2020 Election: Live Results And Coverage

ABC News projects that Democrat Tina Smith will win the Senate race in Minnesota.

ABC News projects a Democratic win in NV-1.

ABC has also called Minnesota for Biden, which is less important in and of itself and more important for what it says about Michigan and Wisconsin.

ABC News projects that Joe Biden will win Minnesota.

Let’s take a step back and look at the big picture. Based on ABC News projections, Trump has 212 electoral votes, and Biden has 209. The biggest states that remain unprojected include Pennsylvania, Michigan, Georgia, North Carolina and Arizona.

ABC News projects that Joe Biden will win the electoral vote for Nebraska’s 2nd District.

ABC News projects Republican wins in AR-2, MN-8 and TX-22; and Democratic wins in CA-10, CA-45 and CA-49.

So to summarize a bit, Biden basically has three “easy” paths to victory remaining. In rough order of likelihood: 1) Win Arizona and NE-02, hold Michigan and Wisconsin; 2) Win Pennsylvania, hold Michigan and Wisconsin; 3) Win Georgia, hold Michigan and Wisconsin.

Less likely paths would involve his winning North Carolina, or other scenarios where he loses Wisconsin or Michigan but does well enough elsewhere.

Fox News has called Nebraska’s 2nd Congressional District for Biden, becoming the first network to do so. They’re also the only network to have called Arizona for Biden. Those two places have an important relationship because if Biden wins both Arizona and NE-02, he doesn’t need Pennsylvania (although he does need both Michigan and Wisconsin). The dynamics are very interesting for media-watcher types thinking about the editorial independence of Fox News’s Decision Desk. The Arizona call was pretty aggressive, but serves as a check against any attempt that Trump might make to claim victory tonight.

ABC News projects that Donald Trump will win Montana.

I really wonder what the national popular vote will be when everything is settled. This has been a weird, not-as-correlated-as-usual night.

ABC News projects that Democrat Ben Ray Lujan will win the Senate race in New Mexico.

Trump leads by 6 points in Texas. The final margin may be tighter, since it looks like there’s a fair amount of the vote still out in Dallas and Houston, but the state hasn’t turned purple quite yet.

ABC News projects a Democratic win in MI-12.

ABC News projects that Donald Trump will win Texas.

We don’t have a projection for these states yet, but at this point, I’d rather be Biden in Pennsylvania and, as Geoffrey said earlier, Wisconsin.

ABC News projects that Joe Biden will win Rhode Island.

ABC News projects Democratic wins in CA-15, CA-16 and CA-17.

Biden leads by 7.5 points in NE-02, a bit down from before with more of the Election Day vote in, but there are also quite a few votes counted there: around 311,000. Before the night began, we had projected that about 324,000 votes would be cast there.

Democrat Theresa Greenfield has conceded Iowa’s Senate race to Republican Sen. Joni Ernst. This is a blow to Democrats’ chances of flipping the Senate, which now basically require them to pull out wins in North Carolina and Maine.

An Omaha media source says Biden looks good in NE-02.

It’s now (yawn) 1 a.m. Eastern, and the final votes have now been cast in the 2020 election: The last few polling places just closed in Alaska, and our forecast is anticipating some competitive races there.

ABC News projects Democratic wins in CA-11, CA-12, CA-13 and CA-14.

We just got word, via the president’s Twitter account, that Trump plans to make a statement tonight. Trump sent a lot of signals going into tonight that, almost no matter what the actual results, he would falsely or prematurely claim victory. Indeed, the outcome of the 2020 presidential election is still very much in doubt, and things likely won’t become clearer until Pennsylvania and Michigan finish counting all their votes. We’re also waiting for official projections in Georgia, Arizona, Wisconsin and a handful of other contests. But since Trump made it clear that he would take this route, we talked over how we would handle things in the FiveThirtyEight newsroom.

Here’s where we landed: If Trump falsely or prematurely declares victory … our priorities would be (i) don’t let Trump’s false/premature claim dominate our coverage or alter our framing of the night, while (ii) still making clear to readers why the claim is false/premature and carries no legal power.

We’ll see what Trump says in his statement, but those are our guiding principles. To be clear: Votes will continue to be counted — a perfectly normal and legitimate electoral process — and we won’t know who won until those final results are in. And Trump’s read on the race doesn’t affect any of the actual mechanics of how the U.S. elects presidents.

With 72 percent of the expected vote in from Wisconsin, Trump leads by a little more than 4 points and around 114,000 votes. But in terms of what’s left, it might be enough to put Biden over the top. The big story is Milwaukee County, where only 36 percent of the expected vote is in. That along with 10 percent of the expected vote left out in deep-blue Dane County (Madison) leaves things very much up in the air.

ABC News has projected that Virginia’s Amendment No. 1 — to set up a bipartisan redistricting commission — has passed. That means that control of redistricting Virginia next year will not be solely in Democratic hands; instead, a 16-member commission (half Democrats, half Republicans) will submit maps for the legislature’s approval. If the legislature fails to pass any of their maps, the task of drawing district lines would fall to the courts.

ABC News projects Democratic wins in CA-9 and VA-10.

Decision Desk HQ has more of Maine reported than other sources, and they show Biden with a bigger lead there (+10) and also Gideon a little closer (-5.6).

Dismayingly, Trump has sent a Tweet claiming that the election is being stolen. This is contrary to any evidence. The fact is, the winner of the election remains unclear, with many votes still needing to be counted.

Trump’s falsehood has long been in the cards. Axios reported over the weekend that Trump has been discussing the possibility of declaring victory this evening if he looked “ahead.” Of course, as we at FiveThirtyEight and many other outlets have spent the past few weeks emphasizing, this year’s vote count was always expected to take longer than usual because of the number of mail-in ballots. And we have always emphasized that what matters is the final vote count, not who looks “ahead” at the end of election night.

Given the high volume of ballots and rules in some states that don’t allow counting to start until Election Day, it’s been entirely expected and is entirely legal that some ballots will be counted after the clock hit midnight. The Trump campaign, however, has been pushing to have the counting of these ballots stopped.

We’ll continue to keep abreast of the counts in the various states, but for now, know this: We do not yet have a clear winner in the election, nor is there any evidence of fraud or malfeasance, despite the president’s statement.

According to the Associated Press, Republican Greg Gianforte has been elected the next governor of Montana, which appears to mean Republicans have taken full control of state government there.

There wasn’t a lot of clarity to be had tonight as the race for president and the Senate both remain too close to call. But as for the House of Representatives, we have a sense of where things are headed, as ABC News and other major media outlets have projected that Democrats will retain control of Congress’s lower chamber.

Coming into the night, this was the most likely outcome, too, as our forecast gave Democrats a 97 in 100 chance of holding onto a House majority. Democrats entered the night with 233 seats to the Republicans’ 201 (with one Libertarian member), so the GOP needed 17 seats to capture a majority. But so far, the only seats called by ABC News that have flipped are two Republican-held seats in North Carolina that changed dramatically due to court-ordered redistricting in 2019 — the 2nd and 6th congressional districts. This was expected, as our forecast gave Democrats better than a 99 in 100 shot in both.

That doesn’t mean that Democrats aren’t going to suffer losses, though. With at least 92 percent of the expected vote in from two Democratic-held seats in South Florida, it looks like the GOP will likely win the 26th and 27th congressional districts, which are mostly in Miami-Dade County, where Biden and other Democrats appear to have underperformed. Other media outlets have called those races for the GOP, which reflects the Republicans’ improved showing among Hispanic voters tonight in Florida, as both of those two seats have large Cuban American populations.

Lots of votes still have to be counted, but it looks all but certain that the House will still be in Democratic hands when the next Congress takes office in January 2021. And that means House Speaker Nancy Pelosi will keep her gavel for one more term, as she’s said she will not serve as speaker beyond the 117th Congress.

Ossoff running about 2 points behind Biden in Georgia, so if the presidential race winds up being a photo-finish, the Senate race might have a good chance of going to a runoff. The libertarian candidate has 2.3 percent of the vote so far there.

ABC News projects a Democratic win in CA-6 and a Republican win in UT-2.

Exit polls should obviously be taken with a big grain of salt at this point, but some interesting nuggets from the national exit poll: So far, Trump seems to have won among white voters by less than he did in 2016, while Biden seems to be doing better among independents, among moderates and in suburbs than Clinton did. And while first-time voters went overwhelmingly for Clinton in 2016, Biden seems to have increased his lead among this group as well.

Galen Druke speaks to Clare Malone about Trump’s win in Ohio and what it could mean for some other remaining races.

ABC News projects that Donald Trump will win Iowa.

ABC News also projects that Republican Joni Ernst will win the Senate race in Iowa.

Iowa projected for Trump by ABC News. Looks like Ann Selzer is pretty good at polling after all!

Bullock is 1 point ahead in Montana while Biden is 6 points behind.

Here’s a bullish sign for Biden in Pennsylvania. I wouldn’t be surprised if rural counties wind up with margins similar to the ones they posted in 2016, but urban and suburban ones (like Dauphin) lurch leftward.

ABC News projects Democratic wins in CA-3, CA-5 and WA-1; and a Republican win in WA-5.

“Keep the faith, guys! We’re gonna win this!” That’s how Biden ends this VERY short speech. A totally surreal scene in some ways, since he’s basically making the speech to a drive-in movie theater seating scenario.

Posted by Trump just after Biden ended his speech:

Yeah, that Minnesota projection — which ABC hasn’t made yet! — is bullish for Biden in Wisconsin and Michigan. Maybe less so in Pennsylvania, which was polling more tightly and which isn’t as similar demographically to Minnesota.

The cars are honking up a storm! “We’re going to have to be patient until the hard work of tallying votes is over,” Biden says. “But we’re feeling good about where we are … we’re confident about Arizona.”

He also goes on to say he thinks he’ll win Pennsylvania. “I’m optimistic about this outcome.”

Our best clue to how Wisconsin might go could be found in next-door Minnesota, where the Associated Press has just projected Biden as the winner. In the AP’s count, Biden leads Trump by an impressive 12 points there, with 76 percent of the expected vote reporting. In 2016, Wisconsin was just 3 points more Republican-leaning than Minnesota.

ABC News projects Democratic wins in OR-4, OR-5 and WA-8; and a Republican win in WA-3.

OK, Biden is taking the stage in Delaware at his “drive-in amphitheater” election night celebration. “We believe we’re on track to win this election.”

That’s Fivey Fox’s first emoji of the night. Fivey reports the ABC News projections with emojis if the projections diverge from our expectations based on our final forecast.

In this case, Fivey was surprised (😮) by Trump’s win in Florida, which our forecast showed as “slightly favored” for Biden.

Just as a reminder, Fivey is an emotional fox. Fivey responds with a surprised emoji (😮) if a candidate we listed as “slightly favored” loses a race, with a shocked emoji (😲) if a candidate we have listed as “favored” loses a race, and with a mind blown emoji (🤯) if a candidate we have listed as “clearly favored” or “very likely” loses a race.

… as I said, that Florida call is a bit overdue. One implication is that Florida is as much a red state as a purple one, because it looks to have moved further away from the tipping point.