2020 Election Results: Live Updates on Day 2 - The New York Times

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Nov. 4, 2020, 11:04 a.m. ET

Election ballots are opened, sorted and scanned in the absentee ballot processing room at State Farm Arena in Atlanta on Tuesday. — Credit...Nicole Craine for The New York Times

With attention focused on Georgia and its 16 electoral votes, the state’s top election official, Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, was slated to hold a news conference on Wednesday morning to discuss the number of uncounted votes remaining, and how long they will take to process.

A total of 1.8 million absentee ballots were requested in Georgia and an estimated 1.25 million returned. It was not immediately clear on Wednesday morning how many of them remained uncounted, but the figure was believed to be in the tens of thousands.

A mere 100,000 votes currently separate the two candidates in Georgia, with President. Trump currently leading with 50.5 percent of the vote, or 2.38 million votes.

Most of the remaining ballots are believed to be from metropolitan Atlanta and other Democratic-leaning areas of the state that are believed to favor his challenger, Joseph R. Biden Jr.

Georgia’s voters were able to submit absentee ballots through drop boxes around the state as late as 7 p.m. Tuesday. After collection, they had to be delivered to elections offices before they could be counted.

The counting process can be labor-intensive. Ballots must be manually removed from envelopes by election workers, then placed in scanners for tabulation. In some cases, they require human review for verification.

There were also problems in several counties that caused delays in the processing on Tuesday. In Fulton County, the state’s most populous and home to Atlanta, officials had initially said they hoped to have ballots fully processed on Election Day.

But a water pipe break in a room being used by Fulton County to process those ballots disrupted operations Tuesday morning, delaying the counting of an estimated 50,000 ballots.

Northwest of Atlanta, in suburban Cobb County, roughly 15,000 absentee ballots had yet to be processed on Wednesday morning, according to the county’s elections and registration director, Janine Eveler. Those should be processed on Wednesday or Thursday, she said.

Additionally, 882 provisional ballots are expected to be processed on Friday, as are ballots cast by uniformed and overseas citizens, and those with missing or mismatched signatures that must be fixed and verified, or “cured by affidavit,” Ms. Eveler said.

Thomas Kaplan in Wilmington, Del.

Biden is expected to address the American people at some point today, his campaign manager, Jennifer O'Malley Dillon, tells reporters.

Nov. 4, 2020, 10:39 a.m. ET

Trump supporters at an election watch party on Tuesday in Hendersonville, N.C. — Credit...Juan Diego Reyes for The New York Times

RALEIGH, N.C. — North Carolina has not been called, but the math is solidly in President Trump’s favor.

He has a lead of more than 76,000 votes in the state. There are 117,000 absentee ballots outstanding, but not all of those will actually be returned. There are also an unknown number of provisional ballots to be reviewed as well, but the gap will be a difficult one for Joe Biden to overcome.

The numbers look even better for Senator Thom Tillis, a Republican incumbent, who is up nearly 100,000 votes over his rival, Cal Cunningham, a former state senator. Mr. Cunningham did not address reporters gathered Tuesday night at the state Democratic Party headquarters here.

“It doesn’t seem likely that there will be enough to change the presidential election results in North Carolina, or the Senate,” said Steven Greene, a political science professor at North Carolina State University. “Honestly, the people that you would expect to see the optimistic case from, I’m not seeing it.”

The election numbers reinforce North Carolina’s role as a state that straddles the political fence, tucked between Virginia, which is solidly blue, and South Carolina, which is reliably red. Gov. Roy Cooper, a Democrat, won re-election Tuesday, and Josh Stein, a Democrat who is the state’s attorney general, was leading his opponent by about 10,000 votes. But the state legislature remains in Republican hands.

“The truth we just remain in a stasis of being a very closely divided state,” Mr. Greene said. “On the state level, it’s been hard to get anything done at all.”

Nov. 4, 2020, 10:38 a.m. ET

Bill Stepien, President Trump’s 2020 campaign manager, listening to the president speak at campaign headquarters in Arlington, Va., on Tuesday. — Credit...Anna Moneymaker for The New York Times

The morning after an Election Day that left President Trump and former Vice President Joseph R. Biden, Jr. both short of the number of electoral votes required to secure victory, Trump campaign officials projected confidence in a pathway to victory.

“If we count all legal ballots, the president wins,” campaign manager Bill Stepien said on a morning conference call with reporters. He took no questions.

At 2:21 a.m. Wednesday morning, Mr. Trump told supporters in the White House that “We want all voting to stop.” But his campaign officials on Wednesday morning projected a path to victory that involved counting what they called “legal”ballots, suggesting that they anticipated challenging the legality of some outstanding ballots.

Mr. Stepien said he expected Wisconsin to be a tight race that was headed to “recount territory.”

He said late-breaking mail-in ballots helped Mr. Trump in Nevada and that he could win the state by a slim margin of about 5,500 votes. And he said the campaign was confident in its numbers in Georgia and that Mr. Trump maintained a lead in Pennsylvania, predicting he would win the state by about 40,000 votes.

Trump campaign officials continued to contest the Fox News and AP calls of Arizona for Mr. Biden, saying their data showed that the president would win the state by about 30,000 once all ballots were counted.

“Anyone who has called this race is just plain wrong,” said Jason Miller, the campaign’s strategist.

In a separate presentation to reporters, Mr. Biden's campaign offered a completely different assessment of the election results. The Biden team said it believed the former vice president had won in Arizona, Michigan and Wisconsin, among other states, and expressed confidence that he had won the presidential race.

Annie Karni in Washington

Trump campaign officials tell reporters that "if all legally cast ballots are counted, we believe the president will win." They continue to describe Fox News, AP calls of Arizona for Biden as "just plain wrong."

Annie Karni in Washington

"If we count all legal ballots, the president wins,” Trump campaign manager Bill Stepien said on a call with reporters, and took no questions.The call came hours after Trump said he wanted to stop vote counting.

Thomas Kaplan in Wilmington, Del.

In a press briefing, Jennifer O'Malley Dillon, Biden's campaign manager, says, "Joe Biden is on track to win this election, and he will be the next president of the United States."

Annie Karni in Washington

Trump campaign manager Bill Stepien is projecting confidence in the president's chances in Wisconsin, Michigan, Nevada and Georgia. He said Wisconsin was headed to "recount territory."

Mark Landler in London

In shot at Trump, Simon Coveney, Ireland’s foreign minister, said it would be unwise to claim victory before all votes counted. His U.K. counterpart, Dominic Raab, said vote would provide “definitive result.”

Nov. 4, 2020, 9:38 a.m. ET

Officials counting absentee ballots in Detroit on Wednesday. — Credit...Brittany Greeson for The New York Times

President Trump and Joseph R. Biden Jr. were locked Wednesday morning in a race for the White House that was too close to call, with election officials in crucial battleground states still counting ballots, many of them sent by mail before the polls closed.

Mr. Trump won Florida, Iowa and Ohio. Mr. Biden carried Minnesota. But, as of Wednesday morning, neither candidate had amassed the 270 electoral votes needed to win the presidency. Both parties were focused on the tallies being conducted in seven key states: Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.

No major news organizations have projected a winner in the overall race.

Election officials had long cautioned that it would take time — perhaps days — to tabulate votes because of the coronavirus pandemic and the related swell of mail-in ballots. Mr. Trump, though, falsely claimed victory early Wednesday, a brazen and unprecedented effort to upend the nation’s well-established process of choosing its president.

Mr. Biden adopted a different tone during an early morning, address ahead of Mr. Trump’s, saying, “As I’ve said all along, it’s not my place or Donald Trump’s place to declare who’s won this election.”

So far, neither Mr. Biden nor Mr. Trump have scheduled any public appearances for Wednesday.

Officials in many places tallied votes throughout the night and were to continue counting in the days ahead.

Although the result of the contest between Mr. Trump and Mr. Biden remained uncertain, Democrats appeared on track to retain their majority in the House. The clash for Senate control, though, was ongoing: Democrats ousted Republican lawmakers in Arizona and Colorado, but Republicans won an Alabama seat.

At least one of Georgia’s Senate races — voters there faced two contests because of a special election — will move to a runoff in January. The outcome of Georgia’s other Senate election was too close to call on Wednesday morning, as were hard-fought races in Maine, Michigan and North Carolina.

If Mr. Biden wins the White House, Democrats need a net gain of three seats to seize control of the Senate. If Mr. Trump is re-elected, keeping Republican control of the Senate’s tiebreaking vote, Democrats must net four seats to secure a majority.

Lisa Lerer in Orlando, Fla.

Biden pulled ahead in Michigan, as another batch of votes rolled in from Wayne County, where Detroit is located. That heavily Democratic area is currently reporting about 70% of returns.

See Michigan results

Nate Cohn in New York

Biden has won Pennsylvania absentee ballots by an overwhelming margin so far. If he carried the remaining absentee ballots by a similar margin, he would win the state.

Nov. 4, 2020, 8:08 a.m. ET

From left: Representatives Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts, Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York and Rashida Tlaib of Michigan will all return to the House. — Credit...Anna Moneymaker/The New York Times

The 2020 election brought victory to all four congresswomen often called “the Squad” — Representatives Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, Rashida Tlaib of Michigan and Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts, underscoring their popularity among their constituents.

Ms. Ocasio-Cortez, who sailed to victory over a first-time Republican challenger, said in a tweet that fighting for working-class families in Congress had been the “greatest honor, privilege & responsibility” of her life. Ms. Pressley posted an uplifting message to her constituents: “I believe in the power of us. And we’re just getting started.”

The foursome, who have collective achieved a level of political celebrity, have often found themselves in the spotlight since Democrats swept to power in the House. President Trump told the group of four minority congresswomen to “go back” to the countries they came from in 2019.

But despite their own victories, at least two of the four congresswomen had their eyes fixed on the undecided presidential election.

“Count every ballot,” Ms. Tlaib said in a Twitter post.

Ms. Ocasio-Cortez took her comments a step further, slamming President Trump’s premature assertion that he had won the election as “illegitimate, dangerous and authoritarian.”

Nov. 4, 2020, 7:32 a.m. ET

Jim Wilson/The New York Times
Chang W. Lee/The New York Times
Ilana Panich-Linsman for The New York Times

Nov. 4, 2020, 7:20 a.m. ET

Joseph R. Biden Jr. made Wisconsin a priority in his presidential campaign. — Credit...Ruth Fremson/The New York Time

MADISON, Wis. — Joseph R. Biden Jr. pulled into a narrow lead in Wisconsin early Wednesday after absentee ballots were counted from the cities of Milwaukee and Green Bay.

Mr. Biden’s lead in the state is about 11,000 votes statewide out of more than three million cast — though absentee ballots remain to be counted and reported from Kenosha, a Democratic city with an absentee electorate expected to skew Democratic.

Green Bay’s counting had been delayed by slow ballot-counting machines, and one machine ran out of ink early Wednesday, further delaying the process until more could be brought from City Hall.

Nov. 4, 2020, 7:13 a.m. ET

In Las Vegas on Tuesday. Nevada, which has been hit hard by the coronavirus pandemic, could be a wild card in the presidential election. — Credit...Bridget Bennett for The New York Times

Nevada, where Joseph R. Biden Jr. held a narrow lead early Wednesday, will not announce any new updates on election results until 9 a.m. Pacific time on Thursday, state election officials said.

So far, all in-person votes and all mail-in ballots through Nov. 2 have been counted, the election division of the secretary of state’s office said in a tweet on Wednesday morning. Mail-in ballots received on Election Day, mail-in ballots received over the next week and provisional ballots still need to be counted.

“Ballots outstanding is difficult to estimate in Nevada because every voter was sent a mail ballot,” the election division wrote. “Obviously, not all will vote.”

As of the most recent update on Wednesday, Mr. Biden held a narrow lead in the state, one of the most contested in the presidential race. It has been shading blue in recent elections as its electorate becomes more diverse, but President Trump has fought hard to flip the state. Hillary Clinton won the state in 2016 by just over 2 percentage points, 10 points less than Barack Obama’s margin of victory in the state in 2008.

Democrats hope that their efforts in recent years to better reach Latino voters in the state will help them win there again. But the coronavirus pandemic has hammered Nevada’s economy, crippled its tourism industry and sent its unemployment rate soaring, and some Democratic strategists worry that would-be Democratic voters will be more focused on immediate concerns, like feeding their families, than voting.

Isabella Grullón Paz and Sydney Ember contributed reporting.

Nate Cohn in New York

Trump leads by nearly 700,000 votes in Pennsylvania. Biden’s chances there depend on whether he can win a large percentage of more than 1.4 million uncounted absentee ballots.