A pile of ballots in the Luzerne County Government Centre in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania. Photo / Robert Nickelsberg, The New York Timeslea
The tabulations continue in the states too close to call, but some things are becoming clearer.
Joe Biden looks to be on the cusp of winning the presidential election. Here's a look at where the vote count stands in the key states.
President Donald Trump's lead in Pennsylvania has plummeted to 2 percentage points as of Thursday morning (Friday NZ time), as the mail absentee ballot count proceeded briskly across the state.
There is every indication that Biden remains on track to pull ahead when all of the votes are in and counted, whenever that may be.
So far, Biden has been winning absentee votes, 77 per cent to 22 per cent, according to the Pennsylvania secretary of state. At that pace, he needs only 288,000 more mail votes before taking the lead. By my count, there are about 500,000 mail ballots left. The secretary of state reported a total of 2.6 million absentee ballots cast as of Tuesday, and so far 2.1 million absentee votes have been counted. If Biden won those 500,000 ballots by the same pace, he would end with a lead of about 100,000 votes in the state. That's a pretty decent cushion.
That estimate may also be conservative. For one, the remaining mail ballots are disproportionately in Democratic counties, so he'll probably do better than 77 per cent to 21 per cent. Another factor: There are more remaining absentee votes than estimated here; the state tally as of Tuesday does not include mail ballots postmarked by Election Day that arrived afterward (and I'm not entirely sure whether it includes mail ballots placed in Election Day drop boxes, but I'm assuming so out of caution).
To that point, the Pennsylvania election web page says there are 763,000 mail ballots left to be counted. I think that's mainly because it's out of date, and additional mail ballots have been counted since the page was last updated. But it may also reflect additional mail ballots. It might also be both.
And finally, there are still Election Day ballots left in Philadelphia, as well as provisional ballots — votes cast by people who couldn't initially be verified as eligible voters when they showed up to cast a ballot, like someone who went to the wrong precinct — that will cushion Biden.
The provisional count might be especially large here this year, since voters who requested a mail ballot but decided to vote in person (and didn't surrender their mail ballot in person) were also forced to vote provisionally, so as to make sure their votes weren't double-counted. Only one county, York County, has reported the results: There were 10,000 of them, and Biden won them by 9 points. The county voted for Trump by 25 points. If the pattern held elsewhere in the state, it would pad Biden's statewide margin by nearly 2 percentage points — although there's a lot of uncertainty in that extrapolation.
In the places where the count has mostly wrapped up, Biden is mostly running ahead of Hillary Clinton's 2016 showing — and often by a significant margin. Now take that logic statewide: If Biden runs ahead of her 2016 performance by a modest margin statewide, he carries the state. And that's before the provisional vote count.
If Biden is the projected winner in Pennsylvania, he'll be the president-elect.
Biden's lead in Arizona fell to 2.4 points Wednesday night, as late mail ballots broke toward Trump by a significant margin. This runs counter to the pattern we've seen elsewhere in the country, but it was expected, or at least not a surprise.
Why are late mail ballots better for Trump here? Unlike most other states, Arizona has a huge number of permanent absentee mail votes, and they're slightly Republican by registration. This year, the Democratic absentee voters rushed in their ballots, giving Democrats an unusual lead in the state's early mail vote. As a consequence, the group of voters who had received but not returned mail ballots was disproportionately Republican heading into the weekend before the election.
Overall, Trump won the ballots counted in Arizona on Wednesday night by about 23 points. It's hard to say whether that pace will be enough for Trump to win, since it depends on exactly how many ballots are left (we don't know this with the precision necessary for a close race). It also depends on what kinds of late mail ballots are left, and what kinds of votes were counted Wednesday night.
There are two kinds of late mail ballots in Arizona: those that arrived in the mail in the days ahead of the election, and those that were dropped off at a polling place on Election Day. These two kinds often lean differently politically, and they can be counted at different times, too. Without knowing which of these ballots we saw Wednesday night, it's hard to be too sure whether Trump's on track for something close to a comeback.
In general, the Election Day drop-off mail ballots are usually better for Democrats. If those ballots weren't included in Wednesday's count, that's good news for Biden.
No matter how you cut the data, it's hard not to arrive at the conclusion that Biden's lead will withstand the late vote. But there's also enough uncertainty with the number and kind of ballots left that it would be a mistake to be too sure about it. Certainly, it is too soon to project the state for Biden.
The president's lead in the state all but vanished overnight. Trump now leads by four-tenths of a percentage point — just under 19,000 votes — as heavily Democratic ballots in the Atlanta area were finally counted. There are still more absentee ballots left for Biden.
It's not clear exactly how many ballots there are and where; there was conflicting information Thursday morning, and things are so close that even modest differences will be decisive.
Thursday morning, the Georgia secretary of state initially said there were 25,000 ballots remaining. If so, Biden's push might fall just short of victory, although he'd still have a chance with provisional ballots. Later, the secretary of state said it was 50,000 ballots. And now, The New York Times is reporting that the state voting system implementation manager says there are 61,367 remaining ballots. The latter numbers come a lot closer to our estimates, and that would be enough for Biden to be a favorite. But caution is warranted, given the mixed messaging.
We also don't have a number on the provisional ballot count, but we're in the territory where that's a potentially crucial factor. And if you're wondering, our election night forecaster did assume that some number of provisional ballots would break heavily for Biden, helping to make him a very narrow favorite to win the state.
We didn't get any new ballots, and Biden still holds a lead. The remaining vote: mail ballots received on Election Day and provisionals. There's reason to expect these will pad Biden's lead: Democrats were outpacing Republicans by a 2-1 margin in the state's mail ballot returns, and provisionals lean Democratic just about everywhere. But we'll wait to be sure. We should get more data Thursday.
We're still waiting on how many mail ballots arrived after the election, and whether they're enough to overcome the president's lead. There's not much reason to expect it, but here again we'll wait to be sure.
Written by: Nate Cohn
Photographs by: Robert Nickelsberg
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