Joe Biden’s lead in Arizona has fallen below 20,000.
Biden currently remains ahead by 20, 573, votes, with a 49.5% hold of the total vote, compared to Trump’s 48.9%.
Biden is leading in every other state. He is likely to be called the winner there soon with the remaining votes coming from Allegheny County, which includes Democratic strongholds of Philadelphia and Pittsburgh.
If Biden wins Pennsylvania, he no longer needs any of the other states to claim the 270 electoral college votes he needs to claim the White House. If Trump wins Arizona, he still needs every other state in play which seems increasingly unlikely.
In Georgia, a recount has been called because the margin is so thin.
As it stands, Biden has 253 electoral votes, compared to Trump’s 213, meaning he can win the presidency in one of two ways.
If he wins Pennsylvania, he gains 20 votes and no longer needs either Arizona or Nevada. But if he wins Arizona – which has 11 electoral college votes – and Nevada – which has 6 – he no longer needs Pennsylvania.
Officials on Friday night released the results of the 69,000 ballots counted in Maricopa County, which reduced Biden’s standing by about 7,000
Biden is leading in every other state. He snatched the lead from Trump in Pennsylvania on Friday and is now ahead by 28,877 votes.
He is likely to be called the winner there soon, with the remaining votes coming from Allegheny County, which includes Democratic strongholds of Philadelphia and Pittsburgh.
In Georgia, the pair are neck-and-neck and a recount has been called because the margin is so thin.
If Biden wins Pennsylvania today, he no longer needs any of the other states to claim the 270 electoral college votes he needs to claim the White House. If Trump wins Arizona, he still needs every other state in play which seems increasingly unlikely.
Arizona has a long political history of voting Republican. It’s the home state of Barry Goldwater, a five-term, conservative senator who was the Republican nominee for president in 1964. John McCain, the party’s 2008 presidential nominee, represented the state in Congress from 1983 until his 2018 death.
But changing demographics, including a fast-growing Latino population and a boom of new residents – some fleeing the skyrocketing cost of living in neighboring California – have made the state friendlier to Democrats.
An election worker puts ballots in a high-speed tabulating scanner inside the Maricopa county elections building where a large crowd of pro-Trump supporters have gathered outside in the parking lot to protest election results Friday
Trump supporters rally outside the Maricopa County Elections headquarters where officials are still counting votes on a close election in Phoenix on Friday
Trump supporters have gathered outside of the Maricopa County election center in Phoenix, since Thursday night, with some carrying military-style rifles and handguns. Arizona law allows people to openly carry guns.
Authorities at the center used fences to create a ‘freedom of speech zone’ and keep the entrance to the building open. The crowd took turns chanting – ‘Count the votes!’ and ‘Four more years!’ – and complaining through a megaphone about the voting process.
They paused to listen as Trump spoke from the White House, where he repeated many of his groundless assertions of a rigged vote.
They whooped and clapped when the president said, ‘We’re on track to win Arizona.’
It comes after the AP and and Fox News had both called Arizona early on Wednesday morning, claiming there was no possible way for Trump to claw it back from him – a move which was later called into question.
The counting delay prolongs an already excruciating wait to find out who will be the next President for frustrated Americans and people all over the world who are now asking why it is taking so long to reach a conclusion.
There has been no simple answer so far. In some states it’s because the margin is incredibly tight. In others, it’s because mail-in ballots haven’t yet arrived and can be counted for days yet.
Official counts are never normally returned on election day or even in the immediate aftermath. The election is always called instead by a TV or news network based on analysis of possible outcomes.
But none are calling it this year, because the race in the remaining swing states has been so tight.
Even though hundreds of thousands of votes remain uncounted, Trump is already demanding a recount in Wisconsin and he’s asking that the vote counting stop in Georgia, Pennsylvania, Michigan and Nevada. He hasn’t requested anything in Arizona yet.
The margin for a recount in Arizona is tiny at only 200 votes. It is possible in Wisconsin and Georgia; in Wisconsin, it needs to be fewer than 1 percent, which the result was. In Georgia, it needs to be within 0.5 percent which is seeming more and more likely.
In Nevada, it needs to be requested within three days of the final, certified result but Nevada has no minimum margin for a recount. In Pennsylvania, the margin is 0.5 percent.
Hobbs said she didn’t know what option Trump had to call the Arizona race into question.
On Wednesday night, dozens of protesters descended on a counting center – forcing it to close. They were Trump supporters.
‘I don’t understand what these protesters are interested in. We’re going to keep counting ballots. If they’re supporting the president they should want us to continue counting. I just don’t know what their goal is. Absolutely they are not disrupting what we’re doing,’ she said.
Several members of the group AZ Patriots did successfully manage to make their way inside the building, one wearing a military vest, where they argued that the pens in the count had been changed to Sharpies, before they were kicked out of the building.
Media crews were escorted from the center at around 12.30am and some staff were also escorted from the building at the end of their shifts as the shouts of the crowd grew louder. There have been no reports of violence although several members of the press claimed they were threatened.
Inside, the count continued, with the center vowing that it would continue until the last update of the night.
In Georgia, the lawsuit claims that a GOP poll observer witnessed 53 late absentee ballots added to a pile in Chatham County while two additional actions in Pennsylvania claim a Senator there has given Biden back-door votes to try to push Trump out.
And in Wisconsin, the campaign is demanding a recount, despite Biden winning by more than 20,000 votes which represents around 0.6 percent of the vote. The figure falls within the state’s recount rules which allows for anything within a one-point margin to qualify for a a recount.
In Pennsylvania, where a result is unlikely before Friday, Rudy Giuliani – Trump’s personal lawyer – and Trump’s son, Eric, arrived to spearhead ‘critical legal actions’ in the state.
The Trump campaign has announced that it will wade into a case currently before the Supreme Court which challenges state law that allows for mail-in ballots that arrive up to three days after election day.
Deputy Trump Campaign Manager Justin Clark said the campaign will be suing to stop ‘Democrat election officials from hiding the ballot counting and processing’ from GOP poll-watchers.
Maricopa County Sheriff’s Deputies stand at the door of the Maricopa County Recorder’s Office as President Donald Trump supporters rally outside, Wednesday, Nov. 4, 2020, in Phoenix
Video from outside the count center showed the angered crowd as they shouted that the vote was being suppressed
Chaos hit the election count center in a crucial Arizona county on Wednesday night after a large group of Trump supporters gathered outside to protest, some carrying weapons as the chanted for the vote to continue
Vote counting in Arizona is likely to continue until Friday, stretching out the excruciating wait for a result by even longer
He claimed that Republican observers in Philadelphia were ordered to stand 25 meters away from counting staff, making it impossible to watch.
Trump has also accused Pennsylvania’s Secretary of State Kathy Boockvar of unilaterally extending the deadline by which mail-in voters whose voter ID was missing to provide proof.
In a press conference held in Philadelphia on Wednesday afternoon Giuliani and Eric claimed the president won the state, despite roughly one million mail-in ballots still needing to be counted.
Like Trump himself, neither man offered a legal argument for a win or proof of any voter fraud, but nonetheless made claims of cheating.
‘They’re trying to cheat, they’re trying to cheat,’ Eric Trump said repeatedly of the Democrats.
Giuliani ranted for several minutes about mail-in ballots which he claimed – without proof – could be falsified.
‘This is beyond anything I have ever seen before,’ he said. ‘Do you think we’re stupid? Do you think we’re fools?
‘You know something, Democrats do think you’re stupid,’ Giuliani added. ‘And they do think you’re fools. That’s why you get called ‘deplorable’ and ‘chumps’.
‘We’re going to stick with this. We’re going to win this election. We’ve actually won it.
‘It’s just a matter of counting the votes fairly.’
Giuliani complained the mail-in ballots could have come from Mars or Canada – or could simply be one person who sent in 100,000 votes.
‘Staff at the @maricopacounty Elections Department will continue our job, which is to administer elections in the second largest voting jurisdiction in the county,’ the department tweeted.
‘We will release results again tonight as planned. We thank the @mcsoaz for doing their job, so we can do ours.’
Among the protesters was local Congressman Paul Gosar who joined the crowd in complaining that votes were not being counted, blasting the Arizona Secretary of State as a ‘joke’ and praying, before demanding an update on the tally.
‘Some shady things are happening in Arizona…’ he tweeted earlier in the day.
Gosar made the claim after Fox News faced outrage for deciding to call the state’s eleven electoral college seats for Biden before midnight on election night. The Associated Press has since also called a Biden victory but the New York Times and CNN are among the major news organization believing the race is still there for either candidate.
On Wednesday night, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis railed against the decision to call Arizona and said that Fox should immediate rescind the decision.
‘Trump is gaining in Arizona. There are probably 500,000…’ DeSantis said during an interview with Fox. ‘Here’s my thing, if you’re quick on the trigger, then be quick on the trigger for both sides and stand by it. With Trump, they never want to call the state. Biden, they will do it right away. It’s inconsistent and unacceptable. Look, North Carolina should be called for the president, for sure. Arizona — Fox should rescind that call.’
‘We have to do this in a right way,’ DeSantis continued. ‘I thought it was really poor how it was done. Florida, we didn’t even need the panhandle coming in. The president was up so much with the basis of Miami-Dade [county] early in mail voting that here was no way he would lose by Florida and won by 400,000 votes in the end.’
FiveThirtyEight’s Nate Silver, who has himself been criticized for wildly inaccurate polling data, also said that Fox and the Associated Press should retracted the projection.
The Arizona call from Fox was the first of the states that appeared to have flipped from red to blue, marking a major loss for the Trump campaign in this must-win state if it were accurate.
Yet the Trump campaign has argued that the voting is not yet over, dismissing the call and predicting that the president will eventually win by some 30,000 votes once all ballots are counted.
They have also said they are considering contesting the result but have not indicated what action they would take after calling for a recount in Wisconsin and filing lawsuits over vote counting in Pennsylvania, Michigan and Georgia.