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

Our friends over at SCOTUSblog, with some firm thoughts on the chances that the Supreme Court would get involved in this election:

The Georgia Secretary of State’s office also announced that there aren’t any additional absentee ballots left in Laurens County … they had already been counted and included in Laurens County’s totals.

The Georgia Secretary of State just made a brief public statement in which he said that Georgia will head into a recount when its initial count is over because of the slim margins there. Trump’s campaign also indicated this would happen this morning in a statement, though that statement included the Trump campaign’s usual allusions to the idea of voter fraud, of which there is no proof.

You might be wondering about North Carolina and Alaska, two unprojected states that we haven’t heard a peep from in days. Well, there’s a good reason for that: Both states accept absentee ballots that arrive as late as next week, and they won’t provide any updates until Nov. 10 (in Alaska) and Nov. 12 or 13 (in North Carolina). In fact, Alaska hasn’t released any absentee-ballot results yet, so that state (and its surprisingly competitive Senate race) is still up in the air.

This is an important detail in Georgia. There could be as many as 8,900 additional overseas absentee ballots. That’s how many ballots are outstanding. But we don’t know how many of them have actually been sent in, as compared to overseas voters who received a ballot but didn’t bother to return it. So it’s likely that there are considerably fewer than 8,900 votes that will ultimately need to be counted.

I mentioned the possible litigation over Pennsylvania mail-in votes that were cast by Election Day but didn’t arrive until afterward, and how that’s unlikely to consequentially alter Biden’s eventual lead in the state. But it’s worth reiterating that none of the ballots counted up to this point include those, so Biden has taken the lead without the inclusion of ballots that arrived after Election Day.

The fact that ballots are counted sequentially lends the process of vote counting important transparency. But it can also lead us to apply inappropriate mental frames. For instance, we may resort to horse-race language that suggests that Biden is pulling ahead at the last second, but in fact these votes were all cast on or before Election Day. The illusion of a dramatic horse race is simply a product of the order in which we count votes.

Biden is still over-performing the national margin of votes for Democratic House candidates over Republican House candidates by a few points. That matches the difference between support for Biden and Democrats’ support in the generic ballot polls, though both were overstated. That difference is still showing up in races in the remaining uncalled presidential states. In Pennsylvania, Finello has lost to Fitzpatrick in PA-1 by a large margin in areas supporting Biden, and lean or likely Democratic seats in PA-7, PA-8 and PA-17 are still close, even as presidential votes increase for Biden.

Trump’s campaign has already said it will seek a recount in Wisconsin, and I wouldn’t be surprised if they do so in Georgia as well. Biden currently leads there by 1,097 votes, or just 0.02 percentage points. In Georgia, a candidate can request a recount if the final margin is within 0.5 points. While I expect Biden’s margin to go up a bit, I think it will be hard for him to exceed that margin.

In Pennsylvania, an automatic recount is triggered if the final margin is within 0.5 percent of the total votes cast. Right now, Biden is ahead of Trump by .1 percentage point, but it makes sense to wait for more votes before making a call, especially when we think there are more than 100,000 votes left to count, and Biden’s lead is about 6,700 votes at this point. If Biden can widen his lead as more votes come in, it will lower the chances of an automatic recount.

Even as Biden’s lead will continue to grow in Pennsylvania, it’s worth noting that the Trump campaign could try to get the courts to throw out ballots that arrived after Election Day (but were postmarked by then). However, given the current trend in mail ballots, Biden’s lead would probably hold even if that happened. Nate Cohn at The New York Times notes that fewer than 30,000 mail ballots have been added to the state’s overall mail ballot tally since Election Night, and some of those may well have arrived by Election Day. As Biden’s lead will probably end up being beyond 30,000 votes, it’s hard to see such a move altering the outcome. Plus, we still don’t know about provisional ballots, of which there may be many due to some voters voting in person instead of by mail because of fears about their ballot arriving on time, but they failed to have all their mail ballots documents with them, which forced them to vote provisionally so officials could double-check they didn’t vote by mail.

It’s now Trump’s turn to try to close a gap in Georgia. We estimate that Trump would need to win only 52 percent of the 24,600 potentially outstanding votes in Georgia in order to regain the lead. In addition to the remaining mail-in votes that we’ve been talking about for days, that figure now includes provisional, overseas and rejected absentee ballots that might also count. However, some of them surely won’t count; plus, these remaining ballots are expected to skew Democratic anyway. So Trump’s path in Georgia, while not impossible, is longer than it looks.

In 2016, Donald Trump won Pennsylvania while the Democrats took key statewide positions like attorney general. But this year, with news of Democrat Nina Amhad’s loss in the auditor general’s race, we once again see an election where both Democrats and Republicans can win statewide simultaneously. Pennsylvania may go blue for president, but it is not a blue state.

And if there are roughly 130,000 mail ballots left, Biden’s been winning them at around a 3 in 4 clip, so if that continued, it might add 60,000 to 65,000 onto his current lead, with an unknown number of provisional ballots left to count as well.

The Pennsylvania secretary of state’s last update on the number of outstanding votes remaining came around midnight, and reported about 163,500 ballots left to be counted in the state. Since then, about 32,000 votes have been reported, overwhelmingly from Philadelphia. That would mean there are about 130,000 votes still to be reported, though it’s hard to get a precise grasp. Using these figures, Philadelphia would have an additional 27,000 votes left to report.

It won’t matter if Biden wins Pennsylvania, but the race in Georgia could come down to the last few ballots that are counted, such as provisional ballots, overseas ballots and absentee ballots with mistakes that voters have to fix. There are at least several thousand provisional ballots (in-person votes whose validity is in question) yet to be gone through, although we don’t know the exact number; these ballots typically lean Democratic. In addition, the secretary of state says that up to 8,900 overseas ballots may be returned by today’s deadline. That includes both the votes of military members stationed overseas (which will probably lean Republican) and expats living abroad (which will probably lean Democratic). Finally, there are at least 2,000 rejected absentee ballots that could count if voters fix their mistakes on time. These ballots probably skew Democratic as well.

This sounds about right on Georgia. It’s within the “margin of surprise.” But there would have to be a surprise for Trump to win.

Here’s Galen Druke taking a look at the electoral map and showing us what Biden’s lead in Pennsylvania means for Trump.

We expect that it is a matter of time before Pennsylvania is projected for Biden, and with it, the presidency. While we wait, here’s some sense of what is going on at the ABC News Decision Desk. According to their standards, they will make a projection when they are 99.5 percent sure of the outcome in Pennsylvania.

With Biden taking the lead in Pennsylvania, Chief Justice John Roberts (and the other Supreme Court justices) may be breathing a sigh of relief. Assuming Pennsylvania is eventually called for Biden, and it’s not especially close, the constitutionality of the deadline for late-arriving ballots will be irrelevant to the outcome — as will Trump’s other litigation in Pennsylvania (and elsewhere), which is already encountering a lot of skepticism in the courts.

So glad we went through all this, then, Nate.

Pennsylvania may not be particularly close in the end. There are still quite a few very blue mail-in ballots left to count, and most counties haven’t counted provisional ballots, which are liable to be very blue. I might expect Biden to win by something like 3 points there in the end, perhaps pretty close to what polls showed.

Decision Desk HQ has called the race for Biden. Good for them, because you could have called this thing last night.

Now it’s just a matter of when the networks decide to make a call. Trump has no path back in Pennsylvania. The outcome is not in doubt.

Those super-blue mail-in votes in strongly Democratic Philadelphia put Biden into the lead in Pennsylvania. There were around 31,000 in the new tranche being reported, and of those, around 87 percent went for Biden.

And Philadelphia has updated its vote tally. Trump’s statewide margin stood at 18,049 as of 8 a.m., but now Biden has grown his lead in Philadelphia by 23,636, taking the lead in Pennsylvania.

THAT BATCH OF BALLOTS PUT BIDEN AHEAD IN PENNSYLVANIA.

One other stray thought this morning: The fact that we’re almost certainly going to have two runoffs in Georgia that could determine control of the Senate puts some constraints on the GOP’s behavior — and Biden’s, for that matter. This is not a typical lame-duck period where there’s nothing immediate at stake. Control of Congress is likely to be at stake!

Since this is something I’ve been curious about … A Navigator Research poll finds that 52 percent of Americans think Biden is winning the election, 20 percent think Trump and the rest are in some state of uncertainty.

One thing we’ve been keeping an eye on at FiveThirtyEight is the extent to which other elected Republican officials support, stay silent on or push back on Trump’s baseless allegations of widespread vote fraud. There have been a handful of Republicans — Sens. Lindsey Graham and Ted Cruz, for example — to throw in with Trump’s claims, but many have simply stayed silent and a few have pushed back.

We also just got this from Sen. Pat Toomey:

Why is Toomey important? Well, for one he represents Pennsylvania, which looks likely to decide the election. But also: Toomey (along with Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin at some points) was our informal stand-in/barometer for the “mainstream” of the Republican Party once upon a time on the FiveThirtyEight Politics Podcast. The idea was that you could use Toomey (or Johnson) as a short-cut or proxy to get an idea of the extent to which Republican Party elites were aligning themselves with Trump. Over the past few years, that’s mostly been a story of alignment. But at least on the question of the integrity of this election, Toomey doesn’t seem to be going along.

Happy Friday, dear readers. In a different kind of election news, the U.S. Office of Special Counsel is apparently opening an investigation into whether the Trump campaign violated the Hatch Act by using federal property for campaign events, including the use of the Old Executive Office Building as a campaign command center of sorts.

An update on Georgia from our colleagues at ABC News. Biden’s lead still stands at +1,096 votes. But Gabriel Sterling, the statewide voting systems implementation manager, joined “Good Morning America” and said that there were at least 8,197 votes still outstanding. This includes at least 4,800 ballots from Gwinnett County, which has trended blue and is likely to add to Biden’s margin.

But note, that figure does not include provisional ballots, potential absentee ballot cures or military and overseas ballots. The deadline to verify provisional ballots/cure absentee ballots is today, as is the deadline for military/overseas ballots to be returned, as long as they were postmarked by Election Day. (Sterling said the maximum number of military/overseas ballots that could come in is 8,899.)

“When we know the outcome of this election, we’re going to have an audit afterwards and we have a very good likelihood that it’s going to be within a half of a percentage,” Sterling said. “Under our laws, whoever comes in second in this election [in Georgia], they can request a recount.”

All eyes are on a handful of states now, including Pennsylvania, with Philadelphia and other jurisdictions expected to report additional votes today that could put Biden into the lead. But if Biden wins Pennsylvania, it will likely be thanks to his improved performance (relative to 2016) in other parts of the state. And despite some baseless claims to the contrary, there’s absolutely no reason to question the trustworthiness of the vote count in Philly.

For one thing, voting in Philadelphia is overseen by a bipartisan group of three elected officials, the Philadelphia City Commissioners. One is Al Schmidt, a Republican. (Of course, bipartisanship is by no means a prerequisite for trustworthiness.)

What’s more, while Philadelphia is the largest source of net Democratic votes in Pennsylvania, Biden’s improvement in the state relative to 2016 is actually driven by other jurisdictions. In 2016, Clinton won about 584,000 votes in the city to Trump’s nearly 109,000, a pro-Democratic vote margin of about 475,000. With nearly 122,000 votes as of 7 a.m. Friday morning, Trump has already won more votes in Philadelphia than he had in 2016. While Biden could wind up besting Clinton’s vote total in the city once the counting is done, he hasn’t yet, and there’s no guarantee he will. What that means is that Biden’s strengthening position in Pennsylvania isn’t powered by Philadelphia; while the timing of vote counting — dictated by the state’s Republican legislators — has put Philadelphia in the position to potentially put Biden ahead of Trump, Biden’s strong performance relative to Clinton is actually driven by other parts of the state.

First, consider York County, a GOP stronghold in south-central Pennsylvania. In 2016, Trump bested Clinton by about 60,000 votes in the county. As of this morning, though, Trump was winning York by just under 58,000, and that margin may narrow further with provisional ballots.

Or better yet, consider Montgomery County, home to the Main Line suburbs just outside Philadelphia. In 2016, Montgomery gave Clinton a net of over 93,000 votes over Trump. But as of this Friday morning, the county’s vote stood to give Biden at least 130,000 over Trump. Mitch McConnell said that the election showed GOP weakness in the suburbs. And he was right.

So Democrats’ improving fortunes aren’t driven by Philadelphia but by other parts of the state. These facts are especially key in light of the allegations that “bad things happen in Philadelphia,” a claim Trump made in the first presidential debate, weeks before the vote counting began. So when GOP senators, including Lindsey Graham and Ted Cruz, baselessly allege that there are improprieties in Philadelphia’s vote count, they are undermining the election’s integrity in service of a factless narrative.

In 2016, one straightforward way to see the legitimacy of Trump’s victory in Pennsylvania was to observe that similar trends were afoot across demographically similar counties here and elsewhere. In 2016, for instance, many upstate New York counties showed the same pro-GOP shift that put Trump over the top here in Pennsylvania. The same is true today. In tilting slightly Democratic relative to 2016, with suburb-powered shifts, Pennsylvania is tracking with broader national trends. And like 2016, I see no reason to question the legitimacy of the count.

Again, for a detailed rundown of where the vote stands in the unresolved states, see below 👇 . But here’s where things stand cartographically (maps courtesy of the very useful 270toWin):

And then, with current leaders (of course, we expect Biden to overtake Trump in Pennsylvania remember):

For our readers who haven’t been up all night watching returns … good morning! 👋 ☕ ☀️ (OK, the sun is not really up yet, at least in NYC, but still.)

Where are we?

• Biden has taken the slimmest of leads in Georgia — just over 1,000 votes — with 99 percent of the expected vote in (remember, the “expected vote” is an estimate — we think there are about 10,000 ballots left to be counted, but that could change if more military/overseas, provisional and cured absentee ballots come in). We don’t, however, think any of the networks will project Georgia for Biden anytime soon as the margin is just sooooo slim.
• Biden is up by about 47,000 votes in Arizona with about 90 percent of the expected vote in (that’s about 263,000 ballots left to count). Biden’s lead increased by several hundred votes overnight.
• Biden has a tiny lead in Nevada and Trump has a small lead in North Carolina, and we didn’t get any more votes from either state overnight. In Nevada, about 89 percent of the expected vote has been counted, leaving about 190,150 ballots outstanding. Almost all of those, about 170,000, are from Clark County (home to Vegas), the Democratic stronghold in the state.
• Thus, all 👀 are really on Pennsylvania. Trump’s lead is down to about 18,000 votes in the Keystone State with about 95 percent of the expected vote in. That leaves about 160,000 votes still to be counted. And there are still roughly 44,000 mail-in ballots left to be reported in very blue Philadelphia and at least 30,000 in Allegheny County (home to Pittsburgh).

The upshot is that all signs point to Biden overtaking Trump in Pennsylvania at some point — likely today, but it’s really hard to say. If Pennsylvania is projected for Biden, its 20 Electoral College votes would make him the projected next president of the United States.

Needless to say, we’ll be following it all here in real-time. Thanks for watching with us! And let us know if you have any questions — we’ll try to answer them (once everyone else is awake, obviously).

According to the Decision Desk, Biden has now taken the lead in Georgia, albeit a narrow one — just 917 votes. However, the state’s presidential race still hasn’t yet been projected by ABC News (or other outlets at this point), and probably won’t be for a while, given that the final margin is likely to be very close.

This is certainly a big deal as the last time Georgia voted for a Democrat for president was Bill Clinton in 1992, but we want to urge extra caution — there is still more outstanding vote to be counted, and the margins here are razor thin.

The presidential race continues to tighten in Georgia and Pennsylvania — and it could be a matter of hours before Biden overtakes Trump in the vote count in Georgia. (Although some media outlets, like NBC, are saying it could be “weeks” before they make a call in Georgia even if Biden takes the lead.)

The outstanding vote in these two states continues to come in dribs and drabs. We’ll be back to post about any big updates, but settle in, readers, for a possibly long Friday.

We just got our first new batch of Clayton County votes since about 1:30 a.m. It contained 704 votes for Biden and 102 for Trump, cutting Trump’s statewide lead from 1,267 votes to just 665. It’s probably just a matter of hours before Biden takes the lead.

Georgia and Pennsylvania are really stretching out their moments in the spotlight — they’re releasing new batches of ballots at an agonizingly slow pace. (Though, in fairness, it is late at night and they are working very hard.) The latest numbers seem to be on Decision Desk HQ, which has Trump’s Pennsylvania lead down to 18,224 votes and his Georgia lead down to 1,267.

Decision Desk HQ has Trump’s lead down to 1,479 votes in Georgia based on what I’m assuming is another small batch of returns from Clayton County.

So … where do we stand here? Well, we’re playing the waiting game. Look, FiveThirtyEight doesn’t “call” elections, and even if we did, we’d probably be exceptionally conservative. But we’re expecting that at some point, Biden will surpass Trump in the vote count in both Georgia and Pennsylvania. When? We don’t know. Possibly in the wee hours of the morning here, but also possibly not. Not so helpful, I know. But we know from our years of covering elections that sometimes important things happen at 3 in the morning … and sometimes they don’t because some key player in the system has literally gone to sleep.

So for now, we’re keeping an eye on those states, but we won’t be posting much until we get some news.

We’re still waiting on Georgia, but here’s a good article on other types of ballots, such as some overseas and military absentee ballots, that will still need to be counted there even after officials finish counting the mail votes. Plus, there might be a recount, which could uncover other issues. So even if Biden takes a lead there, that doesn’t mean he’s home free; he’d like to build up a bit of a cushion.

We’re going to run silent for a bit as we await a potential lead change in Georgia. With Biden down 1,902 votes and about 16,000 left to count, Biden needs to win only 56 percent of what remains in order to take the lead statewide. If he does, we’ll let you know right here, so don’t go away.

My home state of Virginia’s moment in the sun was 2008, and also 2012 to some extent — it was the state whose popular vote was closest to the national popular vote margin in both cycles (though Colorado was the tipping-point state in 2008 and 2012). Now it’s less competitive in presidential races.

Yeah, Nate, Ohio totally had a higher VORS (Value Over Replacement State) than Michigan in 2012.

New Pennsylvania ballots from Monroe County (Stroudsburg and the Delaware Water Gap, bordering New Jersey) bring Trump’s lead down to about 42,000 votes. That’s a meaningful number — it’s now below the 44,000 by which Trump won the state in 2016.

Maybe not surprising that a Michigander like Nate would pick Michigan in 2012, but who can forget Karl Rove disputing Fox’s call of Ohio for Obama that year?

If you were to hand out a Most Valuable State of the Electoral College award in each election, which one would it go to? This is not necessarily the tipping-point state, but the state that subjectively feels most important to the narrative. I’d go with:

2000: Florida (duh)

2004: Ohio

2008: North Carolina/Virginia/Colorado (co-winners)

2012: Michigan

2016: Wisconsin

2020: Whichever one of Georgia or Pennsylvania shows a Biden lead first

Biden may pull into the lead in Georgia tonight. According to CNN, Clayton County plans to release results from its 5,700 outstanding ballots by midnight. Biden won the last batch of Clayton votes 87 percent to 13 percent; if he wins the remainder by the same amount, he’d net about 4,300 votes. Trump’s current Georgia lead is only 2,497 votes.