up the presidential election, the battle for Georgia has already started. The liberal fundraising platform ActBlue has already set up a fundraising page where people can split their donations equally to support Ossoff and Warnock’s campaigns. Loeffler, in a tweet, said, “The stakes of our race could not possibly be higher. We NEED a Republican Senate Majority to defend everything we’ve fought for over the last four years.”

These two races are likely to be super interesting. It’s very unusual to have two Senate runoffs on the same day period — let alone to determine control of the Senate. And it’s not just control of the Senate that will be at stake — with Biden likely to win and Democrats still in the majority in the House, these Georgia races will determine if Democrats have a trifecta in Washington, which will make it much easier to adopt their agenda.

So for Loeffler and Perdue, assuming that Trump loses the presidential election, their message is simple: “Send us back to Washington to ensure there is a check on the Democrats.” I would expect those two to hammer that message relentlessly. For Ossoff and Warnock, this is tricky. Biden and Democrats across the country basically campaigned on the idea that Trump was a unique danger and that the broader Republican Party had enabled him and therefore should be removed from office along with the president. But the specter of a Trump second term is probably over now. “Send us to Washington so we Democrats can have total control,” may be a controversial message in a closely divided state like Georgia. So I will be curious how the two Democrats position themselves.

Also, what is Biden’s role in these Georgia campaigns? Having a Democratic Senate majority would be hugely helpful to his presidency. And he appears to have just narrowly won Georgia, so he has some popularity in the state. Does he go all in on Georgia — or at least as all in as he can while also trying to set up his presidency?

The races could be super-close, at least based on the results of the November election. The race for the Loeffler seat is a special election because she was appointed to the seat. In such an election, there are not party primaries. So lots of people in Georgia from both parties ran for the seat, hoping to finish in the top two and advance to the runoff.

The total vote for the eight Democrats who got at least 0.5 percent support, including Warnock, was around 48.4 percent. The total vote for the five Republicans who got at least 0.5 percent, including Leoffler, was about 49.3 percent. As of right now, Ossoff is around 47.9 percent of the vote, compared to Perdue’s 49.8 percent. Biden is at 49.4 percent in Georgia, Trump at 49.3.

While we wait for a larger update from Arizona’s Maricopa County, we just got a new batch of results from Pinal County, where Trump leads Biden by nearly 15 percentage points, 57 percent to 41 percent. In this batch, though, Trump outpaced his share in the county, getting 62 percent to Biden’s 35 percent and netting a little less than 2,000 votes.

Biden now leads statewide in Arizona by just under 28,000 votes.