Will We Know A Winner Soon? Here’s Where Things Stand And When More Vote Results Are Expected In The Presidential Race

The 2020 presidential election has turned into a long slog, with every dump of ballots being scrutinized and analyzed for not only what it says about the results but the remaining count.

There are four states where razor-thin margins are leaving the campaigns and supporters of Joe Biden and Donald Trump on edge: Arizona, Georgia, Nevada and Pennsylvania. Two other states — Alaska and North Carolina — have not been called, but both are expected to go for Trump.

The Associated Press and Fox News have called Arizona for Biden, leaving him just six electoral votes shy of the presidency, but the Trump campaign is challenging those calls and is attacking the director of Fox’s decision desk.

Both campaigns are predicting victory.

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Trump’s campaign sent out an all caps statement from the president on Thursday. “IF YOU COUNT THE LEGAL VOTES, I EASILY WIN THE ELECTION! IF YOU COUNT THE ILLEGAL AND LATE VOTES, THEY CAN STEAL THE ELECTION FROM US!”

Biden, meanwhile, tweeted: “Be patient, folks. Votes are being counted, and we feel good about where we are.” Earlier, his campaign had a press briefing with the insistence that “Vice President Biden will win this election.”

Here’s an estimate of when new updates are expected on the remaining votes. Keep in mind that, in many cases, state and county officials will continue to tabulate even after networks have called a state for Trump or Biden based on their own models.

Here’s where things stand as of late Thursday morning:

Arizona. Biden holds the lead, but that diminished a bit overnight as Trump gained some ground with 140,000 more ballots reported from Maricopa County. While that is good news for the Trump campaign, it’s unclear that he will continue to make the same type of gains. There is still a sizable chunk of votes from counties that trend toward the Democrats, according to the Arizona Republic. Another batch of Maricopa ballots are expected to be added to the update in the evening Thursday at around 9 PM.

Georgia. Trump leads, but that is shrinking to about 14,000 votes over Biden. As of 9 a.m. on Thursday, there were still about 60,000 mainly absentee ballots remaining to be counted, and they mainly come from metro areas around Atlanta and Savannah, according to the Atlanta Journal Constitution. They were expected to finish today, but it’s unclear what time, and remaining and overseas military ballots have to be counted.

Nevada: Biden slightly expanded his lead in an update around 9 a.m. Thursday, but there is more to go. In Clark County, the state’s largest that includes Las Vegas, will count about 51,000 ballots today and plan to update them before 10 a.m. PT Friday. An additional 63,000 mail ballots remain, according to Registrar Joe Gloria, as well as around 60,000 provisional ballots that will take longer to process. He expects to complete the count of most of the mail ballots by Saturday or Sunday, but they will continue to accept mail ballots postmarked by November 3 through November 10.

Pennsylvania: Trump holds a lead, but that has been narrowing, and there is still a sizable chunk of votes to be counted. According to the Philadelphia Inquirer, there are 360,000 mail ballots left to count, and as of 10 a.m. on Thursday, Trump has a lead over Biden of around 116,000 votes. While that is a relatively sizable lead, there is some optimism on the Biden campaign because he has excelled in the mail-in vote and a substantial chunk remaining is believed to be centered in urban areas like Philadelphia. Secretary of State Kathy Boockvar told CNN’s Jake Tapper that “it is looking like we will have the overwhelming majority counted by today,” although she did not specify a time. One county, Allegheny County, still has about 35,000 ballots that it won’t process until Friday because of a court ruling to settle a mailing error and other issues.