Election 2020: Day 2, 12pm

Vote continues to be counted in the several remaining states of interest. A quick snapshot of the current state of affairs:

  • In Nevada, where no change was made yesterday to voting totals, this morning Biden’s lead has widened slightly from 8K to 12K, or 0.9%.
  • In Arizona, there is more outstanding vote yet to be counted than was originally believed (which may have misled some news organizations into calling Arizona for Biden); but, unlike in the other states of interest, this late vote appears to be breaking for Trump. Over the past 24 hours Biden’s margin has narrowed from 3.4% to 2.5%.
  • Georgia keeps narrowing as the vote totals from metropolitan Atlanta increase. Right now Trump’s lead is down to less than 14K, or 0.3%. Senator Purdue is now at 50.0%; if he drops below 50% then there will be two separate runoff Senate elections in January.
  • Pennsylvania also keeps narrowing as votes from Philadelphia and elsewhere trickle in. Trump’s margin, in double digits on election night, is now down to 1.8%, or 115K votes.
  • North Carolina looks to be in a suspended state, as they wait for ballots postmarked by election day to arrive and be counted. The state remains uncalled but there don’t look to have been any updates made to the vote totals lately, with Trump still ahead by 1.4% and Senator Tillis still ahead by 1.8%

Nate Cohn (from the New York Times’ The Upshot) thinks things look good for Biden in NV, AZ, GA, and PA. If true that would give Biden a 306-232 win, which is exactly the same as the Trump-Clinton electoral vote margin in 2016 (before taking faithless electors into account).

Right now Biden has a 3.8 million vote lead in the national popular vote, which is only about 1 million more than Clinton’s 2016 lead. However, I imagine that lead will continue to widen, with plenty of vote yet to be counted in Democratic strongholds like California, New York, and Illinois.