We have projections, but we don’t exactly know who won the 2020 presidential election, since the votes aren’t all counted. (A refresher on how CNN makes projections is here.)
And even where all the votes have been counted, there’s the potential for recounts. The Trump campaign has threatened to exercise its right to request a recount in Wisconsin, although it would have to wait for the initial count to be completed. The current margin is more than 20,000 votes, not unlike the margin by which Trump won the state in 2016.
The state did conduct a recount that year, but it didn’t materially change the results. Recounts almost never do. It would have to be completed by December 1, the state’s election certification deadline.
The only successful recount I can remember is the one after the 2008 election in Minnesota that gave Al Franken a slim majority over incumbent Sen. Norm Coleman. But Franken, who had sought the recount, made up 215 votes, not 20,000.
The counting in battleground states is becoming contentious. Here is information from battleground state officials, which is supplemented with key information on each state from CNN’s political unit, as of 6 p.m. ET Wednesday.
Status: The state may not update its vote totals until as late as Thursday. Biden has an approximately 8,000-vote lead. Mail-in votes postmarked November 3 but received by November 10 can still be counted.
Biden has less than a 100,000-vote lead. Approximately 600,000 votes are being counted from across the state, according to CNN’s estimate, but particularly in Maricopa County, the state’s population center, which has so far gone for Biden. Votes will be reported by the state late Wednesday ET, and potentially early Thursday morning ET, according to the Arizona Republic.
There are outstanding mostly mail-in votes, according to CNN’s estimate, and Biden has an approximately 60,000-vote lead. Trump would have to over-perform the current vote to make a comeback. Michigan’s secretary of state said Wednesday on CNN that we should know the state of the race by the end of the day. CNN projected Biden would win just after 4 p.m. ET.
State Attorney General Josh Shapiro said on CNN that the count could go through Friday as the state continues to accept postmarked mail-in ballots. It’s possible the Trump campaign will again challenge those late-arriving ballots despite its previous loss in the Supreme Court. If you’re betting on a legal fight, this is a good place to focus.
The Trump campaign has signaled it will pursue all options in Pennsylvania, but perhaps only if the state is determinative. It’s not right now.
You can watch the opening of ballots in Philadelphia. They’re live-streaming it!
Trump holds an approximately 80,000-vote lead, but there are absentee ballots still being counted in Democratic strongholds around Atlanta. Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger said Wednesday that counting could be completed late the same day, but sorting out all the ballots could take days.
Trump has a lead of more than 75,000 votes. But mail-in votes received by November 12 can still be counted.
Here’s CNN’s full report on ballot counting.
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