In the past several hours, news organizations have named Biden the “apparent winner” in Wisconsin, as vote tabulation appears to be complete but his margin is narrow enough that a recount may occur. He has a 20K vote lead, or 0.6%; that’s smaller than Trump’s margin of victory in Wisconsin four years ago.

News organizations have also named Biden the winner in Michigan, as the counting of votes from urban areas has given him an ever-widening lead throughout the day. Right now his lead is about 120K votes, or 2.1%.

Trump’s leads in both Georgia and Pennsylvania have been compressing throughout the day as votes from urban areas come in. Trump’s lead in Georgia currently sits at only 80K, or 0.8%; Senator Perdue remains very slightly above the all-important 50% line, at 50.2%. Pennsylvania is now at 51-48 Trump, whereas I think he started the day ahead more like 56-43. Both states remain in significant doubt.

North Carolina hasn’t been called yet, but Trump’s lead remains 1.4% and the result here seems less uncertain than in GA or PA. Senator Tillis has a 1.8% lead over Cunningham.

There have been no new developments during the day in either Arizona or Nevada, although both states are expected to report new votes later tonight. Some news organizations have not yet called Arizona for Biden. While Biden’s lead in Nevada is only 8K, or 0.6%, most observers seem to believe the uncounted vote there is more likely to break for Biden; whereas in Arizona, where Biden’s lead in 3.4%, the nature of the uncounted vote is less clear.

At any rate: Nevada plus Arizona is enough to get Biden to 270 regardless of what happens in GA/PA/NC. In mid-afternoon Biden gave a brief speech, including a statement that will probably go down in the annals of U.S. political history as one of the great semantic statements of all time:

I’m not here to declare that we’ve won, but I am here to report when the count is finished, we believe we will be the winners.

Naturally I was reminded of the famous line from “Deep Space Homer”:

Gentlemen, you’ve both worked very hard. And in a way, you’re both winners. But in another more accurate way, Barney is the winner.

One disappointing piece of news this afternoon was that Gideon conceded to Senator Collins in Maine. It looks like Collins has actually made it to 51% on first-choice votes, without the need to redistribute the third-party candidates’ votes.

We may soon be entering the “protracted litigation phase” of the Presidential election. And, of course, if things break badly for Biden from here and the final total ends up at 270-268, then we could eventually enter the “faithless elector” phase, as highlighted in a new article today from The Atlantic.