2020 presidential race remains too close to call
Biden #Biden
© Patrick Semansky, AP Images President Donald Trump and former Vice President Joe Biden debate in September at Case Western University in Cleveland.
USA TODAY’S coverage of the 2020 election continues as states work to finish counting the ballots. Be sure to refresh this page often to get the latest information on how things are going.
USA TODAY will have live election results.
It’s officially the day after Election Day and the country, and world, are waking up without knowing who the next president of the United States will be.
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It was expected we wouldn’t know who the victor was Tuesday night.
Biden wins Wisconsin
Democratic nominee Joe Biden has won the state of Wisconsin, a key “blue wall” state that had crushed Hillary Rodham Clinton’s hopes in 2016.
Biden’s win in Wisconsin, which came a day after polls closed and as absentee ballots from the Democrat-heavy city of Milwaukee poured in, represented a major shift in the tight race toward 270 Electoral College votes between Biden and President Donald Trump, widening the former vice president’s already growing path to the White House.
Biden overtook Trump Wednesday when Milwaukee reported its roughly 170,000 outstanding absentee votes, which were overwhelmingly Democratic. Late returns from Green Bay and Kenosha only added to his slender lead. The state, with 10 Electoral College votes, had long been considered a top tier battleground with the potential to give huge momentum to Biden or Trump.
If Biden also captures Michigan and keeps his lead in Nevada, it will allow him to secure the 270 electoral votes needed to win the White House even if he loses Pennsylvania, where votes were still being counted in a close contest.
In a closing crescendo of campaign travel, Trump made five trips to Wisconsin in the final month of the race amid a surging of coronavirus cases. His last stop, in Kenosha, came the day before the election.
Biden made his only October visit to the state on the Friday before the election. He outspent Trump heavily in the home stretch on TV in Milwaukee and Green Bay, the most important media markets.
Turnout in the state topped 3.2 million – the most votes ever cast in a Wisconsin election. At least 71% of the state’s voting-age adults cast ballots – the highest turnout rate ever after the 2004 election.
In the end, the result was much tighter than polling had predicted. For much of Wednesday morning, Biden led by a mere 20,000 votes, close to Trump’s winning margin in 2016. Polling conducted before the election had regularly shown Biden with a near double digit lead in the state.
It was the fourth time in six presidential elections that Wisconsin was decided by less than a percentage point, and the sixth time in eight presidential races that the winner failed to reach 50%.
Wisconsin was not only at the epicenter of the presidential race. It was also at the center of the two national crises that shaped the campaign’s final months: the pandemic, and the clash over policing and protest. Its coronavirus caseload rose faster than any other top battleground.
Democrats were devastated by the loss there in 2016, marking the first time a Republican presidential candidate carried the state since Ronald Reagan in 1984. Trump mercilessly mocked Clinton for not campaigning frequently enough there, suggesting she had taken it for granted at her peril.
– Craig Gilbert and John Fritze
Trump files lawsuit in Michigan to ‘halt counting’
President Donald Trump’s campaign said Wednesday it filed a lawsuit in a Michigan state court to “halt counting” ballots in the state until the Republicans could gain access to the tallying process.
The lawsuit, which the campaign did not immediately make available for review, appears to be one of the first filed in the wake of tight contests in several battleground states.
“We have filed suit today in the Michigan Court of Claims to halt counting until meaningful access has been granted,” Trump campaign manager Bill Stepien said in a statement. “We also demand to review those ballots which were opened and counted while we did not have meaningful access.”
The prospects of the lawsuit are not known.
– John Fritze and David Jackson
Maine Sen. Susan Collins defeats Gideon
Maine Sen. Susan Collins has been reelected. Democratic challenger Sara Gideon conceded Wednesday afternoon, acknowledging that she lost a hard-fought and closely watched contest to the Republican incumbent.
Democrats had hoped a win by Gideon would help them gain a majority in the Senate, but the race in Maine was among several disappointments for the Democrats nationwide.
Gideon said during a livestream at 1:30 p.m. that she called Collins to concede.
“I congratulated her on winning this election, and I told her I will always be available to help serve the people of Maine,” Gideon said. “Ultimately, that’s why I entered this race. And it’s why I got involved in public service in the first place.”
– Steven Porter (Portsmouth Herald)
Maine divides votes: 3 for Biden, 1 for Trump
Democratic nominee Joe Biden was projected to win Maine, but not the state’s competitive 2nd Congressional District where President Donald Trump campaigned repeatedly.
Maine is one of two states, along with Nebraska, that divides its electoral college votes. Nebraska’s 2nd Congressional District supported Biden, while the rest of the state backed Trump.
Maine’s 2nd District, the largest district east of the Mississippi, covers most of the state geographically outside of the more Democratic areas of Portland and Augusta. Trump won the district in 2016, marking the first time in history that the state split its electoral votes.
Trump campaigned in Bangor and invited a lobsterman to speak at the Republican National Convention. He promoted reopening a stretch of the Atlantic Ocean off New England to lobster fishing, after the area had been closed under the Obama administration while Biden was vice president.
Trump also made a quick stop to visit an orchard in Bangor in late October.
But Maine as a state has supported Democratic presidential candidates since 1992. Biden enjoyed support for his proposals to strengthen requirements for the federal government to buy products manufactured in America.
– Bart Jansen
As Biden leads in Wisconsin, Trump campaign vows to request recount
President Donald Trump’s campaign vowed Wednesday to request a recount in Wisconsin, one of the nation’s most closely watched battleground states, before either candidate was projected to win its 10 electoral votes. Biden was holding a slight lead in the state.
“Wisconsin has been a razor thin race as we always knew that it would be,” said Bill Stepien, Trump’s campaign manager. “The president is well within the threshold to request a recount and we will immediately do so.”
Though the state was too close to call, Democrat Joe Biden appeared to erase Trump’s lead in early returns and was ahead by a slim margin by Wednesday morning.
A Biden win in Wisconsin, should it happen, would represent a major break in the race toward 270 Electoral College votes in his favor, substantially widening his path to the presidency.
Biden overtook Trump in early returns as Milwaukee reported its roughly 170,000 outstanding absentee votes, which were overwhelmingly Democratic. Late returns from Green Bay and Kenosha only added to his slender lead.
Democrats were devastated by the loss there in 2016, marking the first time a Republican presidential candidate carried the state since Ronald Reagan in 1984.
A candidate in Wisconsin may request a recount if they trail by no more than 1% of the total votes cast for the office. Who pays for the recount depends on the closeness of the final results.
– John Fritze
Trump attacks vote counting – but GOP blocked changes
As votes are counted in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan, President Donald Trump tweeted criticisms about the time it’s taken to count ballots – without noting that Republican legislators contributed to the long counts in those same states.
“They are finding Biden votes all over the place — in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Michigan. So bad for our Country!” Trump tweeted mid-day Wednesday.
Biden has benefitted from counts of absentee and mail-in ballots. Democrats organized mail-in voting campaigns to appeal to people who worried about going to the polls in person because of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Election officials in Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin wanted to start counting these ballots earlier. But GOP-run legislatures in those states blocked changes that, as in other states, would have allowed earlier preparations to count these votes.
Twitter flagged another Trump tweet in which he claimed officials in Pennsylvania were trying to make a 500,000-vote advantage “disappear.”
Content in the tweet “is disputed and might be misleading about an election or other civic process,” Twitter said in a note attached to Trump’s post.
– David Jackson
Biden leads in Wisconsin with almost all unofficial returns in, state officials say
Wisconsin once again went down to the wire in the 2020 election, with Democrat Joe Biden holding a lead of around 20,000 votes with almost all the unofficial returns in.
Trump has vowed to seek a recount in the crucial swing state as he and Biden bald toward the 270 Electoral College votes to win the presidency.
Biden overtook Trump in early morning hours when the city of Milwaukee finally reported its roughly 170,000 absentee votes, which were overwhelmingly Democratic. Then late returns from Green Bay and the city of Kenosha added to his slender lead. Trump had nurtured a lead of more than 100,000 votes before that.
Meagan Wolfe, the director of the state Elections Commission, told NBC News on Wednesday that all ballots have been counted, though the results have not yet been made final.
“All of our unofficial results have come in from the local election offices,” she said. “Now we’re in the important process of triple checking the results.”
– Craig Gilbert (Milwaukee Journal Sentinel)
8.6 million votes remain in states yet to be called
About 8.6 million outstanding votes remain in states that have yet to be called, according to a USA TODAY analysis of estimates reported by the Associated Press.
About two-thirds of the expected votes are from counties that favored President Donald J. Trump in 2016, though experts expect many of the remaining votes will favor Democrats. Trump generally cast doubt on the accuracy of voting by mail, while Democratic voters may have been more worried about coronavirus.
The analysis is based on the AP’s “estimated election vote percentage,” an estimate that continues to change throughout the day as more votes are counted. It also differs based on the source. The AP says Pennsylvania has counted 64% of its ballots. The New York Times pegs that number at 80%.
The AP numbers are almost surely high. Michigan’s secretary of state, Jocelyn Benson, said in a press conference that just 100,000 ballots remain to be counted in Michigan. According to the EEVP calculations, that number is about 480,000.
The reason for the remaining votes vary by state.
In Nevada, several lines remained in Clark County – home to Las Vegas – as of 9:15 p.m. Tuesday.
The county also had several polling places fail to open on time due to technical problems. Clark County District Court Judge Joe Hardy on Tuesday ruled that 22 polling places that opened late had to remain open until 8 p.m.
That pushed back the timeline for reporting results statewide, because local elections officials aren’t allowed to post preliminary results until the state’s final ballot is cast.
For uncalled states, the AP suggests it’s still expecting 2.3 million votes from Georgia, about 480,000 from Michigan, about 370,000 from North Carolina, 2.2 million from Nevada, 3.2 million from Pennsylvania.
– Michael Stucka and Matt Wynn
Georgia expects to finish counting 250,000 votes today in tight race
Election officials in Georgia, which President Donald Trump currently leads Democrat Joe Biden narrowly by around 87,000 votes, expects to finish counting around 250,000 votes by the end of the day Wednesday.
Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, a Republican, told reporters about 200,000 absentee ballots remain uncounted in the state. He said there are also about 40,000 to 50,000 in-person early votes to be counted.
“Every legal vote in Georgia will count,” he said.
Most of the outstanding ballots appear to be in counties in and around Democrat-heavy Atlanta, which is likely to favor Biden, as well as Savannah. The former vice president has also held a major advantage with absentee voters nationally including in Georgia.
– Joey Garrison
Mitch McConnell: GOP needs to do better
After Republicans outperformed expectations Tuesday, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell nonetheless said he’s “disturbed” by some GOP deficiencies that need to be addressed.
Democrats, who outraised many GOP Senate incumbents, do a much better job at harvesting small-dollar donations through the internet, said McConnell – who was outraised in his own, successful, reelection bid.
And Republicans need to win back the suburbs and improve their standing with college educated voters and with women, the Kentucky Republican emphasized.
“I’m disturbed by the loss of support in the suburbs,” he said. “We had, overall, I think a better election than most people thought we were going to have, across the country. But, yeah, we have improvement we need to make.”
McConnell, though, praised President Donald Trump for turning the presidential contest into a cliffhanger when “everybody was writing him off.”
“It was an extraordinary campaign,” he said. “I think it also helped us in our Senate races. With the exception of Maine, the places where we have the best chance of winning are the places where it looks like he won.”
McConnell said it’s possible enough of the outstanding Senate races could be called Wednesday to determine whether he becomes the minority leader or stays in the majority.
“I’ve been both. Majority’s better,” he said.
– Maureen Groppe
Mitch McConnell: Not unusual that Trump claimed victory
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., dismissed concerns Wednesday about President Donald Trump’s false claims that he won the election and the Supreme Court should get involved.
“It’s not unusual for people to claim they won the election,” McConnell told reporters in Kentucky. “But claiming you’ve won the election is different from finishing the counting.”
McConnell said he’s not troubled by Trump’s reference to a legal challenge because, in close elections, both sides lawyer up.
“I don’t think the president should be criticized for suggesting he may have some lawyers because the other guys are certainly already doing that,” he said.
In early morning remarks at the White House, Trump cast doubt on the validity of ballots cast by mail because of the pandemic and said he would be going to the Supreme Court because “we want all voting to stop.”
Some Republicans have pushed back on Trump’s unfounded claims of fraud and threats of litigation.
McConnell praised the “beauty of the Electoral College,” saying it’s a useful system during close elections like this one. The Electoral College guarantees that you have finality in each state, he said.
“We ought to be grateful for the Electoral College,” he said, “in a close election like this.”
– Maureen Groppe
Biden campaign officials contend he’s on track to win Electoral College
Campaign officials for former Vice President Joe Biden argued Wednesday that the former vice president is on a path to accumulate the Electoral College votes in competitive states to win the election against President Donald Trump, but that they would fight for every vote to be counted.
“Joe Biden is on track to win this election, and he will be the next president of the United States,” said Biden campaign manager Jennifer O’Malley Dillon.
“We expect that at some point later today that the vice president will address the American people,” she told reporters in a conference call. “We’re speaking clearly on the data in the states.”
When asked why the race was so close, O’Malley Dillon said: “They’re swing states for a reason.”
“We are going to win Wisconsin, recount or no recount,” she said, citing the prospect that a candidate could request a recount if the margin is within 1%. “We are very confident Wisconsin is ours.”
Bob Bauer, an expert in election law who is advising the Biden campaign, said Trump and the Republican Party tried repeatedly to halt voting in the days leading up to the end of voting Tuesday, but were rejected in state and federal courts. Bauer said Trump would also lose if he reached the Supreme Court.
“These specious claims were rejected by court after court,” Bauer said. “He will be in for one of the most embarrassing defeats any president has suffered before the highest court in the land.”
Trump’s court claims complained about guidance given to election officials, about the use of drop boxes, in-person absentee voting and the length of lines, Bauer said. But he said it’s impossible to imagine the Supreme Court supporting any of the claims.
“It’s impossible to imagine it will have any merit,” Bauer said. “We’re winning the election, we’ve won the election.”
– Bart Jansen
GOP statehouse majorities hold off flips ahead of redistricting
Democrats who hoped to gain statehouse control in some key battleground states came up short of their goals on Election Day, as redistricting of state and federal voting districts looms in the new year.
Overshadowed by the attention to national politics in the lead-up to the election, Democrats had methodically targeted seat pickup opportunities in several legislative chambers to flip party control in Arizona, Iowa, Michigan, Minnesota, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Texas.
While some statehouse seats are still being tallied, Republicans held onto control of many of those places, notably in North Carolina’s state House and Senate. Texas, considered one of the biggest flip opportunities, also stayed red. Republicans likely will hold key voting majorities in Pennsylvania, Ohio and Michigan ahead of reapportionment next year.
Tallies by the National Conference on State Legislatures, a bipartisan group, said as of Wednesday morning, it appeared to be the fewest party control changes since 1944, when only four chambers changed hands, calling it “remarkably status quo.”
Majority party control in many states will play a crucial role in the once-in-a-decade redrawing of Congressional maps based on the new Census. Redistricting has become an increasingly political process, where critics say both parties seek to chop up the map to favor their party or to dilute the voting power of racial or ethnic minorities.
About 6,000 state legislative seats out of the nation’s 7,383 were up for grabs on Tuesday. Republicans have held a majority of state control since the 2010 election, when 13 chambers switched to majority GOP. Going into Tuesday night, Republicans had controlled 59 of 99 state legislative chambers.
– Nick Penzenstadler
Trump aides remain confident, president complains about the process
President Donald Trump and his campaign aides began the day after the election Wednesday by criticizing the ongoing counting of ballots in battleground states, saying they would still prevail in winning the presidency.
“If we count all legal ballots, the president wins,” Trump campaign manager Bill Stepien told reporters Wednesday.
“We are confident in our pathway. We are confident in our math,” Stepien said, suggesting that the president would win Nevada, Georgia, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, although he conceded that the Badger State was in “recount territory.”
Campaign official Jason Miller also suggested that the Associated Press and Fox News were wrong to call Arizona for Biden.
As his campaign aides projected confidence in the math, Trump himself complained about the process.
“Last night I was leading, often solidly, in many key States, in almost all instances Democrat run & controlled,” he tweeted. “Then, one by one, they started to magically disappear as surprise ballot dumps were counted. VERY STRANGE, and the ‘pollsters’ got it completely & historically wrong!”
Record turnouts have slowed the counting process in states that will decide the presidential election, including Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Arizona, Nevada, Georgia and North Carolina.
Democratic challenger Joe Biden and his aides are optimistic about winning those states.
– David Jackson and Courtney Subramanian
Biden campaign: Election ‘moving to a conclusion in our favor’
The Joe Biden campaign is bullish about its chances to reach 270 electoral votes to claim victory in the race for president as the counting of mail-in ballots continues in several battleground states.
“This is moving to a conclusion – and moving to a conclusion in our favor,” a campaign official told USA TODAY on Wednesday morning.
In Wisconsin, the official said the Biden campaign is “confident we have won” and expects it to be called later Wednesday morning.
In Michigan, the Biden campaign believes it has built an “insurmountable” lead, the official said, with the mail-ballots still to be counted expected to favor Biden. The campaign believes the race in Michigan will be called by midday Wednesday.
The aide said they feel “confident” about Pennsylvania, with votes from hundreds of thousands of mail-ballots in Philadelphia to be released either tonight or tomorrow.
The campaign expects vote counts in Georgia to conclude by the afternoon Wednesday and for Nevada to be called Thursday.
If Biden wins Nevada, Wisconsin and Michigan, it would put the former vice president at exactly 270 electoral votes regardless of what happens in Georgia or Pennsylvania.
– Joey Garrison
Biden takes slight lead in Michigan
If vote-counting trends hold, Michigan is offering a vivid illustration of the blue wave.
Shortly after midnight, President Donald Trump had a big lead with 54% of the vote. Shortly after 9 a.m. EST, Democrat Joe Biden took the lead by 12,000 votes.
And there were still hundreds of thousands of ballots to count – most of them absentee, which tend to favor Democrats.
Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson said final results are likely by Wednesday night.
At least 5.26 million ballots were cast overall, a record that surpassed the 2008 vote, when Barack Obama won the state. More than 60% of the votes were cast by absentee ballot.
Turnout in heavily Democratic Detroit was expected to be close to 55%, the highest in two decades.
About 28,000 voters took advantage of same-day voter registration, which was offered in Michigan for the first time in a presidential election.
– Richard Wolf
Biden, Trump in tight race in Wisconsin
Former Vice President Joe Biden holds a razor-thin lead of around 20,000 votes over President Donald Trump in Wisconsin with the majority of unofficial returns in.
However, the presidential race in Wisconsin has not yet been called.
Trump earlier led in the Midwestern battleground state but Biden made up ground through the night as mail-in ballots substantially broke for the Democratic challenger.
Ben Winkler, chairman of the Wisconsin’s Democratic Party, tweeted that “when all votes are counted, we’re confident Joe Biden will win Wisconsin.”
The state’s 10 electoral college votes will not, on their own, be enough to push Biden to hit the 270 electoral college ceiling needed to win the presidency.
Before the mail-in ballots started to be counted in Wisconsin, Trump had nurtured a lead of more than 100,000 votes. Trump won Wisconsin by fewer than 23,000 votes in 2016.
– Kim Hjelmgaard and Craig Gilbert
What’s going on in Pennsylvania?
Pennsylvania is waking up Wednesday without a winner, as its 20 electoral votes are poised to play a decisive role in a close presidential race.
Republican President Donald Trump is leading Democratic challenger Joe Biden 55%-43% in the Keystone State, but that could change after more than 1.4 million outstanding mail-in votes are counted.
Those mail-in votes are expected to heavily favor Biden because more Democrats voted by mail, while more Republicans voted in person. Also, the mail-in votes are largely uncounted in counties won by 2016 Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton: Philadelphia, Allegheny, Chester, Bucks, Delaware and Montgomery.
– Candy Woodall (USA TODAY Network Pennsylvania Capitol Bureau)
Biden holds narrow lead in Nevada, more results expected until Thursday
Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden held a narrow lead in Nevada as of Wednesday morning as the Nevada Secretary of State said it would not release any more results until Thursday.
The Secretary of State’s office said in a Twitter post they had already counted all in-person early and Election Day votes, and mail ballots sent through Nov. 2. The state still had yet to count all of the mail ballots received on and after Election Day, as well as provisional ballots.
Nevada was one of several states that mailed all registered voters a ballot this year, making it difficult to estimate how many ballots were still left to count.
The state’s six electoral votes could be part of either candidate’s remaining path to victory with several states still counting ballots. Biden held a roughly 8,000-vote lead with about two-thirds of the vote counted.
– Nicholas Wu
Where do things stand
Democratic nominee Joe Biden has secured the key battleground state of Arizona. It’s a state a Democratic presidential candidate has not won since Bill Clinton in 1996. Biden also picked up a win in Maine, with three of its four electoral votes (Maine is one of two states that doesn’t award all their electoral college votes to the statewide winner).
President Donald Trump secured wins in Texas, Florida, Ohio, Iowa, Montana, Idaho, Utah, Kansas, Missouri, Nebraska, Louisiana, Wyoming, North Dakota, South Dakota, Kentucky, West Virginia, Indiana, South Carolina, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Mississippi, Alabama and Arkansas.
Biden won Minnesota, Hawaii, California, Oregon, Washington, New Hampshire, Colorado, the District of Columbia, New Mexico, New York, Virginia, Vermont, Rhode Island, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Maryland, Illinois, Delaware and Connecticut.
That gives Biden 238 electoral college votes and Trump 213 after 3 a.m. EDT. A candidate needs 270 electoral college votes to win the election.
Biden camp slams Trump statement on outcome as ‘outrageous’
A top aide to Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden slammed President Donald Trump’s premature declaration of victory early Wednesday and threatened to defend the counting of legally cast ballots in court.
“The president’s statement tonight about trying to shut down the counting of duly cast ballots was outrageous, unprecedented, and incorrect,” Biden campaign manager Jen O’Malley Dillon said in a statement. “It was outrageous because it is a naked effort to take away the democratic rights of American citizens.”
Trump falsely claimed during remarks at the White House early Wednesday that he had won the presidential contest, even though ballots were still being counting in several states that would actually determine the outcome, and he threatened to ask the U.S. Supreme Court to halt the counting of ballots he described as a “fraud.”
Trump: Trump falsely claims he has won election, even though ballots are still being counted
Trump’s remarks were consistent with his statements prior to the election in which he sought to cast doubt on the millions of absentee ballots cast this year because of the coronavirus pandemic. Those mail ballots always take time to count – sometimes several days. This year, there’s simply more of them to count.
Polls taken before the election indicated that Democrats were far more likely to vote by mail and Republicans were more apt to vote in person.
“We repeat what the Vice President said tonight: Donald Trump does not decide the outcome of this election. Joe Biden does not decide the outcome of this election,” O’Malley Dillon said in a statement. “The American people decide the outcome of this election. And the democratic process must and will continue until its conclusion.”
– John Fritze
Joe Biden speaks to supporters: ‘We believe we’re on track to win this election’
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Biden and Trump express confidence
Democratic nominee Joe Biden addressed supporters late Tuesday night, saying he felt he was “on track” to win the election because of support from mail-in votes, while urging supporters to exercise patience while states count ballots.
“We feel good about where we are,” Biden said. “We really do.”
More: Facebook, Twitter label Trump claims over ‘stealing the election’ as potentially misleading
Early Wednesday morning, Trump suggested – falsely – that he had already won, while million of ballots remained outstanding.
“Frankly, we did win this election,” Trump told supporters in the East Room of the White House. “As far as I’m concerned, we have already have won.”
Facebook and Twitter on early Wednesday warned social media users that Trump’s claim is potentially misleading.
Dems losing chance to flip the Senate
The chances of Democrats flipping enough seats to take control of the Senate appeared to be dwindling early Wednesday as Republicans fended off challenges in a number of key races. You can track those results here.
You can also stay updated on control over the House of Representatives here as Democrats are projected to retain control but have been underperforming.
Battleground states up for grabs
A number of battleground states are still on the table as of 3 a.m. EDT, but a few crucial ones have been called.
Trump held on to some crucial battleground states he needed for a road to reelection, including Ohio, Texas, Florida, and Iowa.
More: Tuesday coverage: Trump takes Texas, chipping away at Biden’s electoral college lead
However, Democratic nominee Joe Biden made gains in Arizona and Nebraska’s 2nd District, which rules out the possibility of a 269-269 electoral tie, while also keeping Minnesota and New Hampshire in the blue column.
The southern states of North Carolina and Georgia are too close to call, which, if either swing to Biden, would be gains from years past.
In Georgia, a few blue counties stopped counting ballots earlier in the night. One of those, Fulton County, which is home to Atlanta, had a pipe burst earlier Tuesday at State Farm Arena, which delayed the counting of absentee ballots. Democrats could pick up numbers there.
More: Protesters in Washington, Los Angeles, Raleigh, Portland take to the streets amid Election night vote tallies
Key states of Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania are not expecting to know who the winner is until at earliest Wednesday morning, though some are predicting it could be a few days to accurately count all mail-in ballots.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Election updates: Wisconsin goes for Biden, putting him a step closer to an Electoral College victory