Election updates: Biden takes slight lead over Trump in Michigan as votes are tallied

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.

It was expected we wouldn’t know who the victor was Tuesday night. 

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

Former Vice President Joe Biden addresses an outdoor crowd in Delaware as votes from across the country are being counted. USA TODAY

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.

Read or Share this story: https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/elections/2020/11/04/live-elections-updates-trump-biden-waiting-battleground-states/6157655002/