Biden sweeps battleground states that pushed him to victory
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President-elect Joe Biden’s stunning victory on Friday was built on key flips of the 2016 electoral map.
Biden captured three battleground states, Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin, that President Donald Trump narrowly won four years ago.
The biggest prize was Pennsylvania, where the former vice president secured 20 electoral votes that pushed him across the finish line. Biden’s lead on Friday morning of roughly 6,000 votes made the Keystone state no longer winnable for Trump, according to projections by Insider and Decision Desk HQ.
Biden needed 270 electoral votes to officially become the 46th president of the United States. A total of 21 states and Washington, DC, delivered him 273 electoral votes, so far. Georgia, Arizona, Nevada and North Carolina have still not been formally called.
Both candidates had been vying for crucial Northeastern and Midwestern states that would be critical to a win in 2020. Biden — who was born in Scranton, Pennsylvania, and served as a senator for decades in neighboring Delaware — proved able to reconstruct the “Blue Wall,” which represents a group of states that every Democratic presidential nominee carried from 1992 to 2012, and reversed some of Trump’s 2016 gains.
Biden held a strong advantage in the lead-up to the election, consistently polling higher Trump in each state week after week. Yet, the races were much closer than the big-digit leads that pollsters anticipated. Election officals continue to count votes, however, so the currently-slim margins may change.
This is especially true in Pennsylvania, where thousands of mail-in ballots remain to be counted, most of which are expected to tip in Biden’s favor. The Trump campaign has filed a wave of legal challenges since Election Day, in an attempt to halt the count, based on unsubstantiated claims of voter fraud and voting irregularities.
Biden’s Wisconsin lead over Trump currently sits at 20,034 votes, or 0.63%. The Trump campaign has asked for a recount, which is allowed under state law if a candidate is behind by less than 1%. Yet Biden has transcended former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s 2016 performance in the state, making it unlikely to shift into a Trump 2020 win. The president-elect successfully improved turnout in Milwaukee, receiving 317,251 votes in the pivotal county, compared to Clinton’s 288,822 votes.
In Michigan, Biden fought to play up his longstanding support from organized labor and emphasize his ties to the auto industry when he served as vice president under former President Barack Obama. As of Friday, Biden’s ahead in the Wolverine State by 145,921 votes, or 2.49%, powered by strong performances in Detroit and its populous suburbs, along with Ann Arbor, Saginaw, and Grand Rapids.
Trump still maintained his edge in other swing states in the region, most notably Iowa and Ohio.
The president also defeated Biden in hotly-contested Sunbelt states including Florida and Texas, but the wins didn’t yield him enough electoral votes for another four years in the White House.