US election 2020: Biden holds lead over Trump in tense wait for results – live updates | US news

Election Day was Tuesday. It’s Thursday and we still don’t know who the next president of the United States is going to be. Here’s how the key states are looking now…

Arizona: 11 electoral votes
Called for Biden by AP and Fox News, but seems still in play.
Biden leads 50.5-48.1, with 86% counted.
Trump needs to win nearly two-thirds of the remaining votes.
Next update: Expected Thursday night local time (that’s late in the UK).

Georgia: 16 electoral votes
Toss-up
Trump leads 49.6–49.1, with 95% counted
Biden needs to win 60% of remaining votes, many coming from Democrat areas.
Next update: Secretary of state says they hope to have results today

Nevada: 6 electoral votes
Toss-up but leans Biden
Biden leads 49.3-48.7, with 86% counted
The lead is fewer than 8,000 but remaining mail-in expected to skew Democrat.
Result expected noon ET/5pm UK

North Carolina: 15 electoral votes
Toss-up but leans Trump
Trump leads 50.1-48.7, with 95% counted
Biden needs two-thirds of mail-in ballots to go his way
Mail ballots still accepted if they arrive by 12 November, so could be a long wait for certainty.

Pennsylvania: 20 electoral votes
Toss-up
Trump leads 50.7-48.1. 89% of vote in
Most votes yet to be counted are in strong Democratic urban areas
Result expected Friday, but already subject to Trump legal challenges over mail-in ballots being counted which are postmarked on election day or before, but arrive after 3 November. Trump wants them tossed out.

Michigan: 16 electoral votes
Called for Biden. The Trump campaign is suing to halt counting of mail-in ballots

Wisconsin: 10 electoral votes
Called for Biden
Biden’s lead is 49.4-48.8.
If the winning margin is less than 1%, then Trump is entitled to a recount, which the campaign say they will demand.

Here are some of the most striking images from overnight of exhausted election workers, protestors on the street, and police in riot gear across the US.

Donald Trump’s press secretary Kayleigh McEnany was getting an uncharacteristically tough time on Fox News last night as she tried to outline the legal action the Trump campaign is taking in Pennsylvania.

She was repeatedly pressed on whether the plan was to throw out ballots that had been cast in good faith on election. She was asked “Even if they voted on 3 November [by mail], in Pennsylvania, because they were told that was ok to do, you’re going to toss their ballot out?”

McEnany replied no, but then said: “We believe every vote on election day should be counted, but it’s those that arrive after the election day that we are fighting.”

So…yes?

Worth noting too that McEnany ended the segment by predicting that “I think that it’ll be a mere hypothetical, what we’re talking about now, because we will prevail by 40,000 votes in the state of Pennsylvania.”

Pennsylvania has 20 electoral college votes. Trump’s lead is currently 164,418, but there are more than 780,000 votes still to be counted.

What’s going on with Arizona? Good question. Well, yesterday Associated Press and Fox News both called the race for Biden. But they may have been premature. Other outlets were more cautious. Biden did have a significant lead, but it is down to 68,000, and the Trump campaign still insist they will win it. That could throw the election right back up in the air.

At the moment, if Biden wins Arizona, he just needs to win one more state. If Trump takes Arizona, the math starts to look more complicated, although it still slightly favors the Democrat nominee if he can take Nevada, where he leads, and Georgia, where he is closing on a narrow Trump lead. Nevada will report its results today, around about 5pm UK time, or noon in New York.

Jennifer Medina at the New York Times has this though – suggesting that Trump still faces an uphill battle to clinch the state:

Trump would have to receive at least 57 percent of votes that remain to be counted in other parts of the state as well, including counties that tend to vote Democratic.

Biden’s narrow edge underscored a profound political shift in Arizona, a longtime Republican bastion that has lurched left in recent years, fueled by rapidly evolving demographics and a growing contingent of young Latino voters who favor liberal policies.

Welcome to our continued live coverage of the US election. Here’s where we are up to…

• Joe Biden has won more votes than any US presidential candidate in history – but the race for the White House remains too close to call.
• Based on the states that Associated Press (AP) has called, Biden needs just one more state to get over the 270 threshold in the Electoral College to be declared the winner.
• Georgia, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Nevada and Alaska remain to be called. Biden has a narrow lead in Nevada, and Democrats believe he will overhaul Trump’s lead in at least one of Georgia or Pennsylvania as the last remaining votes are counted.
• The Nevada result should come through today. It is expected at lunchtime in the US, around 5pm in the UK
• There’s a slight question mark over the status of Arizona. AP and Fox News have called it for Biden, other news organisations aren’t so confident of the result, and the Trump campaign are still predicting they will ultimately win there. Biden’s lead is down to 68,000 with more mail-in ballots to count.
• Trump supporters protested at a Detroit vote-counting site, and outside a Phoenix election center. The crowd called upon Michigan election officials to “stop the vote”. In Phoenix, Trump supporters demanded the opposite, telling officials keep counting as Biden’s lead narrowed.
• Twitter flagged more of Trump’s tweets for pushing misinformation about the election results. The president shared a tweet thread this evening trying to “claim” multiple battleground states that he has not won. Obviously, those “claims” have no legal standing in a US election.
• You can find our full live results service here.
• We also have the full results for Congress, where the Democrats’ attempt to flip the Senate appears to have faltered.
• The election isn’t the only story in town. Yesterday the US set a new world record for daily coronavirus cases, with 102,831 recorded. There were 1,097 deaths.

I’m Martin Belam, and I will be with you for the next few hours – you can get in touch with me at martin.belam@hafta-ichi.com. And while we are settling in to our new home, you might want to have a scroll back through what has been happening overnight.