ESPN lays of Thousands.

robert massimi
6 min readNov 6, 2020

It’s Election Day plus three, and Americans are still waiting for a conclusion to the 2020 presidential election. As of this writing, The Associated Press has Democratic nominee Joe Biden leading 264–214, with 60 electoral votes still remaining.

President Trump leads Biden in the critical battleground state of Pennsylvania (20 electoral votes) as of this writing by a margin of roughly 18,000, with about 3% of the vote left to be tallied. Most of the remaining ballots are expected to come from Philadelphia and the surrounding suburbs.

Georgia (16 electoral votes) has become one of the most hotly contested states. As of this writing, Biden has pulled ahead by a razor-thin margin of 900 votes. The state, key to the president’s reelection, has not been called yet. See updates here.

Both the AP and Fox News called Arizona (11 electoral votes) for Biden late Tuesday, and both outlets confirmed their decisions yesterday. Still, the state is close — Biden leads by 1.6% as of this writing, with roughly 10% of the votes still to be reported. The state’s next update is scheduled for this morning.

Officials in Nevada (six electoral votes) said the next batch of vote tallies would be released around 12pm ET today. Biden currently leads by around 11,400 votes, with an estimated 63,000 mail-in ballots remaining — the bulk from Clark County (Las Vegas) — along with 60,000 provisional ballots. A final count is not expected until the weekend.

The president leads in North Carolina (15 electoral votes) by 1.4%, or around 76,000 votes. State officials have said there are just over 116,000 outstanding ballots — Trump is very likely to carry the state.

The Trump campaign has mounted a number of legal challenges (updates here), with more anticipated. Judges dismissed early suits in Michigan — claiming insufficient access to observe ballot tallying — and Georgia — alleging a stack of late ballots were illegally included in the count. A Nevada lawsuit was filed claiming out-of-state voters were inappropriately allowed to cast ballots in the state. So far, experts say the suits are narrow and unlikely to overturn any results. President Trump gave remarks last evening, criticizing mail-in voting and claiming fraud (watch) — no evidence of widespread fraud has been reported.

Separately, both Senate campaigns in Georgia appear likely to head to a Jan. 5 runoff. Incumbent Sen. David Perdue (R) is on track to fall just short of the 50% total vote share needed to avoid a second race. North Carolina’s Senate race has not been called, but incumbent Sen. Thom Tillis (R) currently enjoys a 1.8% lead, or almost 100,000 votes. The Senate appears on track to stay under Republican control, barring an upset in Georgia’s runoffs. See a list of every incumbent who lost reelection here.

Finally, see a history of contested presidential elections here.

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robert massimi

Drama critic for Nimbus Magazine, Metropolitan Magazine and New York Lifestyles Magazine. Producer, editor and writer.