US Election: Biden Leads In Electoral College Votes
President Donald Trump and Joe Biden are slugging out a tight battle for the White House across the country with signs that a momentous election could come down to Arizona, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan.
Biden holds the lead in the Electoral College at this stage in the night, 205-132; 270 electoral votes are needed to become president.
Trump holds a lead in Florida, one of the states Biden had hoped to peel away from the President’s 2016 map and has a narrow edge in North Carolina, all of which remain too close to call. The former vice president is hoping that Arizona, where he has a 8 percentage point lead with 75% of the ballots counted could be his first victory of the night that turns a red state blue.
Increasingly it appears that the result of the entire election could hinge on whether Biden can restore the Democratic “blue wall” in Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, a scenario that could mean the result may not be known on Tuesday night, and could stretch into the coming days as large numbers of mail-in votes are counted.
Biden currently leads the Electoral College at this early stage in the night, but the key battlegrounds that will decide who serves as president for the next four years are still in play.
The night unfolded as the most unorthodox election night in modern memory. At times it appeared like one candidate or the other was heading for an early win in important states. But batches of mail-in and early votes meant the count often dramatically shifted one way or the other.
Polls are now closed across the continental US on a nerve-jangling night that will set the nation’s course for the next four years and cast judgment on the most tumultuous presidency of the modern age. Results are flowing in from battlegrounds and it’s too early to make a projection in many key states.
CNN projects Biden will win Virginia, California, Oregon, Washington, Illinois, New Hampshire, New Mexico, Colorado, Connecticut, New Jersey, New York, Vermont, Delaware, Washington, DC, Maryland and Massachusetts.
CNN projects Trump will win in Ohio, Mississippi, Wyoming, Missouri, Kansas, Utah, Louisiana, Alabama, South Carolina, North Dakota, South Dakota, Arkansas, Indiana, Oklahoma, Kentucky, West Virginia and Tennessee and three of Nebraska’s five electoral votes. Nebraska awards two electoral votes to its statewide winner and divides three others over its three congressional districts.
