Presidential election results 2020

Our live coverage has moved. Go here for the latest results and news from the election.

Results from Milwaukee have flipped Wisconsin to Joe Biden, who has a lead in the state right now, CNN’s Phil Mattingly says.

Earlier, the city of Milwaukee’s absentee ballot information was delivered with a police escort, CNN’s Ryan Young reported.

“When they have those three officers walking with them, you understand the importance of the event,” Young told CNN’s Chris Cuomo.

The election is far from over with millions of votes still outstanding in key states, including in battleground Wisconsin.

Joe Biden will win Hawaii, CNN projects.

There are four electoral votes at stake in Hawaii. It takes 270 electoral votes to win the 2020 presidential election.

Who won in 2016: Former Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton carried the state, and President Trump won the general election.

Republican insiders are crediting a $300 million get-out-out the vote effort organized by the Trump campaign and allies for narrowing the gap in many states, CNN’s Ryan Nobles reported early this morning.

“Republicans are talking about… the ground game that the Republican National Committee and the Trump Victory Organization put into place shortly after President Trump was inaugurated,” said Nobles.

Nobles reported on Friday that the campaign had spent more than $300 million on a data and ground operation and less on television and digital advertising in the final leg of the campaign. 

“They firmly believe that that ground game was going to be a big part in narrowing the gap, in many of these key states and they’re now saying that we’re seeing that play out in realtime as these votes come,” added Nobles.

Joe Biden’s campaign manager Jen O’Malley Dillon issued a strongly worded statement following President Trump’s White House speech, calling it “outrageous, unprecedented, and incorrect.”

“The president’s statement tonight about trying to shut down the counting of duly cast ballots was outrageous, unprecedented, and incorrect. It was outrageous because it is a naked effort to take away the democratic rights of American citizens,” she said in the statement.

 O’Malley Dillon went on to say that “the counting will not stop.”

Votes are still being counted in several key states across the US, and no winner has been determined in the presidential election.

If you’re just reading in, here’s what you need to know about the race:

Benjamin L. Ginsberg, a longtime Republican election lawyer who co-chaired the Presidential Commission on Election Administration, said Wednesday that President Trump should “let all the votes be counted,” following his attacks on legitimate vote counting efforts.

“If you have objections to either the particular ballots or to the process, then you have remedies after the fact from each state individual contests laws or recount laws if the margins are close enough,” Ginsberg told CNN’s Jake Tapper during CNN’s special election coverage. 

“But these are legally cast ballots, Jake, or at least will be determined to be legally cast ballots by the appropriate local county and state officials. And for a president to say we are going to disenfranchise those legally cast ballots — it really is extraordinary.”

Hear Ginsberg explain:

Video Ad Feedback

5de02354-3c45-43aa-8adc-1818c5f3282b.mp4

02:57 - Source: cnn

Philadelphia won’t have an updated number on mail-in ballots until 9 a.m. on Wednesday, said Lisa Deeley, head of the Philadelphia City Commissioners, which is a bipartisan board of elected officials in charge of elections and voter registration.

Election officials are waiting on in-person voting numbers to be reported by some individual precincts and ingested into their system before they can report the number of mail-in ballots, Deeley said. 

“That’s just the configuration of our system,” said Deeley, adding that it was a reporting issue, not mechanical.

The delay in in-person results from the field are slowing down the reports, particularly in West Philadelphia, Deeley said 

“We are counting, we have been counting, we are going to continue counting until it’s done,” Deeley said. “We’re just waiting for the rest of the in-person results to come in from voting machines.”

Another update with mail-in votes will come at 9 a.m., Deeley said.

As of 1:10 a.m. ET, with 1,598 of 1,703 divisions reporting, former Vice President Joe Biden has received 73.3% of the city’s votes, and President Trump has received 25.67% of the city’s vote.

Based on CNN’s current projections, Joe Biden has 220 electoral votes while Donald Trump has 213 electoral votes.

Here’s the latest look at where things stand:

Reminder: Each candidate needs 270 electoral votes to win the presidency.

Arizona’s largest county has processed and counted a total of 1,487,624 early votes out of a total of approximately 1.7 million early votes cast, according to the Maricopa County Elections Department.

There are roughly 248,000 outstanding early votes that have been signature verified but not yet fully processed. Election officials will start counting these remaining early votes Wednesday as well as an undetermined number of mail-in ballots that people delivered to voting centers in person that have not been processed in any way.

On Election Day, approximately 167,000 people voted in person at 175 voting centers within the county.

As of 12:40 a.m. local time with 75 voting centers reporting, a total of 74,485 Election Day votes have been counted.

Veteran Republican election lawyer Ben Ginsberg expressed dismay at President Trump’s attacks on legitimate vote-counting efforts this morning, saying he had never seen a President behave in such a manner.

“It is a distressing moment for me as a long time Republican to see a call to disenfranchise so many people,” said Ginsberg. “…What the President said tonight is not only unprecedented and it not only lacks any basis in the law, it really is a disservice to all the other men and women who are on the ballot as Republicans today.”

When asked by CNN’s Jake Tapper whether he’d every seen anything like this from a President, he replied, “No. Not even close.”

Hear more from Ben Ginsberg:

Video Ad Feedback

00da2c6c-3fee-4b9e-945f-48c417788715.mp4

01:20 - Source: cnn

President Trump attacked legitimate vote-counting efforts in remarks from the White House early Wednesday, suggesting attempts to tally all ballots amounted to disenfranchising his supporters.

“Millions and millions of people voted for us,” Trump said in the East Room. “A very sad group of people is trying to disenfranchise that group of people.”

His remarks were laced with misleading statements and outright falsehoods and amounted to an assault on the Democratic process. He insisted that states where vote tallies currently show him leading should be called in his favor, despite significant outstanding votes yet to be counted.

He said he was preparing to declare victory earlier in the evening.

“We were getting ready for a big celebration. We were winning everything. And all of a sudden it was just called off,” he said.

Trump baselessly claimed a fraud was being committed.

“This is a fraud on the American public. This is an embarrassment to our country,” Trump claimed.

“Frankly we did win this election,” he said, despite millions of votes still outstanding.

Saying he would go to the US Supreme Court, Trump said he wanted “all voting to stop.”

Pennsylvania Democratic Sen. Bob Casey projected confidence about Joe Biden’s chance of winning the key battleground state in an interview with CNN early Wednesday morning.

Asked what he thinks Biden’s odds are in the fiercely contested state, Casey said, “I think they’re good. I think he’s going to win. I think it’ll be really close.”

“I think if he wins Pennsylvania, which I think he will, and then he wins Michigan and Wisconsin, then it’s over. You win those three states that were lost last time, then it’ll be over,” Casey said.

Donald Trump won all three states in 2016, dealing a major blow to Democrats in the last presidential election.

As for the battle for the Senate, where Democrats have hoped to take back control from Republicans, who currently hold the majority, Casey described the fight as “difficult,” and said, “I just hope for the best as we get the final results.”

There are still plenty of uncounted ballots in Wisconsin, and many of the local officials say they’ll wrap up in the next few hours.

Here’s what we know:

Milwaukee County, the state’s most populous, Democratic stronghold:

All in-person, Election Day ballots have been counted, a spokesperson for the county clerk’s office told CNN. The county is still waiting on 169,341 early and mail ballots from the city of Milwaukee, which are expected to be done around 4 a.m. ET. Also outstanding are a total of about 75,000 ballots from four other suburban municipalities within the county – Oak Creek, Franklin, Wauwatosa and West Allis, which are expected to come in before the city of Milwaukee.

Brown County, includes Green Bay:

All municipalities are fully reporting except for Green Bay. Currently, no results from Green Bay are reporting, Brown County Clerk Sandy Juno told CNN. They are not going to report results from Green Bay until they finish the absentee count, then they will report the absentee and the in-person Election Day results together all at once. That will likely be between 3 a.m. and 4 a.m. ET. They don’t have a total ballot number for how much is outstanding but it’s about 32,000 absentee plus more in-person.

Waukesha County, Milwaukee suburbs and a typical GOP stronghold:

Waukesha County Clerk Meg Wartman told CNN that all results will likely be reported by 2 a.m. ET, though that time has come and gone already. They are still waiting for about 40,000 absentee votes from Brookfield and New Berlin.

Outagamie County:

Now at 93% of expected vote, despite the problems CNN reported earlier with them having to transfer data from about 13,500 misprinted ballots to new ballots.

Dane County, includes Madison, a Democratic stronghold:

Dane is now completely done counting, according to a tweet from clerk Scott McDonell.

Rock County:

The county is totally done counting, the clerk told CNN.

We heard Joe Biden say that the campaign feels “good about where we are.” That wasn’t spin. As we head into the early hours of the morning after Election Day, the Biden camp is cautiously optimistic.

As one Biden ally put it – “Still rather be us than them.” Put simply, the Biden campaign still believes they’ve got a more realistic path to 270 at this point than Trump does.

To be clear, this certainly hasn’t panned out to be the anywhere near the best case, sweep scenario that some on team Biden had dared to fantasize about – Florida is gone; Ohio is gone; Texas is gone. All three are states that Biden had made a push for in the end, even knowing that they would be very competitive or reaches.

But as Biden himself said, the campaign is very much still counting on and feeling good about states like Pennsylvania, and counting on the “Blue Wall” states to come through for them. They also believe they are in the game in Georgia – a win there, of course would be huge.

Bottom line: Team Biden believes that they are on track to win this election. It is just anybody’s guess when that official call will actually come.

President Trump picked up Iowa and Texas, and Joe Biden carried Rhode Island, CNN projects.

Based on CNN’s current projections, Biden now has 220 electoral votes while Trump has 213 electoral votes.

Here’s the latest look at where things stand:

Reminder: Each candidate needs 270 electoral votes to win the presidency.

President Trump is expected to speak soon from the East Room in the White House.

He tweeted earlier that he would be speaking.

The single electoral vote Joe Biden captured in Nebraska could be significant as votes from the midwestern states and Pennsylvania come in, said CNN’s John King.

Noting that the one electoral vote is Biden’s only flip on the map from 2016 so far, King pointed out that in a race as close as this one, every vote can be crucial. 

“When you have a race that shapes up to be this close every one counts,” said King. “So you’ll take it if you get it.”

CNN’s John King explains why:

Video Ad Feedback

6f51aace-a10f-4746-8006-63db58cfe664.mp4

04:00 - Source: cnn

President Trump will win Montana, CNN projects.

There are three electoral votes at stake in Montana. It takes 270 electoral votes to win the 2020 presidential election.

Who won in 2016: President Trump carried the state and won the general election.

Joe Biden will win one electoral vote in Nebraska, and President Trump will win an additional vote, giving him total of four out of five votes.

There are five electoral votes at stake in Nebraska. It takes 270 electoral votes to win the 2020 presidential election.

Nebraska allows electoral votes to be split. In Nebraska, two of five electoral votes go to the winner of the statewide vote. One electoral vote goes to the winner in each of Nebraska’s three congressional districts.

Who won in 2016: President Trump carried the state and won the general election.

Twitter placed a “disputed” label on a tweet sent just minutes ago by President Trump in which he baselessly claimed, “We are up BIG, but they are trying to STEAL the Election.” 

“Some or all of the content shared in this Tweet is disputed and might be misleading about how to participate in an election or another civic process,” the Twitter label reads.  

Twitter has also restricted how the tweet can be shared. The same post was also posted to the President’s Facebook page.

In statement, Twitter said, “We placed a warning on a Tweet from @realDonaldTrump for making a potentially misleading claim about an election. This action is in line with our Civic Integrity Policy.”

The same post was also posted to the President’s Facebook page. CNN has reached out to Facebook for comment.

With many votes still outstanding in Michigan, here is what we know about what type of ballots are still outstanding and how long local officials in some of the biggest counties think it will take to get a completed count. 

Michigan is a key state for the presidential candidates and 16 electoral votes are at stake.

Here’s a look at where things stand in some key counties:

President Trump will win Texas, CNN projects.

There are 38 electoral votes at stake in Texas. It takes 270 electoral votes to win the 2020 presidential election.

Who won in 2016: President Trump carried the Lone Star State and won the general election.

Philadelphia was expected to report 30,000 to 40,000 more mail-in ballot numbers between midnight ET and 1 a.m. ET.

CNN’s Mark Morales reported that 76,000 ballots have already been reported.

There were 350,000 total mail-in ballots received by Election Day. 

Joe Biden will win Rhode Island, CNN projects.

There are four electoral votes at stake in Rhode Island. It takes 270 electoral votes to win the 2020 presidential election.

Who won in 2016: Former Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton carried the state, and President Trump won the general election.

CNN is on the ground in Georgia, where votes are still being counted in parts of the state. Georgia is a key battleground state and 16 electoral votes are at stake.

Here’s where things stand in some of the state’s largest counties:

Fulton County, state’s largest, home to Atlanta:

Dekalb County, large county outside Atlanta:

 Gwinnett County, large suburban Atlanta county:

Cobb County, large suburban Atlanta county

Iowa, with six electoral votes that President Donald Trump carried easily in 2016, is a key part of Trump’s path to 270 electoral votes.

The shift of White voters and rural and exurban voters in Republicans’ favor allowed Trump to win Iowa in 2016. Polls showed Biden outperforming Hillary Clinton with White voters and older voters helped him close the gap in polls there, with Iowa remaining competitive enough to draw visits from Biden on the final Friday of the race and Trump on Sunday.

In the end, CNN projected a victory for both Trump and Sen. Joni Ernst, who faced a stiff and well-funded challenge from Democrat Theresa Greenfield.

The final Des Moines Register poll from Ann Selzer, the gold-standard pollster in Iowa, showed Trump with a 7 percentage point edge, 48% to 41%. That’s the sort of margin he needs in Iowa in order to stay close in other key Midwestern states that are more favorable for Democrats.

President Trump picked up the battleground state of Florida, and Joe Biden carried Minnesota, CNN projects.

Based on CNN’s current projections, Trump now has 171 electoral votes while Biden has 215 electoral votes.

Here’s the latest look at where things stand:

Reminder: Each candidate needs 270 electoral votes to win the presidency.

Speaking in Wilmington, Delaware, Democratic nominee Joe Biden projected confidence, saying he was “feeling good,” but urged patience as the votes continued to be counted in several key states across the country.

The former vice president then suggested he had not expected an early result, and asked his supporters to wait patiently as states continue to count and report their votes.

“We knew, because of the unprecedented early vote and the mail-in vote, it was gonna take a while,” Biden continued. “We’re going to have to be patient until… the hard work of tallying votes is finished, and it ain’t over until every vote is counted, everybody ballot is counted.”

President Trump will win Iowa, CNN projects.

There are six electoral votes at stake in Iowa. It takes 270 electoral votes to win the 2020 presidential election.

Who won in 2016: President Trump carried the state and won the general election.

CNN’s Wolf Blitzer has more:

Video Ad Feedback

fefb9c33-ad62-47da-8da3-2879ef1128c4.mp4

01:18 - Source: cnn

As the presidential election crossed into Wednesday, Joe Biden called on his supporters to be patient as votes continue to be tallied in the fight for the White House. 

“It’s not my place or Donald Trump’s place to declare who has won this election,” Biden said to a crowd of supporters in Wilmington, Delaware.

The Democratic contender went on to say that he was optimistic of the outcome of the election, but it “may take a little longer” to know the results of the race.

“Keep the faith, guys, we’re going to win this,” Biden said. “Thank you. Your patience is great.”

Hear Biden speak to the crowd:

Video Ad Feedback

88066746-f597-4223-91d1-db3ee82b68ba.mp4

03:30 - Source: cnn

President Trump just tweeted that he will be making a statement tonight.

Read his tweet:

Democratic rival Joe Biden just wrapped remarks in Wilmington, Delaware, and urged supporters to be patient as results continue to come in.

Joe Biden urged patience tonight in Delaware as votes continue to be counted.

President Trump will win Florida, CNN projects.

There are 29 electoral votes at stake in Florida. It takes 270 electoral votes to win the 2020 presidential election.

Who won in 2016: President Trump carried the Sunshine State and won the general election.

CNN’s John King is at the magic wall:

Video Ad Feedback

5975bc3d-6ccc-4804-893a-84cabd63064e.mp4

01:35 - Source: cnn

Minnesota is one of a small number of states that Hillary Clinton won in 2016 where President Donald Trump’s campaign made a serious play. (The others are Nevada and New Hampshire.) 

Trump’s near-win there in 2016 buoyed Republicans’ hopes that it would follow Wisconsin, where the GOP’s margins of victory among White working-class voters were enough to overcome Democrats’ performance in cities and suburbs. His campaign hoped that White suburban backlash would follow racial injustice protests over the Minneapolis police killing of George Floyd this summer. 

That didn’t pan out — CNN projected that Biden would win the state.

Joe Biden will win Minnesota, CNN projects.

There are 10 electoral votes at stake in Minnesota. It takes 270 electoral votes to win the 2020 presidential election.

Who won in 2016: Former Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton carried the state, and President Trump won the general election.

The Biden campaign has long said their easiest path to the nomination hinges on the “blue wall” – Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania – and that is still a belief that stands tonight.

Even as the race remains tight in Florida, the campaign has insisted they do not need it to win. Despite making a last minute trip to Ohio yesterday, the campaign had not indicated it was a necessary part of their path but more of an added benefit if they could pull it off.

Two advisers tonight have also expressed optimism in Arizona, pointing to Latino support in the state – where a win could help their path to the presidency.

Despite not having early calls in these battleground states, advisers still remain hopeful about his standing.

“Let the vote be counted,” one Biden adviser said. “Our vote will come in.”

Nebraska and Maine are the only two states that apportion some of their electoral votes based on how each congressional district votes. That means that while four of Nebraska’s five electoral votes heavily favor the GOP, one of them — awarded to the presidential candidate that wins the Omaha-based 2nd District — is in play. (So is Maine’s 2nd district, which is more competitive than the Democratic-leaning state overall.) 

Both the Biden and Trump campaigns have closely watched the two districts, knowing that there are potential outcomes to the race that could leave the candidates nearly tied, struggling to cross the 270 electoral vote threshold. 

The Omaha-based district is the sort of suburban territory that has shifted rapidly in Democrats’ favor during Trump’s presidency. Republican Don Bacon won a hotly contested congressional race there in 2018 by 2 percentage points, but that was against a challenger more progressive than Democrats nominated in most close races in midterm elections.

Joe Biden will deliver remarks in Wilmington at 12:30 a.m. ET, the campaign tells reporters.

No voting results can be posted in Nevada until all polling locations have closed, says Jennifer Russell, a spokeswoman for the Nevada Secretary of State’s office.

Russell tells CNN that 13 out of 17 counties are completely done being counted and the plan is for the state to begin posting results around 12:30 a.m. ET.

Those results will include early voting, Election Day voting in the smaller counties and whatever mail ballots they have at the time. Russell says Clark County results will take longer. 

Per a court order late this afternoon,Clark County, home to nearly 70% of active voters in the state, extended voting at 30 of its 125 locations by one hour until 8 p.m. PT, thought voters in line at closing would still be allowed to vote as longs as they showed up by the new closing time. Lines here have been steady all day in the county.  

Clark County Registrar Joe Gloria spoke a short time ago, and said most of the issues which lead to late openings were technical, the majority being connectivity issues.

He said keeping the locations open later will not impact results, except to say that they will likely come in later. Gloria cautioned the county is still counting mail-in ballots. Voters could drop them off today at all polling locations.

As long as ballots are post-marked by today and received by Nov. 10, they will be counted in the state.

President Trump will win Idaho, CNN projects.

There are four electoral votes at stake in Idaho. It takes 270 electoral votes to win the 2020 presidential election.

Who won in 2016: President Trump carried the state and won the general election.

CNN just projected President Trump will win must-have state of Ohio and picked up 18 additional electoral votes. Based on CNN’s current projections, Trump now has 132 electoral college votes while Joe Biden has 205 electoral college votes.

Here’s the latest look at where things stand:

Reminder: Each candidate needs 270 electoral votes to win the presidency.

President Trump will win Ohio, CNN projects.

There are 18 electoral votes at stake in Ohio. It takes 270 electoral votes to win the 2020 presidential election.

Who won in 2016: President Trump carried the state and won the general election.

CNN’s John King is at the magic wall:

Video Ad Feedback

eb99df49-40b9-4482-8ff6-271b0c13d3cb.mp4

03:34 - Source: cnn

CNN projects Joe Biden will notch a win in Virginia. In 13 of the 14 presidential elections before 2008, Virginia went for the Republican nominee. But Barack Obama’s arrival coincided with a shift in the commonwealth’s electorate, powered by suburban voters with college degrees.

Not quite liberal, Virginia has become increasingly Democratic – in the 2018 midterms, Reps. Jennifer Wexton, Elaine Luria and Abigail Spanberger all flipped GOP seats as the party reclaimed a House majority – and its moderate politics mirror Biden’s.

Virginia was a state in which Trump appeared to have an early lead, but it dissipated as the returns painted a fuller, bluer picture.

Joe Biden will win Virginia, CNN projects.

There are 13 electoral votes at stake in Virginia. It takes 270 electoral votes to win the 2020 presidential election.

Who won in 2016: Former Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton carried the state, and President Trump won the general election.

As votes continued to trickle in from across the country late this evening, the presidential race was felt familiar to past elections.

CNN’s Jake Tapper said he was unsure if the results so far were most reminiscent of the presidential contest in 2016 when then-candidate Donald Trump outpaced the polls, or 2016 when Democrats congressional victories took days to solidify. 

“I don’t know if this feels like 2016 when Donald Trump pulled this huge upset and surprised everybody, or feels like 2018, where Democrats had a really good night, it just took longer than a night,” said Tapper. 

CNN’s Dana Bash, however, presented a third option, saying the results, so far, feel very much like they belong in the year 2020. 

“It feels like 2020 because…  going into tonight, in most of these battleground states, the candidates were within the margin of error,” she said. “That by definition means it is a close race in all of these states and that is what we’re seeing play out right now.” 

Tapper concurred, adding, “it’s a divided country. It’s a close election.”

In Michigan and Pennsylvania officials are calling for patience as they deal with a record turnout of voters. 

The states make up the “blue wall” that President Trump captured in 2016.

Michigan: “Across the entire state, they’re expecting record turnout,” CNN’s Miguel Marquez said, reporting from Detroit, Michigan. “It is not clear how that will affect the vote count for either candidate. We also know they are still counting.”

“Those absentee ballots are being counted as well,” Marquez added. “We should be seeing some of those votes coming very soon as well.”

Marquez went on to report that officials believe in the “next 24 hours or so we’ll have unofficial result of who will win Michigan.”

Pennsylvania: “There is a lot of outstanding votes in the Keystone State and this will not be a process that moves particularly fast,” Sara Murray said, reporting from Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.  

“We know that there’s a lot of these big counties, Philadelphia County, Bucks County, Chester County … they’ll be counting all night long,” Murray added.

At news conference held by the Pennsylvania secretary of state, Kathy Boockvar, Murray said she told reporters that “we need to stay patient and you also need to be prepared for these vote totals to come through overnight in fits and starts.”

CNN’s Miguel Marquez and Sara Murray walk through the latest:

Video Ad Feedback

65dd744d-68b6-40d2-bca8-f562b59aed27.mp4

03:18 - Source: cnn

Virginia’s Fairfax County estimates they will have their roughly 400,000 absentee ballot results in the next couple of hours, likely before 1 a.m. ET, according to Brian Worthy, a county spokesperson.

CNN’s Pamela Brown has more:

Video Ad Feedback

730c9a74-5cd2-4f41-9db2-26438dd65feb.mp4

01:20 - Source: cnn

For the past hour, cars have slowly streamed into the parking lot at the Chase Center in Wilmington, Delaware where Joe Biden’s Election Night event is set to take place.

The set up is similar to past Biden drive-in style events in the Covid-era with attendees arriving in their cars, which are spaced out by red, white and blue traffic cones that have “Biden Harris” bumper stickers on them.

Attendees we’ve spoken to included some state delegates and an older woman who says she’s known Biden for nearly five decades.

One of the attendees said she received an e-mail last night telling her she would be invited to the event and then received a confirmation e-mail tonight around the 9 p.m. ET hour. 

The Biden campaign has not provided an update on when the night’s events might begin. The former vice president remains at home watching returns with his family.

Watch video from the event:

Video Ad Feedback

6efcb222-34c6-4261-9ef6-2fbdf0ae5d9d.mp4

01:01 - Source: cnn

President Trump will win Mississippi, CNN projects.

There are six electoral votes at stake in Mississippi. It takes 270 electoral votes to win the 2020 presidential election.

Who won in 2016: President Trump carried the state and won the general election.

Arizona has long been a Republican stronghold, but a growing Latino population and an influx of voters from more liberal areas has Democrats believing they could flip the state with Joe Biden atop the ticket.

Trump carried the state by over 3 percentage points in 2016, but Democrats won one of the state’s Senate seats in 2018 and carried both Maricopa and Pima County, where about 75% of the election’s votes are expected to be cast.

Trump remains markedly popular in the state’s rural areas, so the key to the race will be how big he wins counties like Pinal, Yavapai and Mohave, while Biden looks to boost turnout in Maricopa and Pima.

Arizona represents an insurance policy for Biden. It’s not a must win for the Democrat and a loss would not spell doom for Trump, but a blue Arizona could signify broader changes for Republicans. Polls show the race is narrow: A recent CNN survey found a race within the poll’s margin of sampling error, with Biden at 50% support to Trump’s 46%.

The state is also home to one of the most hotly contested Senate contests between Republican incumbent Martha McSally and Democrat Mark Kelly, who has consistently had a fundraising advantage and a recent CNN poll found the Democrat with a 7 percentage point lead.

CNN has just projected Joe Biden will win California – the biggest prize of the electoral college, with 55 electoral votes.

Based on CNN’s current projections, Biden has 192 electoral college votes, and Trump has 108 electoral college votes.

Reminder: Each candidate needs 270 electoral college votes to win the presidency.

CNN’s Wolf Blitzer has more:

Video Ad Feedback

907e5238-c397-4abb-96a5-123323668bfd.mp4

01:04 - Source: cnn

President Trump will win Wyoming, CNN projects.

There are three electoral votes at stake in Wyoming. It takes 270 electoral votes to win the 2020 presidential election.

Who won in 2016: President Trump carried the state and won the general election.

Joe Biden will win Washington, CNN projects.

There are 12 electoral votes at stake in Washington. It takes 270 electoral votes to win the 2020 presidential election.

Who won in 2016: Former Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton carried the state, and President Trump won the general election.

Joe Biden will win Oregon, CNN projects.

There are seven electoral votes at stake in Oregon. It takes 270 electoral votes to win the 2020 presidential election.

Who won in 2016: Former Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton carried the state, and President Trump won the general election.

Joe Biden will win California, CNN projects.

There are 55 electoral votes at stake in California. It takes 270 electoral votes to win the 2020 presidential election.

Who won in 2016: Former Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton carried the Golden State, and President Trump won the general election.

Here’s where polls are closing at 11 p.m. ET:

Follow along here and CNN’s Election Center for full coverage.

President Trump’s early lead in Pennsylvania could shrink as the early vote continues to come in, CNN’s political director David Chalian said tonight.

Chalian said that with 35% of the vote currently in, just 18% of the vote is early vote, a number that is expected to rise to 45%. 

“We know that Joe Biden is doing much better in the early vote,” he said “…There’s a ton more early votes still to be counted here and that could benefit Joe Biden in Pennsylvania.”

“We just have to wait to see that early absentee mail vote come in and be counted,” he added. 

CNN’s David Chalian explains:

Video Ad Feedback

ac2d85a4-a27a-456b-9de1-bf0f1b1cf30f.mp4

00:51 - Source: cnn

Joe Biden will win Illinois, CNN projects.

There are 20 electoral votes at stake in Illinois. It takes 270 electoral votes to win the 2020 presidential election.

Who won in 2016: Former Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton carried the state, and President Trump won the general election.

President Trump will win Missouri, CNN projects.

There are 10 electoral votes at stake in Missouri. It takes 270 electoral votes to win the 2020 presidential election.

Who won in 2016: President Trump carried the state and won the general election.

Milwaukee officials said that, while tallies of in-person Election Day votes from the city will likely be released within the next hour and a half, all results of early votes won’t be released until early tomorrow morning.

All of the early votes, mail and in-person, will be reported separately in one batch once counting is complete.

The city expects a total of about 169,000 absentee ballots, and as of 7:50 p.m. CT (8:50 p.m. ET), Mayor Tom Barrett said they’ve processed about 103,000 of them – just over 60%. He’s now projecting the count will be done by 4 a.m. CT (5 a.m. ET). Over 100 staffers have committed to stay as long as it takes to finish counting.

After the counting is complete, those results must be reported to Milwaukee County, which makes them public. The county’s elections director Julietta Henry is predicting they will be done by 5 a.m. CT (6 a.m. ET), according to a spokesperson.

Meanwhile, in-person Election Day votes are being counted at individual polling places and results are sent to the county directly for release. That will likely be in the next hour and a half, Barrett said.

Officials don’t know the total number of in-person Election Day votes yet.

Overall, voting went well. “Everything has been very smooth,” city Election Commission executive director Claire Woodall-Vogg said.

Joe Biden will win New Hampshire, CNN projects.

There are four electoral votes at stake in New Hampshire. It takes 270 electoral votes to win the 2020 presidential election.

Who won in 2016: Former Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton carried the state, and President Trump won the general election.

President Trump will win Utah, CNN projects.

There are six electoral votes at stake in Utah. It takes 270 electoral votes to win the 2020 presidential election.

Who won in 2016: President Trump carried the state and won the general election.

Despite President Trump currently leading in Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania, CNN’s John King warns, “we cannot emphasize enough, we’re nowhere close to the finish line in any of those states.”

“We need to count votes and some of those counts could take until tomorrow,” King said.

In each of the “blue wall” states, a majority of early votes still need to be counted.

CNN’s John King is at the magic wall:

Video Ad Feedback

3f28c975-f5b8-4965-8c83-d05e3ee22e4c.mp4

03:19 - Source: cnn

President Trump will win at least three electoral votes in Nebraska, CNN projects.

There are five total electoral votes at stake in Nebraska. It takes 270 electoral votes to win the 2020 presidential election.

Nebraska allows electoral votes to be split. In Nebraska, two of five electoral votes go to the winner of the statewide vote. One electoral vote goes to the winner in each of Nebraska’s three congressional districts.

Who won in 2016: President Trump carried the state and won the general election.

President Trump will win Kansas, CNN projects.

There are six electoral votes at stake in Kansas. It takes 270 electoral votes to win the 2020 presidential election.

Who won in 2016: President Trump carried the state and won the general election.

Joe Biden will win New Mexico, CNN projects.

There are five electoral votes at stake in New Mexico. It takes 270 electoral votes to win the 2020 presidential election.

Who won in 2016: Former Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton carried the state, and President Trump won the general election.

Based on CNN’s current projections, this is how the balance of power in Congress is shaping up:

Democrats have 40 seats in the Senate so far. Republicans have 38. Either side needs 51 seats to have a majority.

In the House, Democrats have 84 seats. Republicans have 119.

You can follow live updates on the congressional race here.

Because of unprecedented levels of mail-in ballots and early voting due to the coronavirus pandemic, it still may take some time until we get results tonight and final results may look different to what early results are showing.

Since the beginning of the pandemic, supporters of Democratic nominee Joe Biden have shown a strong preference for mail-in voting. Most of President Trump’s supporters said they wanted to vote on Election Day. States count these different types of votes in very different ways.

As a result, in some of the most competitive states – including Texas — early results may look too rosy for former Vice President Joe Biden, before falling back down to earth and becoming more representative of the true outcome. In other states — particularly Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin — Trump could see early leads that slowly narrow as more ballots are counted.

This won’t be a sign of fraud or irregularities. Rather, it’s just a reflection of how states count votes. Some states process early ballots first, and will report those early in the night, while others save them for last.

Here is a breakdown of what to watch for in the pivotal states.

Based on CNN’s current projections, Biden has 89 electoral college votes, and Trump has 72 electoral college votes.

Reminder: Each candidate needs 270 electoral college votes to win the presidency.

CNN’s Dana Bash said the close race in Florida was an early harbinger that tonight would likely not be the landslide Democrats had hoped for. 

“There is no landslide that we are looking at,” she said. “No way given the numbers that we’ve seen particularly when you start the night in Florida when it’s as tight as Florida tends to be.”

Bash went on to explain that the Biden campaign appears to have underperformed with Latino voters because of the Trump campaign’s work to paint Biden as a socialist had been effective. 

“I’ll tell you what [the Biden campaign] thinks went wrong is that the Trump attacks have worked,” said Bash. “Calling the Democrats socialist worked with people in that area, in particular.”

CNN’s Abby Phillip concurred, saying turnout among Latino voters will likely be the area of study for Democrats, once the election is settled. 

“What is happening in Florida, I can tell you, Democrats are not happy about it,” said Phillip. “At the end of the day, the situation in Miami-Dade is something that in the autopsy of this election they will be looking back at and trying to figure out what went wrong.”

CNN’s Dana Bash, Abby Phillip and Jake Tapper explain:

Video Ad Feedback

0fd11763-a5e7-46db-b5fa-5d56c465f2e6.mp4

03:35 - Source: cnn

On Election Night at the White House, the Trump campaign is running the show inside the White House grounds, even at the President’s election night party — further blurring the lines between political activity and official government business. 

Ahead of an expected appearance from President Trump around an election night watch party, the campaign is also setting the guest list – including which journalists can attend.

Rather than inviting the White House press corps, the list was limited to a handful of favored conservative outlets, including Fox News, One America News, Newsmax, Daily Caller, Washington Examiner, JustTheNews.com, and Breitbart. Reporters from Washington Post, Univision, USA Today, and McClatchy were also invited. 

As of 9:30 p.m. ET, those reporters have not yet been told when they will be taken inside and are told to expect to see the President.

Members of CNN’s technical staff were part of a production pool to facilitate video transmission. 

White House spokesperson Judd Deere defended the event, claiming the White House was merely the venue and not the host. “Just like convention it’s a campaign event. White House is the venue,” Deere said. 

The campaign was responsible for that guest list, and not the White House, though the journalists were administered Covid-19 tests by White House doctors. 

Former Trump aide Kellyanne Conway said Tuesday that the President is expected to “address the nation later from the East Room,” which is one of the rooms being used for the event. 

Approximately 400 people were invited to the White House watch party, though only about 200 to 250 are expected to attend the indoor event, which will be held in the East Wing. And over in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, steps away from the West Wing, the campaign has set up a war room with aides monitoring results. CNN reporter earlier that  war room at the White House is being funded by the Trump campaign.

Here’s where polls are closing at 10 p.m. ET:

Follow along here and CNN’s Election Center for full coverage.

Trump will win South Carolina, CNN projects.

There are nine electoral votes at stake in South Carolina. It takes 270 electoral votes to win the 2020 presidential election.

Who won in 2016: President Trump carried the state and won the general election.

President Trump will win Alabama, CNN projects.

There are nine electoral votes at stake in Alabama. It takes 270 electoral votes to win the 2020 presidential election.

Who won in 2016: President Trump carried the state and won the general election.

As Joe Biden’s lead in North Carolina narrows, CNN’s John King said that North Carolina may be the “most competitive” state. 

“North Carolina may be the most competitive state in American politics,” King said. “Maybe Florida is a close second. But when you look at the demographics of North Carolina, it is perhaps the most competitive state in American politics right now.” 

Biden’s lead in the state was based on early voting, which skews Democratic, King explained, while President Trump has encouraged his supporters to vote in person. 

Biden is leading in the cities, while Trump is currently getting “shellacked” in the Raleigh-Durham urban area, King said. 

Joe Biden is currently leading President Trump in North Carolina with 80% of the estimated vote in, but in some big Democratic counties, it is mostly early votes, CNN’s David Chalian said.

“Of this 80% of the vote that’s in, 90% of it right now in North Carolina statewide is early vote,” he said.

Chalian added that by the end of the night only 75% of the total North Carolina vote could be early vote.

“So, right now, the early vote is helping Joe Biden, but as more Election Day vote comes in North Carolina, Donald Trump may be able to benefit from that,” he said.

An estimated 45% of votes have been counted in Georgia, with President Trump currently leading by a healthy margin. The majority of votes in the state, however, come from Atlanta and its neighboring suburban areas where Biden seems to have a comfortable lead, CNN’s John King observed.

“The question is what is still to come in this night that’s a little different than previous election nights because of mail-in voting, early in-person voting and election day voting,” King said.

Some background: Georgia is a key state to watch this election. It is one of three states in the Southeast — along with Florida and North Carolina — that are all crucial for President Trump’s path to 270 electoral votes. The Biden campaign has also dispatched its top surrogates to the state, including former President Barack Obama.

Its diversifying electorate, suburban swings in Democrats’ favor and a series of close calls there during Trump’s presidency have put Georgia into play.

Biden is currently leading in Fulton County where Atlanta is located as well as Dekalb County, close to Atlanta.

The vote count is very much in the preliminary stage but based on the reporting so far, Biden also seems to be outperforming Hillary Clinton in 2016. This also stands for Chatham County.

Biden also has a healthy lead so far in Cobb County with about 30% of the vote in, and in Gwinnett County with about 15% votes counted.

CNN projects Joe Biden will win easily in Colorado, which has been turning bluer and bluer with each passing election cycle.

This year, Democrats not only had the presidential race to excite them, but an opportunity to flip a seat in the Senate, where incumbent Republican Cory Gardner is facing a tough challenge from former Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper. It would be a surprise if Gardner holds on to the seat. (Jury’s still out on that one.)

That Biden walked away so quickly with the Centennial State could bode well for him elsewhere. The expectation going into Election Day was that, with full results from the big cities are likely to come in later, the early arrows could point in Republicans’ direction. 

But the expectation of, at the least, a “red mirage” has mostly dissipated. Biden is cruising and Hickenlooper looks to be in good shape in his bid to unseat Gardner.

President Trump will win North Dakota, CNN projects.

There are three electoral votes at stake in North Dakota. It takes 270 electoral votes to win the 2020 presidential election.

Who won in 2016: President Trump carried the state and won the general election.

Joe Biden will win Colorado, CNN projects.

There are nine electoral votes at stake in Colorado. It takes 270 electoral votes to win the 2020 presidential election.

Who won in 2016: Former Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton carried the state, and President Trump won the general election.

Trump campaign officials are concerned about the crucial battleground states of Georgia, Michigan, and Wisconsin — but are feeling better about Florida, a senior Trump adviser said.

“Georgia could be an issue,” the adviser said, pointing to huge vote totals from urban voters in the state. Michigan may be gone, the adviser said. Wisconsin is “TBD,” according to the adviser.

The adviser went on to say North Carolina, so far, looks like a “jump ball.” But the adviser said GOP officials in the state believe Trump will win the state.

The adviser summed up the problem for Trump this way: If Trump loses Georgia, he can’t lose Wisconsin. If he loses both of those states, the President could be in trouble, the adviser said.

Voters under 30 years old across the Midwest are swinging toward Joe Biden, according to preliminary exit polling. 

Biden earned support from around 6 in 10 voters under 30 years old in Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. Trump earned support from about 1 in 3 voters under 30 years old, the early exit polls show.

Hillary Clinton won young voters in all three states by single digits in 2016, while Biden currently leads by significantly more than that.

White voters with a college degree are also shifting slightly toward Biden, according to the early exit polls. Biden captured a double-digit lead with the group in Michigan and Pennsylvania; Clinton didn’t win this group in either state in 2016.

About this year’s exit polls: CNN’s exit polls this year incorporate in-person interviews at early voting locations and telephone interviews to target by-mail voters. Those surveys are in addition to the in-person interviews with voters on Tuesday. In every state where exit poll results are available on election night, there will be a combined result to reflect a complete picture of voters across the country.

Read more about exit polls during a pandemic here.

Joe Biden will win Connecticut, CNN projects.

There are seven electoral votes at stake in Connecticut. It takes 270 electoral votes to win the 2020 presidential election.

Who won in 2016: Former Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton carried the state, and President Trump won the general election.

President Trump will win South Dakota, CNN projects.

There are three electoral votes at stake in South Dakota. It takes 270 electoral votes to win the 2020 presidential election.

Who won in 2016: President Trump carried the state and won the general election.

Joe Biden is currently leading President Trump in North Carolina with 78% of the vote from the state in. CNN’s John King says Trump needs to narrow the gap in the following counties:

The Nevada Supreme Court denied an emergency request by the Trump campaign to block early vote counting in Clark County, which includes Las Vegas, based on its use of a signature-matching computer software and rules governing the observation of vote counting. 

A seven panel of judges gave the Trump campaign and Nevada Republican Party until Thursday to file additional briefings. 

“Appellants have not demonstrated a sufficient likelihood of success to merit a stay or injunction,” the court stated in an order. “The district court concluded that appellants’ allegations lacked evidentiary support, and their request for relief to this court is not supported by affidavit or record materials supporting many of the factual statements made therein.” 

Some background: Earlier Tuesday, the campaign filed an emergency appeal of a district judge order dismissing its lawsuit against the Clark County Registrar alleging GOP observers were not given enough access to all aspects of the ballot counting process — from opening the ballots, to machine and manual signature checking and duplicating spoiled ballots.

Michigan was the perfect storm for Democrats in 2016 — a surge in rural turnout, White union voters flipping to Donald Trump and depressed turnout among Black voters — leading the President to break through the so-called “blue wall” on his way to an unexpected victory.

Joe Biden needs to take back the state to have almost any shot of winning in 2020 and polls show he is on his way to do that: A CNN survey released in late October found Biden with a 12-percentage point lead in the state.

The former vice president committed his campaign to re-building that blue wall in Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania. Republicans admitted when Biden was nominated that his appeal with White working-class voters made him far more formidable in states like Michigan, and the former vice president has focused his campaign on making that come true.

The Biden campaign is clearly taking nothing for granted in Michigan, however. Former President Barack Obama joined Biden for two events in the state on the final weekend of the campaign, aiming squarely to turnout young and Black voters who stayed home in 2016.

Based on CNN’s current projections, Biden has 73 electoral college votes, and Trump has 48 electoral college votes.

Reminder: Each candidate needs 270 electoral college votes to win the presidency.

Joe Biden will win New Jersey, CNN projects.

There are 14 electoral votes at stake in New Jersey. It takes 270 electoral votes to win the 2020 presidential election.

Who won in 2016: Former Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton carried the state, and President Trump won the general election.

President Trump will win Arkansas CNN projects.

There are six electoral votes at stake in Arkansas. It takes 270 electoral votes to win the 2020 presidential election.

Who won in 2016: President Trump carried the state and won the general election.

Here’s where polls are closing at 9 p.m. ET:

Follow along here and CNN’s Election Center for full coverage.

Based on the votes counted so far, this is where each candidate currently has the lead.

Joe Biden:

Donald Trump:

It’s still early and these numbers could change as more votes are counted.

Joe Biden will win New York, CNN projects.

There are 29 electoral votes at stake in New York. It takes 270 electoral votes to win the 2020 presidential election.

Who won in 2016: Former Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton carried the state, and President Trump won the general election.

By most forecasters’ estimates, there is no state more crucial to either candidates’ path than Pennsylvania, with its 20 electoral votes.

Donald Trump won it in 2016 as he barreled through the Democrats’ “Blue Wall,” taking Michigan and Wisconsin, too. But Joe Biden, who was born in Scranton, maintained a modest lead in most 2020 pre-election polling.

The key for Biden is juicing turnout in Philadelphia, especially among Black and Latino votes, and its surrounding suburbs. For Trump, it’s a trickier proposition. He needs to keep or grow his winning margins in rural parts of the state, mostly in the central and west, and hope his popularity there isn’t overwhelmed by a backlash in suburban areas and urban centers.

Then there is the question of the ballots, which has the potential to turn into a national flashpoint.

Pennsylvania is one of the handful of states that expects to take a while to count all its votes. Expect the early returns to favor Trump, but the race to move in Biden’s direction as mail-in ballot results come in. But that could take some time. Election officials cannot begin processing early ballots until Election Day and some counties might not begin until after the polls close. A few won’t start until Wednesday – meaning there will be no final result out of Pennsylvania tonight.

The Biden campaign is realistic about Florida tonight, with advisers saying the state seems to be moving out of reach. But advisers argue that Florida is unique, not the beginning of a trend.

They are still confident about their standing in Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin – and advisers are optimistic about what they are seeing in North Carolina.

But for Biden world, a Trump Florida win ensures one thing: This race will be dramatically close and they do not foresee any type of landslide tonight.

No Democratic presidential candidate has won Duval County since fellow Southerner Jimmy Carter carried the Jacksonville area in 1976. Joe Biden is on track to break that streak.

This could be critical to Democrats in Florida because in order to make up for the former vice president underperforming where Hillary Clinton was four years ago in populous Miami-Dade County, he needs formerly red population centers like Duval to tilt his way to have a shot at carrying the state.

The former vice president leads President Donald Trump in the county with 91% of the vote in.

Duval County is central for two key themes playing out in the 2020 general election — the suburbs revolting against a Republican Party led by Trump and the work Democrats have put in to turn out Black voters who did not turn out for Hillary Clinton in 2016. Both have turned the one-time Republican stronghold into the largest swing county in the largest swing state.

“There is an argument to be made it may be the single most important county in the single most important state in the most important election in a century,” Dean Black, chair of the county’s Republican Party, said before Election Day.

Democrats, after losing Duval narrowly in 2016, carried the county in the 2018 general election, leading many in the party to grow more confident that they could do it again this year. The party also has 6% more registered Democrats than Republicans in Duval.

There were signs in October that Trump’s hold on some voters in Duval County was slipping.

After voting for Trump in 2016, Danielle Wade went to the ballot box undecided but eventually voted for Biden.

“Quite frankly, I am just over Trump’s antics,” Wade said. “I don’t believe he will be the cure-all,” she said after voting for Biden, the first Democrat she had ever backed in her 35-year-long life. “But the country needs some relief.”

President Trump visited a number of “Trump super counties” in the final days before Election Day to energize the electorate and turn out the vote, said CNN’s John King, pointing to Catawba County in North Carolina where Trump campaigned on Monday.

“These are Trump super counties, if you will, around, the country,” said King. “The President went to certain places to do his rallies because he knew he was losing in the early voting and they were designed to turn people up.”

“The President had a deliberately travel plan,” added King. “He went to certain places where they knew their voters were.”

For Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden to win the competitive state of Ohio, which leans a little Republican, he needs to “run it up in urban areas,” CNN’s John King said as the votes come in.

“That would be Cleveland, Columbus, Cincinnati, Akron, Toledo and Youngstown,” King said.

The suburbs are the big challenge, where the candidates will battle for the American presidency, King said.

“Donald Trump carried the suburbs 2017. That’s why he’s President of the United States. It is part of the coalition Trump put together,” King said. “If Joe Biden can hold Lake County, hold the suburbs west of Cleveland, that’s part of the building blocks, at least get you close.”

President Trump will win West Virginia, CNN projects.

There are five electoral votes at stake in West Virginia. It takes 270 electoral votes to win the 2020 presidential election.

Who won in 2016: President Trump carried the state and won the general election.

CNN’s John King underscored that Ohio may be a crucial state for the President to win reelection. 

“No Republican has won the presidency in modern times without winning Ohio. So that Joe Biden is competitive here is a source of angst right now at the Trump campaign headquarters,” King said. 

With about a third of the vote in, Biden is ahead in Ohio’s cities and surrounding suburbs, while Trump is ahead in the more rural areas. But King outlined that those rural areas could add up for the Trump campaign. 

“We know [Biden is] competitive in Ohio. Win or lose Ohio, there is a lesson in this: that Joe Biden is competitive than Hillary Clinton in these industrial states,” King said.

“No matter how this ends, this tells you that this is a different campaign than we had four years ago, and that Joe Biden is more competitive than Hillary Clinton,” he added. 

As polls close in Florida, an early exit survey of voters in the state shows a big decrease in support for Democrat Joe Biden among Latinos compared to 2016.

Slightly more than half of the group is backing the former vice president, according to the early exit polls, compared to the 62% that went for Clinton four years ago. President Donald Trump’s support among the group has increased significantly, as well. 

Latino voters have also shifted in Georgia. In 2016, Latino voters in the state went for Hillary Clinton by 40 points; they are voting for Joe Biden by around 25 points.

Trump has a small lead among seniors in Florida, garnering just over half of the vote there, a decrease in his performance from in 2016 when he won 57% of the group in Florida. 

More than half of independent voters in the Sunshine State are backing Biden, a better performance than Clinton in 2016, when Trump won independents 47% to 43%.

CNN’s exit polls this year incorporate in-person interviews at early voting locations and telephone interviews to target by-mail voters. Those surveys are in addition to the in-person interviews with voters on Tuesday. In every state where exit poll results are available on election night, there will be a combined result to reflect a complete picture of voters across the country.

President Trump will win Tennessee, CNN projects.

There are 11 electoral votes at stake in Tennessee. It takes 270 electoral votes to win the 2020 presidential election.

Who won in 2016: President Trump carried the state and won the general election.

Maine allocates two of its four electoral votes to the statewide winner – a Democrat in every race since 1988. The other two are split between its two congressional districts. 

Maine’s 2nd is the wild card. 

Democratic Rep. Jared Golden flipped the district in a tight 2018 contest and is expected to retain it this year. The presidential race, though, is a toss-up.

Though it covers a lot more ground, the 2nd district’s population is smaller than in the 1st, which is home to the state’s biggest city in Portland. Trump won the 2nd in 2016, a victory emblematic of his strength with rural voters. 

Maine also presents Democrats with one of their first opportunities of the night to cut into the GOP Senate majority. Incumbent Sen. Susan Collins is in the fight of her political life with Democratic challenger Sara Gideon, who has benefited from a nationwide liberal backlash over Collins’ vote to confirm Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh in 2018. 

Hillary Clinton won New Hampshire in 2016, but it was a very, very close race. In the end, she beat Donald Trump by fewer than 3,000 votes. 

New Hampshire has only four electoral votes, but if this race is close and both campaigns are trying to build out scenarios to get them to 270, it could be decisive. It might also be instructive. If Joe Biden and Trump are neck-and-neck as the count takes shape, that could be a promising sign for the President as the campaigns begin to eyeball the Midwestern swing states.

That’s in part because the polls suggest that Biden is the favorite here. Trump’s team has projected confidence, pointing to their ground game. 

The state’s most famous newspaper, the New Hampshire Union Leader, with its conservative editorial board, endorsed Biden this time around, after effectively ducking the question in 2016 by throwing its support to Libertarian Gary Johnson.

There’s little evidence that newspaper endorsements in big races like this move many voters, but in battleground states they are often a reflection of where the electorate is – or, on Election Day, where it’s going. 

CNN has projected Joe Biden will win Delaware, DC, Maryland, Massachusetts and Vermont.

Donald Trump will win Kentucky and Oklahoma.

Based on these projections, this is where the race to 270 currently stands.

Biden has 30 electoral college votes. Trump has 26 electoral college votes.

Reminder: Each candidate needs 270 electoral college votes to win the presidency.

Nevada state District Court Judge Joe Hardy is extending the hours for about two dozens polling sites in Clark County until 8 p.m. PT.

That will delay the announcement of results in Nevada’s election by an hour. The Trump campaign filed suit in Clark County for the extension. 

Earlier in the day there were reports that many of the 125 polling sites in Clark County had to delay their 7 a.m. opening because of technical problems.

Clark County is the home of 70% of all voters in Nevada. It is a heavily Democratic County. No results in any county can be released until the last poll is closed.

Democrats asked for their own list of polling sites to remain open on top of the Republican list. The judge granted that list.

President Trump will win Kentucky, CNN projects.

There are eight electoral votes at stake in Kentucky. It takes 270 electoral votes to win the 2020 presidential election.

Who won in 2016: President Trump carried the state and won the general election.

Here’s where polls are closing at 8 p.m. ET:

Follow along here and at CNN’s Election Center for full coverage.

Joe Biden will win Massachusetts, CNN projects.

There are 11 electoral votes at stake in Massachusetts. It takes 270 electoral votes to win the 2020 presidential election.

Who won in 2016: Former Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton carried the state, and President Trump won the general election.

Joe Biden will win Delaware, CNN projects.

There are three electoral votes at stake in Delaware. It takes 270 electoral votes to win the 2020 presidential election.

Who won in 2016: Former Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton carried the state, and President Trump won the general election.

Joe Biden will win the District of Columbia, CNN projects.

There are three electoral votes at stake in DC. It takes 270 electoral votes to win the 2020 presidential election.

Who won in 2016: Former Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton carried the district, and President Trump won the general election.

Joe Biden will win Maryland, CNN projects.

There are 10 electoral votes at stake in Maryland. It takes 270 electoral votes to win the 2020 presidential election.

Who won in 2016: Former Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton carried the state, and President Trump won the general election.

President Trump will win Oklahoma, CNN projects.

There are seven electoral votes at stake in Oklahoma. It takes 270 electoral votes to win the 2020 presidential election.

Who won in 2016: President Trump carried the state and won the general election.

Absentee ballot processing in Fulton County, Georgia, has been delayed due to a burst pipe, county spokesperson Regina Waller said.

According to Waller, a pipe burst at State Farm Arena above the processing room for all absentee ballots in Fulton County, but no ballots were damaged.

“The matter caused the start of work today to be delayed by four hours,” Waller said.

“The team is prepared to continue working to complete processing of absentee ballots,” Waller added.

Trump voters heavily favored the economy as the most important issue to their vote, with around 3 in 5 saying so, according to early exit polls. The issue of crime and safety followed at a distance for those voters. 

One-third of voters who back Joe Biden, meanwhile, said racial inequality was their most important issue, followed by almost 3 in 10 who said it was coronavirus, 1 in 10 who said health care policy, and 1 in 10 who said the economy.

About this year’s exit polls: CNN’s exit polls this year incorporate in-person interviews at early voting locations and telephone interviews to target by-mail voters. Those surveys are in addition to the in-person interviews with voters on Tuesday. In every state where exit poll results are available on election night, there will be a combined result to reflect a complete picture of voters across the country.

To account for the large share of early in-person voters in critical states such as North Carolina, Florida and Texas, Edison Research has spent the past month conducting the same type of in-person interviewing that it does on Election Day at a random selection of early voting locations around eight states.  

Read more about exit polls during a pandemic here.

Joe Biden will win Vermont, CNN projects.

There are three electoral votes at stake in Vermont. It takes 270 electoral votes to win the 2020 presidential election.

Who won in 2016: Former Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton carried the state, and President Trump won the general election.

As ballot counts from Florida are quickly coming in, the tight margins for both President Trump and Joe Biden compared to 2016 results are making this a race to watch.

Joe Biden is currently underperforming Hillary Clinton’s 2016 results in Miami-Dade County. “If you’re looking for trouble signs in the Biden campaign, it is right here in Miami-Dade,” CNN’s John King said. Hillary Clinton had a wider margin in the county in 2016 and still lost the state. Biden will have to make it up in other counties, King added.

President Trump is underperforming in Duval County, which includes all of Jacksonville, a population center Trump won in 2016, but swung back to Democrats two years later when the party’s gubernatorial candidate carried the county.

The area around Tampa is also central to a Trump win: The President unexpectedly carried Pinellas County in 2016, a swing that signified it would be a tough night for Democrats.

King said that Trump’s performance among suburban voters will be significant overall.

Deocratic operatives are keeping a close eye on Latino voters tonight in Florida, one of the first states with a significant Latino population to report results.

A key concern for Democrats heading into Election Day was Joe Biden’s ability to court Latinos, a diverse and growing demographic in a number of key states, including Florida, Texas and Arizona. Democratic organizers in those states had raised concerns about Biden’s outreach to Latino voters early in the campaign, leading Biden’s operation to pour manpower and money into turning out Latinos, but the concerns persisted.

The problem is acute in Florida — particularly in populous Miami-Dade County — because of the large number of Cuban and Venezuelan immigrants, two groups that tend to be more conservative than others.

Early results out of Miami-Dade, Florida’s most populous county, show a closer race between Biden and Donald Trump in 2020 than when Clinton faced Trump in 2016.

Trump’s campaign was intensely focused on Miami-Dade County, crafting an entire messaging campaign around painting Biden as a socialist in an attempt to appeal to the county’s Cuban- and Venezuelan-American populations

“If Biden wins Florida with that margin in Dade (and lets assume it gets 1 point or so better with eday), it will be amazing and unprecedented,” said Florida-based Democratic data analyst Matthew Isbell tweeted as the early results from the county came in.

The question for Democrats will be can Biden outperform Clinton in places like Duval and Hillsborough County, two other populous metropolitan centers in the state, to offset him possibly underperforming in the Miami area.

Statewide results in Nevada’s election could be delayed by at least an hour – to 8 p.m. local time/11 p.m. ET – if a judge rules in favor of the Trump campaign. The campaign filed a lawsuit in Clark County to keep the polls open an additional hour for 22 locations. 

There were reports earlier in the day that many of the 125 polling sites in Clark County had to delay their 7 a.m. local openings because of technical problems. Clark County is the home of 70% of all voters in Nevada. It is a heavily Democratic County.

No results in any county can be released until the last poll is closed. 

On election night, CNN’s Wolf Blitzer announces that the network has projected this or that candidate will win a particular race.

The process that leads to Blitzer saying those words is careful and complicated. It involves both real-time results and information from exit polls. CNN, NBC, ABC and CBS work with the polling firm Edison Research in what is known as the National Election Pool for results and exit polling data. Fox News and the Associated Press have a separate arrangement.

CNN’s polling director Jennifer Agiesta explains:

There isn’t any magic involved in projecting races, sadly, it’s really all math. There are a number of things we are looking for in each state to have confidence in a projection. Most important is what’s been counted: Where are the votes coming from geographically within the state, what types of votes are included in the count, and how much of the total vote does the count represent right now?
If there’s a clear lead for one candidate in the current count, but none of the votes from the strongest part of the state for the trailing candidate aren’t in yet, that margin likely won’t hold up. If instead there is good geographic representation in the vote, that’s a point in favor of a projection.
If everything that’s been counted is absentee and early votes, or all Election Day votes, there won’t be a clear picture of how all the votes will look when both types of vote are included. Some of both are needed for projections in closer races.

Read here for more from Agiesta and Washington Bureau Chief Sam Feist.

Four years after Hillary Clinton lost North Carolina by over 3 percentage points, Democrats are growing more confident that the state is moving away from its red neighbors to the South and closer to its bluer neighbors to the north.

The reason is demographics: The number of Hispanic and Asian voters is growing; North Carolina’s cities and suburbs are booming with growth from people moving from more liberal northern states; and seniors, a demographic moving away from a Trump-led Republican party, have been flocking to the state’s coast.

All of this is coupled with a troubling trend for Republicans: The state’s reliably conservative rural areas are shrinking.

This has led Democrats to believe North Carolina is in reach for them this year, creating a key chance for Joe Biden and the party to take another state Trump won in 2016. North Carolina’s polls are closing at 7:30 p.m. ET, so if this scenario plays out for Democrats, the state could be an early signal for how the night is going for each party.

The presidential is far from the only competitive race in a state that has seemed to be the center of the political universe for much of the year: The state also has a competitive Senate race between Republican incumbent Thom Tillis and Democrat Cal Cunningham, as well as a less competitive race for governor between incumbent Democrat Roy Cooper and Republican Dan Forest.

After Donald Trump’s 8-point win in Ohio in 2016 and GOP Gov. Mike DeWine’s win in 2018, what was once the quintessential swing state appeared to have shifted solidly into Republican hands — part of a long-term realignment that was unlikely to reverse itself anytime soon. 

But polls for months showed Joe Biden and Trump locked in a close race. Biden’s campaign invested in the state late, pumping millions of dollars into TV ads in the closing weeks while sending Biden through the eastern portion of the state on a whistle-stop Amtrak tour. 

A final indicator that Biden believes it is within reach came Monday morning, when he made a last-minute campaign stop in Cleveland. 

Ohio is a must-win for Trump. No Republican has ever won the presidency without winning Ohio. If Trump doesn’t win, it’s almost certainly a fatal blow to his chances of winning re-election. And if the race there is neck-and-neck, it’s a problematic sign for Trump’s performance in other key states, including neighboring Pennsylvania and Michigan and fellow Midwestern battleground Wisconsin. 

Pennsylvania Secretary of State Kathy Boockvar said that she was pleased with an earlier federal decision mandating the United States Postal Service to sweep certain processing facilities by 3 p.m. ET for election mail. 

 “We’re very pleased that that order was entered and that is what the postal service is doing and happy to report more later when we have that information,” Boockvar said an interview with CNN’s Erin Burnett.

Update: The US Postal Service said later this evening, however, that it wasn’t able to meet the court ordered deadline.

The postal service had done previous morning sweeps for ballots in recent days, including Tuesday, with personnel reporting data to the court by about 10 a.m.

Postal officials, however, reported to the judge that they were unable to make it happen. 

“Given the time constraints set by this Court’s order, and the fact that Postal Inspectors operate on a nationwide basis, Defendants were unable to accelerate the daily review process to run from 12:30pm to 3:00pm without significantly disrupting preexisting activities on the day of the Election,” the Postal Service wrote to the judge. 

Polls have closed in Georgia and an early exit survey of voters there show around 4 in 5 White voters without a college degree went for Donald Trump.

Slightly over half of White voters with a college degree also backed Trump, the early exit polls show. The slim lead marks a big difference from 2016, when Trump won White college graduates in Georgia 69% to 28%.

Trump leads among another key group in Georgia this year, with more than half of seniors backing the President. He won seniors in 2016, 67% to 31%. 

Joe Biden leads strongly among voters under the age of 30 in the state, with around 3 in 5 of those voters backing the former vice president.

Voters in Georgia who say they want a candidate who is a strong leader voted strongly for Trump, with around three-quarters of voters doing so. Another three-quarters of voters who want a candidate who can unite the country voted for Biden.

About this year’s exit polls: CNN’s exit polls this year incorporate in-person interviews at early voting locations and telephone interviews to target by-mail voters. Those surveys are in addition to the in-person interviews with voters on Tuesday. In every state where exit poll results are available on election night, there will be a combined result to reflect a complete picture of voters across the country.

To account for the large share of early in-person voters in critical states such as North Carolina, Florida and Texas, Edison Research has spent the past month conducting the same type of in-person interviewing that it does on Election Day at a random selection of early voting locations around eight states.  

Read more about exit polls during a pandemic here.

Polls are closing in some states tonight. Here’s where polls are closing at 7:30 p.m. ET:

Remember: North Carolina’s election results will be delayed by at least 45 minutes after the board of elections extended voting at some locations that were having problems this morning. 

Follow along here and see CNN’s Election Center for full coverage.

Suburbs are at the center of the 2020 presidential race, with Joe Biden’s path to 270 electoral votes dependent on turning in a stronger performance there than Hillary Clinton did in 2016.

The suburban shift toward Democrats is the biggest change to the political landscape during Donald Trump’s presidency. In 2017, the northern Virginia suburbs handed Democrats a big win in a closely watched governor’s race. Then, in 2018, suburban congressional districts were at the center of a Democratic wave that handed the party control of the US House of Representatives for the first time in eight years.

Trump’s 2016 win was rooted in big margins of victory in working-class suburbs. He has sought to galvanize those voters again by warning that violence that has accompanied protests against racial injustice would spread to the suburbs. However, Biden’s stronger performance in polls among well-educated voters and with White women, in particular, have positioned him to build on Democratic gains in recent years.

Joe Biden is not Hillary Clinton.

That is a central thought in the minds of Biden aides as they have been studying data throughout the day – they are seeing far more Democrats (and presumably Biden supporters) turning out in rural areas.

They don’t see blow outs they did four years ago. There’s no doubt that President Trump will carry the rural swaths of so many battleground states, but they believe Biden will hold his own far more than Clinton did.

The entire campaign, comparisons have been drawn to 2016 — but one Biden adviser said this map could be more like 2012, the last time Biden was on a ballot as the vice president, with Barack Obama at the top of the ticket.

With an hour to go until polls close, Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf cautioned voters to “remain calm.”

He released a video message calling for patience as every vote is set to be counted in the crucial battleground state. 

“Across the state, dedicated county workers are ready to tirelessly make sure everyone’s vote counts,” Wolf said. 
“But counting that tremendous number of ballots will take more time than we are used to. We may not know the results today, but I encourage all of us to take a deep breath and be patient. What is most important is that we have accurate results, even if that takes a little longer,” he added. 

Polls in the Keystone State are set to close at 8 p.m. ET. 

Georgia is a must-win state for President Donald Trump, and – with a relatively quick vote count expected there —it could offer an early window into how Election Night will unfold. 

Like Florida and North Carolina, it’s a state Joe Biden has invested heavily in, and a place where his campaign is bullish. But unlike those states, it has not voted for Democrats in recent presidential elections. 

Georgia has long been a Republican stronghold, with the GOP currently controlling every statewide office and the state legislature. Democrats haven’t won a major statewide race in the last two decades, but have had a series of close calls —a 2017 special election for a House seat; the 2018 governor’s race — in Georgia during Trump’s presidency. 

This year in Georgia, the stakes are especially high: Two Senate seats are up for grabs in “jungle primaries,” which go to one-on-one runoffs if no candidate finishes above 50% of the vote. Jon Ossoff is challenging Republican Sen. David Perdue, while Rev. Raphael Warnock is the leading Democratic candidate against Republican Sen. Kelly Loeffler, GOP Rep. Doug Collins and other contenders in a special election that’s almost certain to head to a runoff. 

Biden chose Georgia to deliver what his campaign billed as its closing argument with a speech last Tuesday. His running mate, California Sen. Kamala Harris, campaigned there Sunday. And Biden dispatched former President Barack Obama to Atlanta on Monday. Trump, meanwhile, campaigned in Georgia on Sunday night, underscoring his campaign’s recognition of its competitiveness. 

If Donald Trump has any chance of winning the presidency, he can’t stand to lose his home state of Florida.

The President carried the state in 2016 by just over 1 percentage point, but recent polls have found a narrow race in the state, with a series of surveys showing the race between Trump and Joe Biden within the margin of error. Both candidates have blanked the state of late, with both Trump and Biden headlining events in the state on the Thursday before the election.

Florida is a remarkably diverse state with a series of key areas. Trump and his campaign have hopes of cutting into Biden’s expected margin in Miami-Dade and Broward County with a stronger than expected showing with Latinos, particularly Cubans, in South Florida.

The area around Tampa is also central to a Trump win: The President unexpectedly carried Pinellas County in 2016, a swing that signified it would be a tough night for Democrats. And then there was Duval County, which includes all of Jacksonville, a population center Trump won in 2016, but swung back to Democrats two years later when the party’s gubernatorial candidate carried the county.

Turnout will be key for Biden in Florida. A surge of rural voters propelled Trump to victory in 2016, an outpouring that was strengthened by a lack of turnout among Black and Latino voters four years ago. Democrats saw warning signs in early vote numbers from areas with large Black and Latino populations, so the ability for the party to get both key demographics out on Tuesday could prove critical.

CNN’s John King explains:

Video Ad Feedback

10b57e26-7971-4430-9d6d-7b16a4eefd35.mp4

05:56 - Source: cnn

As exit polls trickled in early on Election Night, viewers who support either candidate should be prepared for both ups and downs, CNN political commentator Van Jones warned 

“We are on a little bit of a roller coaster here, a little bit of a seesaw,” said Jones, acknowledging some of the early exit polls had worried him, while he’d found other data points encouraging. 

“You might get seasick tonight looking at these things exit things,” he added. “The issues cut one way … there’s something happening out there that we don’t know yet, we’re gonna wait to see.”

Former Republican Sen. Rick Santorum, a CNN senior political commentator, expressed the same sentiment moments later, suggesting he had already experienced multiple emotions. 

“I’m gonna agree with Van that I was feeling much more confident with these early exits,” he said.  

CNN’s Anderson Cooper, who was moderating the exchange, then predicted in jest that both commentators might be “basket cases” by the end of the night.

President Trump will win Indiana, CNN projects.

There are 11 electoral votes at stake in Indiana. It takes 270 electoral votes to win the 2020 presidential election.

Who won in 2016: President Trump carried the state and won the general election.

Polls are closing in some states voting tonight. Here’s where polls are closing at 7 p.m. ET: 

Follow along here and CNN’s Election Center for full coverage.

Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden is now at his home in Wilmington, surrounded by his family, waiting for returns to start coming in at any moment.

For now, a friend says, he’s trying to take in the weight and history of it all,

It’s a day of nostalgia for a man who could be the oldest president ever elected – should he win. His first bid for the presidency came three decades ago when he was the youngest candidate.

He visited his late son Beau’s grave today and went to his boyhood home in Scranton, where he wrote on the wall: “From this house to the White House, with the grace of God.” 

He loves an election night, a friend says, and this is the biggest of a lifetime of them. 

He has a speech prepared – for either outcome – and the transition is already well underway. But he knows that what unfolds over the next few hours will determine if he will deliver that speech or launch that transition.

Some presidents take a zen-like approach to Election Day, viewing their work as finished as voters vote. Barack Obama played basketball with Scottie Pippen in 2012; George W. Bush worked out on his elliptical trainer in the residence gym. 

President Donald Trump has adopted a somewhat less relaxed attitude. He has spent most of the day in his third-floor residence, where televisions are set to election coverage, on the phone and speaking in person to family members and advisers about the current state of play. 

He has asked for updates on key battlegrounds, asking how turnout is looking and inquiring what his people on the ground are reporting back to headquarters, people familiar with the matter say. 

He has appeared particularly focused on Pennsylvania. “How’s Pennsylvania looking?” he has asked multiple times over the course of the day. He has repeated to his advisers his frustration at a court decision that will allow extended counting of mail-in ballots, saying he believes it will cost him. 

Over the last several weeks, Trump has been making similar calls from Air Force One as he conducted his frenzied rally schedule. Aides provided him reams worth of printouts showing polls (public and private), maps, early voting data and more that piled up on his desk. 

Advisers have been careful about what data to provide the President. They have largely stuck with only the most positive pieces of information, leaving out anything that might make him angry. Often that meant printing out a favorable opinion column or news article instead of actual numbers or data. 

Early returns could suggest a strong night for either President Trump or former Vice President Joe Biden.  

But this year more than most, it’s important to emphasize that these returns are early. And the mail-in votes, a larger portion of votes in this pandemic year, could prove decisive in each of these states. 

Election officials in some Pennsylvania counties won’t even start processing mail-in ballots until Wednesday. Republican-controlled portions of the state legislature objected to changing the rules and processing the vote faster, compounding the problem.

But we’ve seen this in other races in recent years. In Florida in 2018, mail-in votes made the governor’s race tighten substantially in the days after Election Day. In Arizona, another close battleground state, the 2018 Senate race saw a decisive lead change after Election Day and Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, a Democrat, won the race.

This phenomenon, known as the “blue shift,” is common in recent US elections and it’s a big reason why Trump, despite election law and common decency to the contrary, has argued that whoever appears to have won on Election Night should be crowned the winner. That’s not the way it works, of course. Ballots in North Carolina and Pennsylvania can arrive in the days after Election Day as long as they have a November 3 postmark.

See how all the states count ballots here.

In a call with reporters, the Trump campaign expressed confidence that Election Day turnout would boost their vote count despite a lead for Democrats among early voters, with campaign manager Bill Stepien pointing to Florida as an auspicious sign for the campaign. 

“We, very much are of, we don’t agree with the Biden campaign on very much, but we do agree with their assessment of the way the election, the pre-election day vote has broken down, most notably Florida at nearly a dead heat heading into election day,” Stepien told reporters.

“Where we, where we disagree with the Biden campaign is their view of what is happening on election day. They believe that election, and the makeup of voters who are voting today on Election Day, will resemble those who voted on election day in 2016. Where their theory breaks down, is that the Biden campaign cannibalized their votes, something you’ve heard a lot of over the course of the last week, something we’ve been saying and predicting quite a bit over the last couple of weeks. They simply moved those who traditionally vote on election day to vote early. Congratulations.”

The idea that Democrats are “cannibalizing” their own votes was one they hit hard, and one that they credited to their stronger ground game. “They very much were hoping to slam the door shut on Pennsylvania and Florida and Wisconsin and Arizona before elections, before Election Day even started, that simply hasn’t happened,” Stepien said. “With the lack of a round game on the Biden campaign side, they left a ton of votes on the table. And we are driving turnout today, very much making up whatever advantages Democrats built up heading into Election Day.”

Speaking to the “mood in the room,” senior adviser Jason Miller told reporters, “I think that it’s across the board, everybody on the Trump team, I think, I would even say the President included, we feel better and more confident about our positioning now in 2020 then we did at this exact moment in 2016.” 

It looks like Maine set a record for turnout this year, Secretary of State Matthew Dunlap told CNN.

“We expected very light turnout with such high absentee ballot numbers, but in fact the turnout was pretty strong and steady in most places we’ve gone,” Dunlap said. “I’m not nervous at all about those numbers. I think the towns have done a magnificent job of handling it.”

The previous turnout record was 72%. Before the polls opened on Tuesday morning, more than half of all registered voters in the state had cast mail ballots. The state will not get exact turnout totals for several days when the vote is certified, but Dunlap said everything he has seen suggest this will be a record.

“When I voted this morning in the city of Old Town the line was 50 deep, and at 7:30 in the morning that’s not something I expected in the middle of a snowstorm,” said Dunlap, a Democrat. 

Despite concerns about trouble at polling places, there have been no disruptions during the day.  

“We were prepared to talk about public safety. We talked with Maine emergency management and the attorney general’s office about how to deal with possible disruptions at the polling stations,” Dunlap said. “We just haven’t seen it. And that’s because we’re a small town. And people know each other and they take care of each other and we don’t see some of the threats to election disruption of election disruption that you’ve heard about in other states.”

Voters who back Joe Biden are much more likely to view US efforts to contain the coronavirus negatively, with around 4 in 5 saying it’s going badly, compared to around 1 in 5 who say it’s going well. 

Slightly less than 9 in 10 of Trump backers, however, say the efforts to contain the virus are going well.  

Around 5 in 6 Biden voters say wearing a face mask is more of a public health responsibility, while Trump voters are split, with around half who say it’s a public health responsibility and half who say it’s a personal choice. 

About this year’s exit polls: To account for the large share of early in-person voters in critical states such as North Carolina, Florida and Texas, Edison Research has spent the past month conducting the same type of in-person interviewing that it does on Election Day at a random selection of early voting locations around eight states.  

Read more about exit polls during a pandemic here

In Outagamie County, Wisconsin, poll workers are working today to transfer votes from around 13,500 misprinted absentee ballots to clean ballots that won’t jam the electronic tabulating machine, the county clerk told CNN. 

Outagamie is a county in the central part of the state that includes the city of Appleton. 

The Outagamie County Clerk Lori O’Bright told CNN 20 National Guardsmen are on site to assist with the ballot transferring or do whatever else needs to be done. 

O’Bright said there is no way to know the exact number of how many ballots were affected. She added the best guess is 13,500 based on information from the printers and 101 different reporting units. 

Some background: Last week, the Wisconsin Supreme Court declined to take a case that would tell Outagamie County how to deal with the misprinted ballots. The county had to abide by state law, which doesn’t allow clerks to make any changes to ballots, so the only option is to transfer the data from misprinted ballots to clean ones that can be read by the machines.

In Wisconsin, ballots could not be processed until the polls opened at 7 a.m. local time on Election Day, so poll workers were not able to get a head start on this. 

In a release from the Outagamie County clerk’s office after the state Supreme Court denied the petition, the clerk advised that the duplication process will take time and that “it takes approximately four minutes to duplicate a ballot.”

President Donald Trump is watching returns from the East Wing of the White House tonight with his senior staffers and family members by his side, according to the White House communications director.

But Trump’s aides are offering mixed messages on what they expect. Though press secretary Kayleigh McEnany maintained this morning that she’s not worried about litigating the outcome because she’s confident it will be a “landslide,” Alyssa Farah said the White House is expecting some delays in results – “especially in Pennsylvania” – and criticized mail-in voting. 

Farah suggested Trump will make a public appearance in some form from the White House tonight regardless of what happens.  

“I don’t want to get ahead of anything, but I think you might end up hearing from him tonight.”

Both sides are seeing tremendous Election Day turnout in key battleground states. That, of course, cuts both ways, considering more Republicans have said they preferred to vote today.

At this hour, the Biden campaign is urgently working to get more people to the polls in several places – Florida chief among them, including in the Miami-Dade area, Jacksonville and the Tampa/St. Petersburg area.

Those are the parts of the state where a surge in turnout after 5 p.m., when more Democrats have historically voted, could provide a much-needed boost for them in Florida.

The Biden campaign does not need Florida to win, but it would make for a smoother evening ahead.

A Biden adviser believes the Southern battlegrounds – Florida, North Carolina and Georgia – present the biggest challenges tonight. They feel much better about the so-called blue wall states of Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin.

Exit polling traditionally involves interviews with a randomly selected sample of voters conducted as those voters leave their polling places. Unlike pre-election polling, where voters can only be identified using screening questions or a history of voting on a voter file, meeting voters where they are ensures that those included in the survey have actually cast their ballots.

To make the 2020 survey more representative, Edison Research has made modifications to the methodology it uses to carry out the exit poll for the National Election Pool, a news consortium made up of CNN, ABC News, CBS News and NBC News.

This year’s exit poll will still include in-person interviews with voters who cast their ballots on Tuesday. To make sure that both interviewers and voters are safe, interviews will be contactless. Voters will pick up paper questionnaires and single-use pencils from a table rather than taking them directly from the interviewer, and disinfecting wipes and hand sanitizer will be available for use by both voters and the interviewers manning the table. Interviewers will be masked, and have been instructed to remain at least 6 feet away the voters they ask to participate.

Those interviews are only one piece of the puzzle this year. The share of voters who cast their ballots before Election Day has been growing for two decades, and will rapidly accelerate in this year’s election. In 2000, absentee and early voting represented about 16% of the total votes cast. In 2016, that figure was over 40%; this year, it is expected to top 60%.

To account for the large share of early in-person voters in critical states such as North Carolina, Florida and Texas, Edison Research has spent the past month conducting the same type of in-person interviewing that it does on Election Day at a random selection of early voting locations around eight states. The consortium first used this procedure to capture the opinions and vote choices of early voters in 2018 in Nevada and Tennessee. Those voters are answering the same questions that voters will be asked on Election Day.

To account for the large number of by-mail voters, as well as early voters in states where in-person early voter interviewing is not possible, the exit polls will also include the results of telephone polls targeted at these voters. Edison Research has conducted such polling for use in exit polls in states with significant shares of absentee and early voters since 2004.

This year, in every state where exit poll results are available on election night, the results of a telephone poll of early and by-mail voters will be incorporated into the results. These voters are also being asked the same questions that will be asked on Election Day.

When all of these pieces are combined, the exit poll results presented on election night will reflect a complete picture of voters all across the country.

While the economy is strongly positioned as the most important issue for a plurality of 2020 voters, voters are split as to whether the economy is good or poor, according to early exit polls. 

Around half of voters say it is good, while around half say it’s poor.

Around 2 in 5 say they’re better off than they were four years ago; 1 in 5 think they’re worse off, and another 2 in 5 say they’re about the same.

More than half of voters say the coronavirus pandemic has caused them financial hardship.

About this year’s exit polls: To account for the large share of early in-person voters in critical states such as North Carolina, Florida and Texas, Edison Research has spent the past month conducting the same type of in-person interviewing that it does on Election Day at a random selection of early voting locations around eight states.  

Read more about exit polls during a pandemic here.

CNN’s David Chalian breaks down the exit polls:

Video Ad Feedback

42560b31-b12b-407a-b929-c6f814384f60.mp4

01:26 - Source: cnn

The number of same-day voter registrations in Michigan is now 18,822, as of 4:30 p.m., Secretary of State spokesperson Tracy Wimmer told reporters.

The places with the highest numbers were Detroit, Ann Arbor and Grand Rapids.

“It’s quite possible we get up to 25,000 or 30,000” same day voter registrants, Secretary of State Communications and External Affairs Director Jake Rollow said, based on what happened in the March primary, when a wave of new registrations came later in the afternoon.

Some context: This is the first presidential election in Michigan to allow same-day voter registration, after voters passed a ballot initiative in 2018 establishing the practice.

Already, the number of Michiganders who registered today is larger than the number of votes that Donald Trump won the state with in 2016: 10,704 votes.

Republicans on Tuesday filed an emergency appeal seeking to overturn a Nevada judge’s ruling rejecting the GOP’s effort to halt early voting counting in Clark County, which includes Las Vegas, based on its use of a signature-matching computer software and rules governing the observation of vote counting. 

The Trump campaign and Nevada Republican Party have asked the Nevada Supreme Court to expedite its appeal and prohibit the Clark County registrar from duplicating ballots and authenticate ballots using artificial intelligence until its appeal can be heard. 

Lawyers for the Trump campaign sued the clerk claiming that their observers were not given enough access to all aspects of the ballot counting process — from opening the ballots, to machine and manual signature checking and duplicating spoiled ballots. 

A Nevada judge denied the GOP challenge to the early voting process in the heavily Democratic county.

“If this last-minute suit were successful, it would require a major change in how [Nevada] processed absentee [ballots] to determine if the signature on the ballot matched the voter’s prior signature on file,” Richard Pildes, a constitutional law professor at New York University and CNN election law analyst, said. “Courts are typically unwilling to let plaintiffs come in the door so late in the day and ask for major changes to a process that’s already well underway.”

Voters who back President Donald Trump are strongly voting for their candidate rather than against his opponent, with around 4 in 5 saying so, early exit polls show.

Some Joe Biden voters are doing the same, but to a lesser extent. Around two-thirds of Biden voters say they’re voting for their candidate, while around one-third say they are voting against Trump. 

One-third of voters want a candidate who is a strong leader, while around one-quarter say they want someone with good judgment. Around 1 in 5 want someone who “cares about people like me,” while another 1 in 5 want someone who can unite the country. 

CNN’s John King says President Trump’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic is on the ballot, adding that “no matter where you live and no matter how you voted today coronavirus is in your community.”

“The fall surge now is way in excess of the summer surge,” King said during CNN’s special election coverage.

King cited President Trump’s comments that the United States has “rounded the corner” on the pandemic and the promise of a pending vaccine. 

“Dr. Fauci, Dr. Birx, his own people have been critical of him in recent days,” King said. “With the President trying to sell this in states like Wisconsin, especially, hospitalization spike, death record in the final week of the campaign, you just see this going up.”

“Presidential elections are about leadership, the president’s leadership of the pandemic is on the ballot today,” King said. “Joe Biden has a completely different approach. No matter where you lived you have lived this for eight plus months now. How important is it when people people vote?”

Watch the moment:

Video Ad Feedback

a1996001-3839-4c34-9f15-7c50a5f2569b.mp4

04:40 - Source: cnn

President Trump will be watching election results in the East Wing of the White House this evening, communications director Alyssa Farah said. 

“The President’s going to be watching returns tonight with senior aides, with members of the first family from the White House, from the East Wing. He’s excited. We’ve put in the work, we’ve not taken any vote for granted, he’s been out on the trail meeting with voters, doing as many as five events a day, and we’re ready to see these results,” Farah said during an appearance on Fox Business, adding that Trump is in a “great mood.”

Farah said that the White House is expecting some delays in results – “especially in Pennsylvania” – when questioned about absentee and mail-in ballot counting.

“We’re working with state secretaries of state all over the country who are processing these and have plans in place. Our concern from the outset has been mass mail-in voting when our country just hasn’t dealt with this level of it previously. Like I said, we are confident that we’re going to get to the end game, but we could anticipate some delays, especially in Pennsylvania,” she said.

Farah suggested Trump will make a public appearance in some form from the White House this evening, but declined to provide specifics. 

She reiterated that Trump will not declare victory before the race is called, as he mentioned this morning during an appearance on Fox News, but said an appearance will happen “when the ballots are in.”

Attendees at Tuesday night’s event at the White House, Farah said, will be tested and subject to temperature checks.

“We’re recommending folks wear masks and we will be spaced,” she added.

The exit polls will offer us some key clues about whether Donald Trump or Joe Biden are winning over the voters they need to clinch the White House. Here are things to watch for:

The key groups to watch for Trump: 

The key groups to watch for Biden: 

Voters in the 2020 election are confident that votes will be counted accurately, with slightly less than 9 in 10 who say so. Another 9 in 10 voters report that voting in their state is easy, with those who report it is difficult in the single digits.  

More than 9 in 10 voters report they decided on their vote for president before last week, while very few voters decided in the last week. 

And more than 1 in 10 were first time voters in 2020, which is relatively stable compared to the makeup of voters in the 2016 election.

CNN’s David Chalian reports:

Video Ad Feedback

6ef28c14-0163-4808-96ec-b18574b75e31.mp4

01:22 - Source: cnn

The most important issue to voters in the 2020 election is the economy, with around one-third who chose it, followed by around 1 in 5 for racial inequality and the same who chose coronavirus.

Around 1 in 10 voters say the most important issue to their vote is crime and safety and another 1 in 10 for health care policy. 

Over half of voters say that it’s more important to contain the coronavirus than rebuild the economy. 

The electorate splits on how well efforts to contain the coronavirus are going, around half of voters who think containing the virus is going well, and the other half who say it’s going badly. 

Around two-third of voters in the 2020 election say wearing a face mask in public is more of a public health responsibility than around 3 in 10 who think it’s a personal choice.

Arizona’s Maricopa County, which is home to Phoenix, is eyeing its highest voter turnout in 40 years.

The county has already seen 115,000 votes today, and is expecting to reach 200,000 in-person votes by the time the polls close, according to Maricopa County Elections Department spokespeople Diana Solorio and Megan Gilbertson.

If Maricopa County hits 200,000 votes, that means they’ll have 80% turnout, when you combine all the early votes, mail votes and Election Day votes. That hasn’t happened in Maricopa County since 1980. (The highest turnout the county has ever reached was 87% in the 1960s, according to Gilbertson.)

So far, Solorio says in-person voting has been very smooth and the call center has seen only “typical complaints,” nothing major.

Maricopa County is the fastest growing county of any county in the US, according to the US Census, and Phoenix is the fifth-largest city in the country.

While GOP strongholds in the county have continued to see a high number of in-person voters, a Democratic source who is in the Democrats’ Arizona “boiler room” says Democrats came into Election Day with strong early turnout in Maricopa County. 

“Obviously there will be a big (Republican) turnout today, but I think we will be able to withstand it,” the source said.

In traditionally blue Pima County, which includes Tucson, early vote totals by party registration gave Democrats about a 75,000 vote edge coming into Tuesday, with 195,756 votes to 120,595 for the GOP, according to data provided by the Pima County Recorder’s office.

“The GOP usually has a better turnout by percent,” said Alison Jones, chair of the Pima County Democrats. “Our turnout been much better than normal in early voting.” She said that while she expects Republicans to make up ground at the polls today, “Even if every GOP voter votes for Trump — and we know that’s not the case … we have a clear path with the independent votes to take this state.”

Statewide, in Arizona, Republicans account for 35.2% of registered voters, Democrats for 32.2% and independent and other voters for 31.7%.

Joe Biden is heading home to his family to watch the returns after stopping at the aquatic center in Wilmington. The question is whether he speaks tonight here outside the Chase Center where he accepted the Democratic nomination for president.

Campaign manager Jen O’Malley Dillon told reporters earlier today that Biden would address the nation tonight — regardless of outcome. Biden said a few moments ago that it was still to be determined whether he spoke.

The Biden campaign believes it will have a sense of the direction things are going — but are pessimistic on Florida.

“It is a tough lift for us, but people are still voting there,” a campaign official said.

Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden wouldn’t commit to a plan if election results aren’t made clear by the end of Tuesday night, telling reporters in Wilmington, Delaware, that he’ll say something when he’s ready.

“There’s just so much in play right now … We’ll see. If there’s something to talk about tonight, I’ll talk about it. If not, I’ll wait ‘til the votes are counted the next day,” Biden said.

Asked if he plans to respond if President Trump declares a victory before the results are clear, Biden said he doesn’t feel a responsibility to respond, adding, “It depends on what he says and how he says it.”

“Presidents can’t determine what votes counted or not counted and, you know, voters determine who is president,” Biden said. “No matter what he does or what he says, the votes are going to be counted.”

The former vice president also said that he was “superstitious” about predicting an outcome of the election, but said he remained “hopeful,” expressing confidence in “overwhelming” voter turnout among key demographics and key states.

Asked if he was confident that he was on the path to winning, Biden said, “Well, I don’t know.”

“For example … Florida came in and I won, it’s over. Done. If Florida doesn’t come in and, you know, what happens is the early votes occur, and some other states are going to do well, and we’re going to reestablish that blue wall,” Biden said. “I feel good about that.”

Despite his uncertainty, Biden seemed baffled that traditionally red states, like Texas, may be up for grabs tonight.

“It’s just so uncertain,” Biden admitted. “Look, you can’t think of an election in the recent past where so many states are up for grabs. The idea I’m in play in Texas, Georgia, North Carolina, Florida — I mean, come on. Texas?”

In Michigan, 12,530 new voters registered as of 2:30 p.m. today, taking advantage of same-day voter registration, according to Secretary of State spokesman Jake Rollow.

In a call with reporters, Rollow said there were lines of people waiting to get registered or to update their registration specifically in two college towns: Ann Arbor, which is home to the University of Michigan, and Grand Rapids, which is near Grand Valley State University. Overall, things are running smoothly across the state, Rollow said. 

The state has seen more than 359,000 new voter registrations since August 5, the day after the August primary, which was for state elections.

This is the first presidential election in Michigan to allow same-day voter registration, after voters passed a ballot initiative in 2018 establishing the practice. Already, the number of Michiganders who registered today is larger than President Donald Trump’s margin-of-victory in 2016, which was 10,704 votes. 

Heavy turnout in competitive suburban Bucks County, Pennsylvania, is creating very long waits at polling places.

Bucks County Commissioner Gene DiGirolamo told CNN he’s heard from voters who spent three to four hours in line. At Bensalem High School, CNN talked to voters who reported spending about 90 minutes waiting to vote. Officials at this voting location say turnout appeared to be double that of typical election years.

Bucks County Public Information Director Larry King said heavy Election Day turnout may be due to fewer than half of the 488,000 registered voters applying for mail-in ballots. 

“The people that are going to the polls would largely be those that did not request mail-in ballots or in some cases, if they requested mail-in ballots but for whatever reason the mail is running slow, they haven’t received them, they can go to the polls and vote in-person,” said King. 

 “We did have one polling place where there was a problem with the scanners being able to read ballots. There were some markings on the edge of the ballot that were trimmed a little close, so I think might have held that particularly polling place up a little bit but that to my knowledge has been rectified,” said King. 

King said that he himself waited about an hour and a half to vote this morning and that he expects others might be waiting the same amount of time. 

Both candidates have visited this crucial county in the northern Philadelphia suburbs. Hillary Clinton barely won this county in 2016.

CNN’s Kate Bolduan reports:

Video Ad Feedback

d9e82aa7-60fb-4b8f-a2cf-e520d1b19a40.mp4

01:11 - Source: cnn

Gabriel Sterling, Georgia’s Voting System Implementation Manager, says that the average wait time across the state remains at two minutes.   

“Everything has been steady as she goes across the state of Georgia. We are seeing pretty even turnout throughout the day,” Sterling said, updating the press Tuesday afternoon. 

“This is succeeding our expectations given the situations we saw in June.  We have hit all of our marks, the counties have done an amazing job. The State has worked hard with them to make sure that they have the resources they need.  For many of these counties this is the fourth of fifth time they have used this election equipment, so practice makes perfect,” Sterling said.   

Spalding County, located in west central Georgia south of Atlanta, and Morgan County, located in north central Georgia east of Atlanta are both now fully back online after “data set issues” slowed down voting in some locations earlier.    

Sterling said that the main technical issue Georgia has seen today is having to clean some of the scanners sometimes. 

“When the ballots go through them after a while they just want to clean it to make sure it is registering everything properly. But outside of that it has been steady as she goes pretty much across the state.”   

Sterling told CNN on camera that DeKalb County extending hours at two precincts won’t impact the Secretary of State releasing any statewide results when some of the polls close at 7 p.m. ET.

Democratic nominee Joe Biden has an air of confidence today, his final day of his third presidential campaign.

He wanted to spend the day on the road — he asked his advisers specifically —to get a sense of something he’s missed during this pandemic campaign. He wanted to see the crowds and hear the chants. It belies a nervous energy that he has heading into the final hours

Democrats are confident, but they also know their decision to campaign carefully in the coronavirus crisis took away a central part of the party’s backbone: traditional field organizing, the get out the vote effort that won the White House for Obama and Biden twice before.

“We have no regrets how we ran this campaign,” a campaign official tells CNN, but adds they will wonder if a virtual campaign was enough until the final votes are counted.

92% of all absentee ballots across Michigan have been returned, Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson tweeted Tuesday afternoon.

Absentee counting is “going smoothly & very efficiently” and “precincts are islands of calm,” she noted.

Michiganders can drop off their ballots for the next four hours.

Here’s the tweet:

Sen. Kamala Harris made a surprise stop at Greater Grace Temple polling place on 7 Mile in Detroit, Michigan, a predominantly Black community, to thank voters for staying in line to cast their ballots on Election Day.

“Encourage people to stand in line, I know it may be asking a lot but when we think about what we want for ourselves, for our children, for our families, for our community over the next four years and for the next generation this is probably o.k. to do compared to what we’re going to get in return,” Harris said.

The vice presidential hopeful referred back to the 2016 election results, saying voters can make the difference this time.

“You know in Michigan, the last election for president in 2016, the outcome of that election was decided on average of two votes per precinct in Michigan,” Harris said. “Two votes can you imagine if each of us just pulled out another two people to make sure they voted today, that could determine who would be the next president of the United States of America.” 

With reporting from Deanna Hackney and Vanessa Price

Carl Anderson, the chairman of Pennsylvania’s Erie County Board of Elections said Tuesday that things were going well for Election Day. 

Erie County which is located in northwestern part of the state, had one of the narrowest margins of victory for President Donald Trump in 2016, who won the county by a little over a percentage point.

“Things are going very well. It is a beautiful sunny day and 54 degrees. What we call a “Democratic voter turnout day,” he said.

Amid the smoothness of the day, Anderson noted that the county may even be on track to exceed its goal of processing at least 10,000 mail-in ballots by tonight. 

“The word I have asked people for is patience and that seems to be accepted by an overwhelming majority. Very few and very isolated reports of voter intimidation. People have been very respectful,” Anderson added. 

Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson tells CNN she expects the state’s vote will be counted sooner than previously expected, with both day-of and absentee ballot counts expected to be reported soon after polls close tonight.

“What we’ve seen is such high efficiency and so little problems that I now think we’ll clearly get results much sooner,” Benson said.
“We anticipate a mix of both in-person voting results and absentee voting results will be part of the results, the first results, you hear out of Michigan.”

Benson has previously said it could take up to three days for the state’s vote to be counted.

The secretary of state expects cities and counties statewide will report results at about the same time meaning a so-called “red mirage” may not happen in Michigan. 

Benson said there have been no reports of voter intimidation or ballots being challenged in a coordinated fashion across the battleground state. After earlier reports of voters receiving robocalls and text messages with misinformation, Benson said they were “not as widespread as immediately thought.”

“Beyond that, we’re seeing smooth sailing and significantly less problems than we anticipated,” she added.

The FBI is aware of robocalls that are being reported on Election Day that urge voters to “stay home and stay safe.”

“We are aware of reports of robocalls and have no further comment. As a reminder, the FBI encourages the American public to verify any election and voting information they may receive through their local election officials,” the FBI told CNN.

“Robocalls of this nature happen every election and so I think what would be most helpful is repeating that message to the American public that… they happen every election cycle. Be mindful of people that are trying to intimidate you, undermine your confidence, but keep calm, vote on,” according to a senior official with the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security agency.

Iowa Secretary of State spokesman Kevin Hall confirmed to CNN that the office has shared information with the FBI regarding a recorded phone call urging Iowans to “stay home and stay safe.”

He did not know how many Iowans have received the call.

The Iowa Secretary of State also forwarded the information to the state’s Division of Intelligence and Fusion Center, which supports law enforcement, according to Hall

CNN has reached out to the FBI for comment. 

“USTelecom’s Industry Traceback Group is actively tracing these calls. You’re right, it has been around for a bit,” Brian Weiss, spokesman for USTelecom tell CNN.

CORRECTION: This post has been updated to correct reporting on FBI action with regard to the robocalls.

The city of Minneapolis is having a “very smooth” voting day so far with no incidents of equipment malfunction or voter intimidation, said the city’s director of elections. 

Minneapolis Elections and Voter Services director Grace Wachlarowicz said that as of noon, an estimated 206,876 ballots have been cast for this election in Minneapolis, with voter turnout hitting around 76%.

In 2016, the city had about 79% voter turnout but with approximately 26,000 less registered voters than in 2020.

Minneapolis is the largest city in Minnesota with a population of at least 435,885 residents in 2019, according to government data.

The wait times within the city are minimal to none, attributed it to the large early voter turnout this year, Wachlarowicz said.

In a typical voting year, approximately 30% of the vote is absentee, while 65 to 70% is in person on election day. This year the numbers are switched, she said, and approximately 65 to 70% of ballots cast so far was done by absentee voting. 

While there was a slight slowdown with poll pads uploading absentee data this morning, it was solved before polls opened and didn’t affect voters, according to Wachlarowicz. 

There have also been no reports so far of issues with voter intimidation or political clothing in polling places, and mask-wearing has been adhered to in most situations, she continued.

While there are some instances of people not wearing masks, the voter was either provided one or complied with the designated area away from most voters. 

Two polling locations in DeKalb County, Georgia, have extended voting past 7 p.m. local time, since both locations were delayed opening on Election Day. Officials say that this should not delay Georgia’s statewide reporting results at 7 p.m. ET.

According to DeKalb County, the two locations are:

The Valley Brook precinct, located at Valley Brook Baptist Church, 1198 N. Valley Brook Road, Decatur, 30033, will stay open until 7:40 p.m.
The Gresham Road precinct, located at Obama Elementary School, 3132 Clifton Church Road SE, Atlanta, 30316, will remain open until 7:45 p.m.

According to DeKalb County, this extension was requested, in an abundance of caution, to ensure that all electors at the locations have the required full 12 hours of voting.

Typically in Pennsylvania, mail-in and absentee ballots are cast at a rate of between 70-80%.

By 3 p.m. ET, the Keystone State was already ahead of pace.

“We already have 81%, and that was with all day today still yet to come,” Pennsylvania Secretary of State Kathy Boockvar told CNN’s Erin Burnett, adding “not to mention the late arriving ballots.”

“We are already above average from normally what we would see from absentee ballots being cast,” Boockvar said.

For the 2020 general election, Pennsylvanians requested 3.1 million mail-in ballots.

This means that slightly fewer than 600,000 ballots have yet to be received.

Watch the moment:

Video Ad Feedback

e57632aa-0434-439e-a98f-70b748998d7e.mp4

00:57 - Source: cnn

After his foray this morning to his campaign headquarters in Virginia, President Trump is expected to remain at the White House for the rest of the day. But he’ll continue to receive regular updates on the state of his re-election effort by officials, some of whom have established a “war room” on the White House campus. 

The campaign operation will be based in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building adjacent to the West Wing, an official said. 

The “war room” is being funded entirely by the campaign, a spokesman said. Federal rules bar the use of taxpayer resources for political purposes. The President has previously shown little regard for those rules, including when he hosted the final night of the Republican National Convention from the South Lawn.

“The war room needed to be in close proximity to the President and there is no expense whatsoever to American taxpayers for the use of a room in the EEOB, where events like prayer services and receptions for outside groups frequently occur,” campaign communications director Tim Murtaugh told CNN. 

“Every piece of equipment, including WiFi and computers, was paid for by the campaign, and no White House staff is involved. The arrangement has been approved by White House counsel,” Murtaugh said. 

Some background: The last incumbent to spend Election Night at the White House was George W. Bush. His chief strategist Karl Rove set up a workspace in the old family dining room on the state floor with links to campaign headquarters and RNC to provide him updates on the state of the race.

He called it the “bat cave.” During the day and into the evening, Bush popped his head in to receive updates. 

When it came time for Bush to address supporters, he traveled to the nearby Ronald Reagan building in Washington, where his campaign was having its election night party. 

By contrast, Trump is holding the whole event at the White House. Originally planned for 400 people, the event will occur in the elegant parlors and ballrooms on the state floor of the White House, including the East Room and Grand Foyer. 

The actual number of people attending the White House Election Night party could be smaller than 400. One source familiar with the matter said closer to 250 guests were now expected. This source added that all guests will receive a rapid tested for Covid-19 and each guest will receive a testing bracelet. 

Whether and when Trump himself appears isn’t clear. He said earlier Tuesday he wasn’t working on either an acceptance or concession speech. 

Arizona Secretary of State Katie Hobbs said either candidate has the possibility to win in the state, but adds that Joe Biden does have an edge according to polling.

“I try to be non-partisan, but we’ve seen Biden leading pretty much most of the polls that have been done here for Arizona. The margins vary, but he’s been ahead,” Hobbs told CNN’s Erin Burnett.

Hobbs added that she’s seen “so much enthusiasm” this year compared to 2016 and she believes “Arizona could really go either way and I don’t think it belongs to one candidate or the other right now.”

Hobbs said that results of the race will come in later due to early ballots that were turned in within the past few days.

“We will have a good number of results available tonight after the polls close at 8 p.m. Arizona time. What we won’t know until really late tonight, is how many outstanding ballots there are left to count and those are the early ballots that were returned in the last few days… and that is the number that’s going to tell us what percentage of the votes have been reported,” Hobbs added.

The last time a Democratic presidential candidate won Arizona was in 1996.

Watch the moment:

Video Ad Feedback

b9a94fd3-5f19-48c9-bad3-6106103bfa9e.mp4

01:44 - Source: cnn

The state of Texas hasn’t gone to a Democratic presidential candidate since 1976, but CNN’s Brian Todd spoke to Democratic voters in Houston who are hoping to reverse that trend.

“Enough is enough… I’ve got grandkids and I’m worried about their future and we can’t have no more of that,” voter John Smith told CNN outside of a Houston polling place of the prospect of four more years with President Trump in the White House.

Smith said of Trump, “I think he wants to be King. I really do. I think if he get in there and win again, that he might change the amendments and [create] unlimited terms on the President.”

Despite partisan positions, Todd reported that the crowds gathering are largely peaceful, though passionate, about their respective candidates.

“This place is pulsating with energy. These people are not content to just come out and vote. They want to really engage in the art of dueling rhetoric, dueling campaign speeches, dueling shouting matches,” Todd said, calling the Houston environment “part campaign polling place and part Woodstock.”

CNN’s Brian Todd reports:

Video Ad Feedback

bd8a0653-aa2d-4cd3-84e8-d99b53bda8b2.mp4

02:19 - Source: cnn

Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden just spoke moments ago in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, addressing a large crowd on a street that cheered and shouted support at him. Cries of “We love you” and “Uncle Joe” were heard, among others.

Biden told the crowd, “We’re going to have more people vote this year than any time in American history,” saying he’s been told to expect over 150 million people to vote.

He said voters between the ages of 18-30 are turning out in big numbers and understands that “54% of the vote so far is women.” 

Biden continued to criticize President Trump, telling the crowd: 

“The President’s got a lot of things backwards. One of which is, he thinks that he can decide who gets to vote. Well, guess what? The people who are going to decide who gets to be president!”
“Just have to remember who we are, dammit. This is the United States of America!,” he added.

He concluded his speech by telling the group that from Philadelphia he’ll be traveling back home to Wilmington, Delaware, where he’ll be for election night.

Watch the moment:

Video Ad Feedback

f6396566-d5c8-45ba-bb9a-19c32057fab9.mp4

02:57 - Source: cnn

At least 2,893,295 Coloradans turned out to the polls as of 10 a.m. local time, Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold said in a virtual news conference on Tuesday.

Griswold said the turnout “is that 76.6% of active registered voters, so that is really high. It’s very exciting.”

Griswold said the state surpassed the 2016 voter turnout this morning.

She detailed voter turnout in the state, saying it included at least 930,452 from registered Democrats, 833,215 from registered Republicans, and 1,088,369 from unaffiliated voters. “So, we’re just seeing continued high voter engagement,” she said. 

Griswold added that they expect to report 70 to 80% of the total ballots cast tonight.

Griswold also reminded voters that eligible Coloradans can still register and vote today at any voting center in the state. Coloradans can drop off their ballots at a ballot dropbox or voting center

When asked about voter security the Secretary of State said, “everything is going really well” and that there were no incidents to report. She also added that the state was working with the National Guard to help monitor and protect the election support system.

“I’m in the office right now we are here with the National Guard and our security team monitoring all networks.,” Griswold said. 

Griswold also said there were no physical security issues to report other than one incident yesterday that included two men in military clothes filming voters at a drop box and a male with open carry. Griswold said police were dispatched and the incident is being investigated by the Attorney General. She also said there was no major campaign disinformation to report. 

Ballots in Colorado have to be received by 7 p.m. local time. 

Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger said Georgia is having a “successful” election day so far.

“Our November action plan was to encourage absentee voting,” Raffensperger said at a news conference Tuesday afternoon.

“Our goal was 1.5 million voters to vote absentee. We had 1.6 million requests and right now we probably have about almost pushing 1.5 million ballots accepted, so that was a win on us.  Also, we had a goal of 2 million voters to vote early, and we blew past that about 2.7 or 2.8. And that was a success. And then today for election day, the ability to handle up to 2 million more voters and we’ll see what the total is by the end of the day,” he added.

 Raffensperger said that two counties had operation issues that were initiated at the “precinct level.”  

“They have addressed those and resolved those,” he added.   

The issues were in Spalding County, located in west central Georgia south of Atlanta, and Morgan County, in north central Georgia east of Atlanta. 

Gabriel Sterling, Georgia’s Voting System Implementation Manager, described the issues in Spalding and Morgan as “data set issues” in both cases.   

“There were 18 polling locations that were affected in Spalding and seven in Morgan. Four of the ones in Morgan have been hard reset and are going fine. The other eight in Spalding did a hard reset and are fine. But let’s make one thing very clear, they were using ballot activation codes. Voting did not stop, it might have slowed down for a second to figure out what to do. This office will work closely with the Spalding elections director,” Sterling told said at the press conference.   

“Morgan jumped on it very quickly and used the initial backups that this state had outlined for them to do which was the ballot activation codes. They said there were no real backups in Morgan at all and in Spalding we saw some,” Sterling said.  

“We have three teams out there doing the hard resets. It takes about a minute each stop it. It’s still a big county.”  

Raffensperger told CNN that Georgia has not had any malware or cybersecurity issues in the state so far, and also told CNN that they have not heard of any legal challenges to any absentee mail ballots as of this afternoon.  

Democratic nominee Joe Biden’s presidential campaign projected confidence on a public Election Day briefing call, saying “it is clear we are winning.” 

Campaign manager Jen O’Malley Dillon said that they are “confident” about their path to victory and “clear-eyed” on what will come in when. The campaign is staying consistent in its message that it believes the winner will be known tonight. 

They emphasized multiple times during the call that they do not need to win Florida and Pennsylvania to get to 270 electoral votes, providing several different pathways to victory. 

If the campaign does not win Pennsylvania, they see a path to victory that includes winning Michigan and Wisconsin along with either Florida, North Carolina or Arizona.

Without either Pennsylvania or Florida, their path to victory includes winning Michigan, Wisconsin and either Arizona or North Carolina. That being said, Dillon said they believe Pennsylvania is a place where they are “far ahead.” 

Dillon touted that the campaign sent 32 million texts and knocked on 1.3 million doors in the final Get Out the Vote weekend of the election. 

In terms of the election process itself, the campaign’s Bob Bauer reported “minimal issues” with voting across the country saying that matters are “proceeding really well.” 

State election data shows at least 996,970 Iowans cast their ballot early, either in person or by mail. That’s about 48% of registered voters and 63% of those that voted in the 2016 election.

Almost 41,000 people across the state voted on Monday.

Registered Democrats made up 45% of the early voters. Registered Republicans made up 33% of early voters and 21% were unaffiliated. 

Polls close at 10 p.m. ET (9 p.m. CT.) Absentee ballots can be returned via mail until Nov. 9 as long as they’re postmarked by Nov. 2.

Democratic vice presidential nominee Sen. Kamala Harris spoke to reporters as she arrived at Detroit’s airport this afternoon. 

“Here we are, back in Detroit — it’s Election Day, I’m so happy to be back here,” Harris said.

The candidate spoke briefly to press and took questions before heading off to local stops. 

“I want to remind everybody obviously that the polls close at 8 o’clock tonight,” she said. “The path to the White House and the path to determining who will be the next President of the United States without question runs right through Michigan.”

Sen. Harris took a question on what her message would be to those who are on edge about potential unrest tonight.

“Have faith in the American people. I do strongly believe that we - whoever we vote for - will defend the integrity of our democracy and the peaceful transfer of power. And that there are certain lines that no matter who you vote for, they won’t cross,” she said.

North Carolina’s election results will be delayed by at least 45 minutes after the board of elections extended voting at four locations that were having problems this morning.

The State Board of Elections voted on Tuesday to extend voting at four precincts that opened late on Election Day.

The NCSBE voted 3-2 to extend a polling place in Sampson County, near Fayetteville, for 45 minutes after the precinct experienced printer issues.  

The extension means that results statewide will be delayed by at least 45 minutes tonight, holding results until all polls have closed. 

The board also voted 3-2 to keep a second Sampson County precinct open for 24 minutes, a Cabarrus County precinct open for 17 minutes, and a Guilford County precinct open for 34 minutes.

Any voter that shows up at theses precincts after 7:30 p.m. ET would vote a provisional ballot.

CNN’s Suzanne Malveaux reports:

Video Ad Feedback

c4991431-017b-4f86-9cc8-b55f13a155ab.mp4

02:09 - Source: cnn

In response to earlier reports of robocalls targeting Flint voters with misinformation, Sheldon Neeley, Mayor of Flint, Michigan, issued a statement saying: 

“In light of disturbing reports of misleading robocalls designed to disrupt the election process, we are reminding the residents of Flint that today is Election Day and, as always, to make sure they rely on credible information. All residents must deliver their absentee ballot, cast their vote, or be in line at the polls by 8 p.m. to have their vote counted. 
“We had lines of voters at several Flint polling locations when they opened at 7 a.m., but things seem to be moving quickly and smoothly now. We are offering any and all support needed to City Clerk Inez Brown, who is ultimately responsible for managing today’s election, including additional security precautions to make sure polling places remain safe spaces free of threat and intimidation.
“Those who want to vote but are not yet registered can still do so at the City Clerk’s office inside City Hall. All registered voters should vote at their polling place. You can find yours at Michigan.gov/VOTE.
“Remember: Vote today.”

Earlier, Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel flagged via Twitter that a misinformation robocall was targeting Flint voters, telling them that if the line is too long they should leave and come back tomorrow.

She said this was categorically false because voters must be in line by 8 p.m. tonight to have their votes count.

Vice President Mike Pence is spending his Election Day flooding the airwaves doing 21 TV and radio interviews at local media outlets in battleground states.

Pence has done local interviews with at least seven local media radio and TV stations to make a last-minute pitch to voters before polls close tonight. 

The radio and TV stations he’s interviewed with are in battleground states including Florida, Wisconsin, Ohio, North Carolina, Michigan and Nevada.

A White House official said he’s otherwise spending the day with his family.

In New Hampshire’s second largest polling place in Londonderry High School’s gym, Covid-19 safety was a priority in setting up the location according to officials. 

With approximately 15,000 voters expected today — more than 5,000 ballots were cast absentee — state-provided acrylic glass dividers are set up along every step of the check in process, including at the tables where new voters can register.

All of the poll workers are wearing masks, and a cleaning crew is sanitizing booths after voters leave.

There is even an outdoor “accessible” voting area, where voters can drop off absentee ballots and even vote without going inside. 

Masks are not required, though they’re highly encouraged. Maskless voters — a minority of voters throughout the day —are diverted to a special row of voting booths closest to the exit. 

CNN’s Polo Sandoval reports from Londonderry, New Hampshire:

Video Ad Feedback

6d3cc4d4-b392-4d36-961b-afa932902d1f.mp4

02:05 - Source: cnn

As of 11:15 a.m. MT, at least 74,000 people had cast ballots today in Arizona’s Maricopa County, according to the county recorder’s office. Maricopa is home to Phoenix and its suburbs. 

County election officials are expecting between 150,000 and 210,000 people to vote in person today, said spokeswoman Megan Gilbertson.

The county has verified 1.7 million early ballots, she said. 

The county has been tabulating its early votes since Oct. 20, and will be posting early voting results at 8 p.m. MT, she said. Gilbertson said she couldn’t say whether all or just some of the early votes will be posted at that time.

She said there have been no significant technical problems with today’s voting so far.

Attorneys for the state Democratic and Republican parties also said they haven’t had any reports of major problems. 

Connecticut is experiencing very high voter turnout, Secretary of State Denise Merrill told reporters Tuesday.

Speaking outside a West Hartford polling location, Merrill said that state-wide in-person turnout was approaching 50% of registered voters by midday.

“If you combine that with the 25% of the voters who voted absentee ballot, you’re looking at something like 75% already, and it’s only noon,” Merrill said.

“I think it’s wonderful,” she added. “I can throw away all those speeches I used to make about the apathy of voters.”

Total voter turnout in Connecticut for the 2016 election was 75%, according to Merrill.

“Of course, we have the biggest number of registered voters we’ve ever had,” Merril said, “a couple hundred thousand more than we usually have.”

Merrill said that there had been some delays Tuesday morning caused by a loss of power to a few polling stations, which she attributed to overnight wind storms. She said power had been “quickly restored.”

Students on and around college campuses across the country are ripe with enthusiasm to vote today. Here’s what some students told us about their states:

Pennsylvania

Students from the University of Pittsburgh, many of whom were eager to cast their ballot before heading to class, lined up around the block at the Oakland Career Center near the campus of University of Pittsburgh this morning, Sophia Shapiro, co-president of the University of Pittsburgh Students for Biden, told CNN.

“Everyone’s just really excited to cast their ballot. We had a volunteer try to compete to be first in line this morning. People are enthusiastic and optimistic and really motivated to make their voice heard,” Shapiro said.

Arizona

Meanwhile, while the polling site on the campus of Mesa Community College, in Mesa, Arizona didn’t open until 6 a.m. local time, the line of people waiting to vote had already formed by 5:30 a.m. local time, Carla Naranjo, a 21-year-old organizer with Arizona Center for Empowerment (a voting protection agency) told CNN.

The site at Mesa Community College is open to community members and students, Naranjo said, adding that the line was filled with “a good portion of young people.”

“They come in and say yeah I’m a first time voter, they come out excited with a sticker, and just in general, they are energized and ready to vote,” Naranjo said of the young voters she spoke with in Mesa.

Naranjo, a student at Arizona State University in Tempe, Arizona, voted early in 2020, marking her first time voting in a presidential election.

Virginia

Likewise in Virginia, 20-year-old Ian Waite is tabling on campus at George Mason University in Fairfax County.

Waite, Chairman of the George Mason College Republicans and the College Republicans Federation of Virginia, is voting for the first time in a presidential election and voted Republican up and down the ballot, he told CNN.

“I think overall our campus is very energized this election. Our campus does a great job providing opportunities for us to voice our beliefs,” said.
“Overall I expect our voter turnout on campus to be pretty high,” he said. “I think it’s a combination of one, we’re so close to DC that we have a generally energized population on campus, and two, this election is critical to a significant number of issues that speak to our generation and we’re looking for the best solutions to those issues,” Waite added.

Texas

And in Texas, students are voting on campus at the University of Houston, where students, administrators and Harris county officials worked to turn the TDECU Stadium into a polling center for students and community members on Election Day.

“The enthusiasm shown by UH students has been one of the best showings of unity I’ve ever seen on this campus,” 22-year-old Isaiah Martin and an on-campus group that works with administrators on student initiatives at the University of Houston, told CNN.
“From the many student organizations that made their own creative videos, to all the dedicated poll workers and to the administrators that worked tirelessly to support this effort, our school has jumped on the opportunity to get out the young vote and make sure that all of our voices are heard this election cycle.”

Maribeth Witzel-Behl, the city clerk in Madison, Wisconsin, tells CNN that as of noon, more than a third of the absentee ballots from across the city have already been processed.

“Our goal is that by the time the polls would ordinarily close at 8 p.m., that we will be through everything. So that’s why we have our polling locations calling us every couple of hours to let us know how many absentees have been processed so far,” she said.

“And then those locations that have processed the least percentage of their absentees are getting additional help dispatched to their locations so they can focus on that,” Witzel-Behl added.

The city clerk’s office also tweeted that 33.48% of absentee ballots have already been processed.  

As of Tuesday morning, the city of Madison had 121,207 absentee ballots returned out of 127,900 absentee ballots issued. Voters in Madison can return their absentee ballots to their local polling locations or the city clerk’s office today by 8 p.m. local time.

Witzel-Behl added that she requires poll workers in the city to call in to alert her office when there are lines longer than 10 minutes, and she said she has not received any of those calls yet today.

“When the polls opened this morning, there were locations where people had already been lined up to vote. And so there’s that initial rush every single election where people are part of that first group of voters. Then once we get beyond that, our goal is that everybody gets through the line within 15 minutes, and the election officials are to call us if their line reaches 10 minutes long, and we haven’t received any calls indicating that there’s a 10 minute line,” she said.

Witzel-Beh also said there were no problems to flag in Madison. She did say that a few absentee ballots jammed, but they were cleared really quickly, and that is the extent of the issues she has heard about.

President Trump suggested on Tuesday that he does not a have a concession or acceptance speech prepared.

A member of the press asked Trump at the RNC annex in Arlington, Virginia, whether he had written an acceptance or concession speech.

The President responded, “No, I’m not thinking about concession speech or acceptance speech yet.”

“Hopefully we’ll be only doing one of those two and you know, winning is easy. Losing is never easy. Not for me it’s not,” he continued.

Watch:

Video Ad Feedback

5cf1ae11-660c-4a30-9602-2c3cb0fa0c2f.mp4

00:17 - Source: cnn

Federal authorities have put into place “non-scalable” fence around the the perimeter of the White House in preparation for potential civil unrest.

As of this afternoon, peaceful protesters and demonstrators were outside of the fencing near Lafayette Park and St. John’s Church.

Here’s what the scene looked like:

The fencing, the same type that was put up during protests this summer, encompasses the Ellipse and Lafayette Square.

President Trump again strongly criticized the decision by the Supreme Court to allow Pennsylvania to receive ballots up to three days after Election Day, calling it “a very dangerous decision for our country.”

“I think the ruling on Pennsylvania was an unfortunate one by the Supreme Court because I think we should know what happens on the night. Let people put their ballots in earlier, but you have to have numbers, you can have these things delayed for many days and maybe weeks, you can’t do that,” Trump said during remarks at his campaign headquarters in Virginia on Tuesday.

“And a lot of shenanigans, a lot of bad things happen with ballots when you say ‘oh let’s devote days and days’ and all of a sudden, the ballot count changes,” Trump baselessly added, implying cheating could occur if ballots are counted after Election Day.

However ballots are always counted after Election Day. Per a CNN fact check: “it’s media outlets, not the government, that sometimes — but not always — unofficially project a winner on election night. The outlets do so by making projections based on the incomplete available data, not because they possess certified final totals.”

Last night, Trump said the decision by the Supreme Court “will allow rampant and unchecked cheating and will undermine our entire systems of laws. It will also induce violence in the streets.” Twitter flagged the tweet as misleading.

 “I think it’s a very dangerous decision for our country in many ways dangerous, in many ways,” Trump added in his remarks Tuesday.

Approximately 50 voters were given an incorrect ballot when they showed up to vote at Hickory Ridge Middle School in Harrisburg, North Carolina, this morning.

Cabarrus County, which is northeast of Charlotte, has determined the wrong ballots were distributed between 6:30 a.m. ET until just before 7:30 a.m. ET. The ballots distributed at that time did not include the North Carolina 83rd District House race.

The Cabarrus County Board of Elections is encouraging voters who were at that polling place between those times to return to the site and cast a provisional ballot, for the House race only, by 7:30 p.m. ET. If they don’t cast a provisional ballot, their vote will still count. They just won’t have voted for the House race. 

Kasia Faryna Thompson, Cabarrus County Director of Communications, says the board is working to track down those voters and at this point, “the board knows who each of the voters are.”

CNN’s Washington Bureau Chief Sam Feist explained how CNN makes projections and why 2020 is different to other years.

“This year’s different than any other year. Everything in the country is different because of [Covid-19,]” Feist said.

One of the biggest changes in 2020’s election rhythm is the massive uptick in mail-in ballots.

“It takes longer to count mail-in ballots. You have to open the envelope, open the outer envelope, check the signature, scan the ballot. It takes a while,” he said. 

Certain states, including Florida and North Carolina, have been processing mail-in ballots for weeks, with early counts likely to favor Democratic nominee Joe Biden.

Elsewhere, including Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, mail-in ballots aren’t tabulated until after voting closes, a detail that could favor President Trump initially.

“Those states may favor Donald Trump late into the night, until those mail-in ballots go in, and then the count will even out a little bit,” Feist said.

A look at how CNN makes projections: Wolf Blitzer announces that the network has projected this or that candidate will win a particular race.

The process that leads to Blitzer saying those words is careful and complicated. It involves both real-time results and information from exit polls. CNN, NBC, ABC and CBS work with the polling firm Edison Research in what is known as the National Election Pool for results and exit polling data. Fox News and the Associated Press have a separate arrangement.

For additional details as to how CNN calls a presidential election, read more here.

Watch:

Video Ad Feedback

3b4dbbbe-dffb-442b-b901-d61a37038f6e.mp4

04:19 - Source: cnn