Election 2020 presidential results

Our live coverage has moved. Go here for the latest results and news from the election.

Democratic hopeful Joe Biden has taken the lead in Georgia over President Trump.

Trump cannot afford to lose Georgia’s 16 electoral votes if he is to keep alive his hopes of a second term.

Trump cannot find a route to 270 electoral votes without Georgia and Pennsylvania, so his chances of securing reelection will hinge on developments in the two states.

With no new numbers coming in for hours, there remains 163,501 uncounted absentee ballots in the state of Pennsylvania, CNN’s Kristen Holmes reported early this morning.

So far, mail-in ballots in Pennsylvania have heavily favored Joe Biden over President Trump even in Republican areas, meaning there are more than enough ballots for the former vice president to overtake the President’s narrow 18,000-vote margin.

“Any Democrat who is looking at this … they’re feeling very good about where they stand right now,” said Holmes.

In Philadelphia Country 305,000 mail-in ballots have already been counted and there are 60,000 left to count. In Allegheny County, which includes Pittsburgh, there remain 36,000 mail-in ballots to be counted.

CNN’s Kristen Holmes has more:

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Ballots are still being counted in several key states, with elections officials expected to provide updates later today.

Joe Biden holds a 253-213 lead in the Electoral College. In addition to Arizona, Georgia, Nevada, and Pennsylvania, the races in Alaska and North Carolina remain still too close to call.

If you’re just reading in, here’s what you need to know about the race:

All eyes on the Keystone State: Pennsylvania, the state that could take Biden over the 270-vote threshold needed to win the presidency, could complete most of its outstanding counts on Friday, officials there said. The former vice president is only behind President Trump by a little more than 18,000 votes in the Keystone State after having trailed at one point by more than half a million ballots in the hours after polls closed. Tens of thousands of votes — most of them from strongly Democratic areas, including around Philadelphia — remain to be counted.

Race tightens in Georgia: In Georgia, another state that Trump cannot afford to lose with its 16 electoral votes, Biden’s mail-in ballot advantage has pulled him to within 500 votes of the President, as results came in from Fulton County around Atlanta with 99% of the state vote count reported. Trump cannot find a route to 270 electoral votes without Georgia and Pennsylvania, so his chances of securing reelection will hinge on developments in the two states in the coming hours.

Trump mounts aggressive legal strategy: Trump’s team, seeking to keep his slim path to victory alive, has launched a flurry of sometimes contradictory and scattershot legal challenges, without offering evidence of irregularities, demanding vote counts continue in states where he is behind and wanting them shut down in those where he leads.

Trump stages corrosive attempt to undermine votes: On Thursday night, Trump effectively sent a signal that he has no intention of leaving power without a fight if he ends up losing the election. The President’s speech from the White House briefing room could end up being one of the most dangerous presidential statements in American history. In it, Trump falsely claimed that votes that were cast before and during the election, but counted after Election Day, are illegal votes.

Biden urges calm: The former vice president emerged in Wilmington, Delaware, Thursday for a short speech meant to project optimism, urge patience in the vote counting and to apparently create a picture of a presidency in waiting. “In America, the vote is sacred. It is how the people of this nation express their will,” he said, calling for calm and patience as the vote counting process unfolds.

We’re tracking the narrow margins of votes in key states. Here are the latest figures:

The latest vote totals show President Trump’s lead narrowing in Georgia. He’s leading Joe Biden by 463 votes there.

Biden currently has 253 electoral votes, and Trump has 213.

Remember: Each candidate needs to reach 270 electoral votes to win the presidency.

Get full details and results in CNN’s Election Center.

Clayton County in Georgia has just 3,500 of its 30,000 mail-in and provisional ballots left to count, the director of the county’s board of elections, Shauna Dozier, told CNN early this morning. 

She said her team does not plan to break until every ballot is counted, which should be within hours.

“We are going to stay here until every single absentee ballot is counted,” she told CNN’s Chris Cuomo. “We are going to continue forward … whatever it takes to get that done, we’re going to do it. We’re committed.”

Dozier also asked for patience from the American people, saying her office received just 3,170 absentee ballots in 2016, compared to 30,000 this year.

Once the mail-in ballots have been counted, the only remaining uncounted votes from the county will be military ballots, which are due at 5 p.m. ET Friday. Dozier said she was unaware of how many military ballots officials may receive. 

Clayton County, a suburb of Atlanta which trends Democratic, could put President Trump’s path to the presidency in serious peril, CNN’s John King noted earlier this evening. 

CNN’s Chris Cuomo speaks to Shauna Dozier:

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We’re tracking the narrow margins of votes in key states. See the latest figures below, and get full details and results in CNN’s Election Center.

Joe Biden currently has 253 electoral votes, and President Trump has 213.

Remember: Each candidate needs to reach 270 electoral votes to win the presidency.

Even at this late hour, much of the Biden team is up monitoring the results coming in- especially those results from Pennsylvania, a source familiar tells CNN.

The feeling is Friday could be the day that Biden reaches 270. Though it has been said before, the campaign reiterated that when all the votes are counted Biden will have a decisive win in the state.

Why the state matters: There are 20 electoral votes at stake in Pennsylvania. President Trump cannot be reelected if he doesn’t win there, no matter how many other states he wins. Biden currently has 253 electoral votes, and President Trump has 213.

As results from congressional races continue to filter in, here’s how the balance of power in the Senate looks right now.

Republicans have sharply cut Democrats’ chances of taking back the Senate, winning a series of contests across the country on the coattails of President Trump.

Democrats currently have won 47 seats with one pickup in Colorado, while Republicans have won 47 seats with one pick up in Alabama.

There are currently are four undecided races in the Senate. Either side needs 51 seats to control the upper chamber, or 50 if their presidential candidate wins, since the vice president may cast a deciding vote. 

In the House, Democrats have 208 seats and Republicans have 196. The party that has at least 218 seats will control that chamber.

Here’s what we know about the undecided Senate races:

Arizona: The former astronaut Democrat Mark Kelly holds a comfortable lead over Sen. Martha McSally, the Republican incumbent, with a 103,000 vote advantage with 89% of the vote now in. 

Georgia: Republican incumbent Sen. David Perdue is 101,000 votes ahead of Democratic candidate Jon Ossoff with 10,000 ballots remaining to be counted. Perdue has a 2.1% advantage but remains 0.1% short of the majority required under Georgia to avoid a runoff election on Jan. 5.

Georgia special election: Democratic candidate Rev. Raphael Warnock is leading Republican incumbent Sen. Kelly Loeffler by 329,000 but is far shy of the 50% percent majority required to win the seat outright and avoid a runoff. That seat is headed for a special election on Jan. 5.

Alaska: With 47% of the vote in, incumbent Republican Sen. Dan Sullivan leads Democrat Al Gross with 108,488 votes to 54,755.

Police are investigating a potential attack plot at the Pennsylvania Convention Center in Philadelphia, first reported by CNN affiliate WPVI.

“Police got a tip about a group, possibly a family, driving up from Virginia in a Hummer to unleash an attack at the Convention Center,” according to WPVI.  

Philadelphia Police tells WPVI “they recovered a weapon and believed they recovered the Hummer they received a tip about.”

Votes are being counted inside of the convention center.  

Police tell CNN affiliate KYW they were alerted to the threat around 10 p.m. local time on Thursday.

The threat involved a group of individuals from out of state, police tells KYW.   

At least one person has been taken into custody, both WPVI and KYW reports.  

Philadelphia district attorney’s office spokesperson Jane Roh told CNN the office could not comment on the investigation.

CNN has reached out to the Philadelphia Police Department, FBI, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives and the convention center for comment. 

CNN’s Alexandra Field has more:

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We’re tracking the narrow margins of votes in key states. See the latest figures below, and get full details and results in CNN’s Election Center.

Biden currently has 253 electoral votes, while Trump has 213. Each candidate needs to reach 270 electoral votes to win the presidency.

Georgia’s Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger will not provide another update again tonight, according to his press secretary Ari Schaffer.

At last update, the state still had 14,097 votes left to count.

President Trump is currently leading Biden in the state by a mere 1,805 votes.

Here is the breakdown of outstanding ballots by county from the last update released at 10:35 p.m. ET:

Chester County election workers process mail-in and absentee ballots for the 2020 general election in the United States at West Chester University on Wedensday, November 4, in Pennsylvania.

Since the beginning of the pandemic, supporters of Democratic nominee Joe Biden have shown a strong preference for mail-in voting. Most of President Trump’s supporters said they wanted to vote on Election Day. States count these different types of votes in very different ways.

As a result, in some states — particularly in Pennsylvania — Trump saw an early lead that is now narrowing as more ballots are counted.

This isn’t a sign of fraud or irregularities. Rather, it’s just a reflection of how states count votes. Some states process early ballots first, while others save them for last.

This phenomenon, known as the “blue shift,” is common in recent US elections and it’s a big reason why Trump, despite election law and common decency to the contrary, has argued that whoever appears to have won on Election Night should be crowned the winner.

That’s not the way it works, of course. Ballots in North Carolina and Pennsylvania can arrive in the days after Election Day as long as they have a Nov. 3 postmark.

In Pennsylvania, election officials couldn’t do anything with early ballots until Election Day. Some counties didn’t even pick them up until the day after Election Day.

Read more here

CNN’s Jake Tapper revealed his own mother is a mail-in voter in Philadelphia County in Pennsylvania, where votes are still being counted tonight, and rebuked those who would suggest her vote should not to count. 

Tapper also skewered President Trump’s allies who are standing by him even as he alleged fraud without evidence. 

“We are seeing some of the President’s most obedient servants… go on TV and say things that are not true, say things that there’s no evidence for, talk about electoral fraud,” said Tapper, referring by name to Republican Sens. Lindsey Graham, Ted Cruz, and House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy.

“This is not accurate,” he continued. “This is not what is actually going on. “The American people are having their votes counted.”

Tapper then went on to reference August 1974, during the Watergate scandal, when Republican congressional leaders Sens. Barry Goldwater, Hugh Scott and House Minority Leader John Rhodes, went to the White House and informed President Richard Nixon the Republican Party would no longer support him. 

“Nixon resigned the next day,” said Tapper. “Those three Republican leaders, two of them were from Arizona and one of them was from Pennsylvania, two of the four states that we’re waiting to hear from today.”

“Let the American people have their say,” concluded Tapper. 

Watch the moment:

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Joe Biden is nearing 270 electoral votes as he continues to close the gap in Pennsylvania and Georgia.

Trump is leading Biden in Georgia by approximately 1,805 votes and in Pennsylvania by 23,953 votes.

Trump cannot find a route to 270 electoral votes without Georgia and Pennsylvania, so his chances of securing reelection will hinge on developments in the two states.

Biden currently has 253 electoral votes, while Trump has 213.

We’re tracking the narrow margins of votes in key states. See the latest figures below, and get full details and results in CNN’s Election Center.

As of 10:35 p.m. ET, there are approximately 14,097 ballots still outstanding across Georgia, according to a statement by Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger.

Almost all of the outstanding ballots are absentee ballots, Raffensperger’s office told CNN earlier Thursday.

President Trump’s lead over former Vice President Joe Biden has shrunk to 1,775 votes, CNN’s Wolf Blitzer said.

Here’s a breakdown of the ballots by county:

Shauna Dozier, Clayton County’s elections director, told CNN Thursday evening that Clayton County hopes to complete counting their remaining ballots by midnight.

An attendant talks to a person waiting in their car at a coronavirus testing site at Ascarate Park on October 31, in El Paso, Texas.

The next president of the US is yet to be called, but the coronavirus pandemic looms large.

The US reached a new record high of daily Covid-19 cases. So far today, there have been at least 121,054 daily new coronavirus cases in the US, per Johns Hopkins University data.

This is the highest single day reporting since the pandemic began.

The top 5 Covid-19 case days so far:

Joe Biden attended a briefing on coronavirus earlier today in Wilmington, Delaware. The pandemic’s impact has been a key issue of the campaign, and whichever candidate wins the presidency will have to lead the country through this crisis.

All remaining 4,200 uncounted mail-in ballots and provisional ballots cast in Clayton County, Georgia, will most likely be released by midnight, the director of the county’s board of elections, Shauna Dozier, told CNN tonight. 

Dozier said to expect results posted on the county’s website roughly every 30 minutes until midnight.

The only remaining uncounted ballots will then be military ballots, which are due at 5 p.m. ET, on Friday. Dozier said she is unaware of how many military ballots officials may receive. 

Clayton County, a suburb of Atlanta which trends Democratic, could put President Trump’s path to the presidency in serious peril, noted CNN’s John King earlier this evening. 

CNN’s John King speaks to Shauna Dozier:

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Chester County, Pennsylvania, election worker Kristina Sladek opens mail-in and absentee ballots for the 2020 General Election in the United States at West Chester University on Tuesday, November 3.

The presidential race between President Trump and former Vice President Joe Biden remains on a razor’s edge as election workers in key states continue to plow through mail-in ballots.

Most states, with the help of USPS, sent ballot envelopes with a unique set of numbers for each individual voter. Those numbers are often known as Intelligent Mail Barcodes, which allow the Postal Service to track the ballot.

It’s still too close to call a winner in these six states as votes continue to be counted: Alaska, Arizona, Georgia, Nevada, North Carolina and Pennsylvania.

If you submitted your ballot in one of these states and want to check its status, here’s where you can go:

Learn how you can check your ballot in other states here.

And if ballot tracking technology isn’t available where you live, you can contact your local election office if you have questions or concerns about your ballot.

In this July 23, 2020 file photo, Arizona Republican Gov. Doug Ducey applies hand sanitizer prior to giving the latest Arizona coronavirus update during a news conference in Phoenix.

The Republican governor of Arizona said the state is “following established Arizona election law to the letter,” following President Trump’s White House statement tonight claiming the election was being stolen from him.

Contrary to the President’s demands in Pennsylvania and Georgia, the Trump campaign has pushed for vote counting to continue in Arizona as they hope to overtake Joe Biden. The most recent updates in the returns have helped Trump narrow the gap in that state.

“We’ve seen dramatic changes to races up and down the ballot since Tuesday night, including for President,” Ducey said. “All of this underlines the importance of not jumping to conclusions in the state of Arizona until there is a final outcome in all counties.”

At least three counties across Georgia have stopped counting ballots for the night, county officials told CNN Thursday evening.

This includes, Cobb County, an Atlanta suburb where Hillary Clinton won by a small margin in 2016 and Taylor County, located roughly 100 miles south of Atlanta.

Gwinnett County, the second largest county in the state, has stopped counting ballots for the evening and plan to update their results to Georgia’s Secretary of State website on Friday morning.

Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden joined by Democratic vice presidential candidate Sen. Kamala Harris, D-Calif., speaks at the The Queen theater Thursday, Nov. 5, in Wilmington, Delaware.

In the final hours of Thursday night, with Joe Biden continuing to close in on President Trump in Georgia and Pennsylvania, the former vice president’s campaign is projecting confidence.

The campaign believes it is simply a matter of when – not if – the race will be called for Biden. 

Trump’s speech tonight from the White House filled with lies about the democratic vote-tallying process unfolding across the country only appears to have fueled the Biden team’s confidence, with one official calling the remarks “baseless and a sure sign he’s losing.”

Joe Biden keeps gaining ground in Georgia tonight, and he’s now in a near tie with President Trump in that traditionally red state.

It’s a different story in Arizona, where Biden’s advantage has narrowed, but he stills appears to be on a path toward nearing the 270 electoral votes needed to win the presidency.

Biden currently has 253 electoral votes, while Trump has 213.

Here’s a look at where things stand in the closest contests:

Nevada Governor Steve Sisolak arrives for a news conference at the Grant Sawyer State Building in Las Vegas, on Tuesday, September 29.

As the state’s presidential election results remain too close to call, the Democratic governor of Nevada has criticized President Trump’s claim Thursday that the election is being stolen from him.

Joe Biden led in Nevada by more than 11,000 votes Thursday night, with no further updates expected from the state until Friday.

Saying he had “utmost confidence” in his state’s election officials, Sisolak promised they would continue to make sure every vote is counted, regardless of the President’s statements.

“It was clear that the intent of his message was to undermine the public’s confidence in the integrity of our election processes and system, which in turn undermines one of the core pillars of our democracy,” Sisolak said.

President Trump’s lead in Georgia continues to shrink and is now at less than 2,000 votes as ballots continue to be counted through the night.

In Georgia, the Election Day votes were counted first and the mail-in ballots second, CNN’s John King said. There are roughly 16,000 votes still to be counted in the state, he added.

The bigger picture: Trump can’t afford to lose Georgia’s 16 electoral votes if he wants to reach the 270-electoral-vote threshold. He currently has 213 electoral votes.

CNN’s John King has more:

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Joe Biden continued to cut into President Trump’s narrow lead in Georgia, with new results just released in Clayton Country, CNN’s John King reports. 

Of the roughly 1,300 votes released around 9:15 p.m. ET, 1,154 were for Biden while 165 were for President Trump, giving Biden 86% of the votes in that tranche.

Clayton County, a Democratic stronghold included in the Atlanta metropolitan area, still has 5,726 uncounted ballots which officials say will be released by midnight.

If Biden continues to win votes at 86% or above, Clayton County alone could put Trump’s path to the presidency in serious peril, noted King. 

Joe Biden’s lead in Arizona continues to narrow, with President Trump receiving 42,276 and Biden with 31,700 in the latest batch of counted votes.

Biden has 50.1% of the vote in the state compared to Trump’s 48.5%.

The former vice president leads Trump in the state by approximately 46,257 votes.

“We are seeing, in Arizona, the opposite of what we are seeing in Georgia and Pennsylvania,” John King said during CNN’s special election coverage.

“They have a Republican history in Maricopa County. President Trump carried the county last time. This is one of the most fiercely contested states in American politics.”

Why this matters: Eleven electoral votes are at play in the state. Both candidates need 270 electoral votes to win the presidency. Biden currently has 253 electoral votes, while Trump has 213.

Officials from Maricopa County, the most populous in the state, are expected to speak in a news conference soon.

CNN’s John King breaks down the map:

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Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich said Thursday the use of Sharpie pens on election ballots “did not result in disenfranchisement.”

In a letter replying to the Maricopa County Attorney’s office about the issue, Brnovich said his office had received hundreds on inquiries on the topic and would continue to follow up on individual complaints and concerns.

False claims that using Sharpie pens could invalidate ballots in Arizona prompted a top Department of Homeland Security official on Thursday to urge people to stop spreading disinformation online connected to the so-called “#SharpieGate” rumors.

Those rumors fueled outrage among protesters Wednesday night, and prompted a lawsuit, joined by the Trump campaign and the Republican National Committee, filed against Maricopa County election officials.

Some context: Rumors began to spread on social media Wednesday that voters in Arizona who used Sharpie pens on their ballots wouldn’t have their votes counted. That confusion prompted state officials, election monitors and a top Trump administration official to push back on “#SharpieGate” rumors.

CNN’s Geneva Sand, Bob Ortega, and Ashley Fantz contributed to this report.

Maricopa Country officials in Arizona are expected to release around 100,000 more votes tonight, even as protesters gather outside the elections facility in support of President Tump, CNN’s Bill Weir reports from Phoenix. 

Joe Biden has lost 10,000 votes from his lead today, reports Weir. If the 7 p.m. MT, drop holds a 17 point or greater advantage for Trump, it could mark a comeback for the President in Arizona.

CNN’s Bill Weir walks through the latest:

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Allegheny County Executive Rich Fitzgerald said Thursday that there’s “about 35,000 uncounted ballots” and so far the ballots that have been counted are “about 80 to 81% for Joe Biden and a little over 19% for Donald Trump.”

“They are all mail-in,” Fitzgerald said about the uncounted ballots. “Those are the ballots that weren’t able to be processed. One of the 28,000 of those is a batch that was mailed to the wrong address, and then we’re re-mailed, and because of a court order, by a federal court, we are not allowed to begin processing and counting those ballots until 5 p.m. on Friday.”

Remember: Twenty electoral votes are at stake in the state. Both candidates need 270 electoral votes to win the presidency. Biden currently has 253 electoral votes, while Trump has 213.

Almost all of the outstanding ballots in Georgia —18,636 — are absentee ballots, Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger’s office told CNN earlier Thursday.

According to his office, here’s where most of the outstanding ballots across Georgia are coming from: 

 CNN’s Marshall Cohen contributed to this report.

Pennsylvania has less than 10% of its absentee ballots left to count, according to data posted on the official election site.

There are 250,666 ballots left out of the 2,618,565 ballots cast. Philadelphia has just 72,470 left to count, 20% of total absentee ballots cast in the city.

Pennsylvania, the state that could take Joe Biden over the 270-vote threshold needed to win the presidency, could complete most of its outstanding counts on Thursday or Friday, officials there said.

CNN’s Sara Murray has more:

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Democrat Mondaire Jones will win the House race in New York’s 17th Congressional District, CNN projects.

With more than 100,000 mail-in ballots still uncounted in Pennsylvania, results have slowed as officials hand count some ballots that could not be scanned by machines, CNN’s Sara Murray reported from Philadelphia tonight.

As of about 7:45 p.m ET, there were still about 74,000 uncounted votes from Philadelphia County, 36,000 from Allegheny County and just under 25,000 from Bucks County.

“There are still some big pots of ballots to be counted,” reported Murray. 

Many of the ballots that could not be counted by automated scanners must now counted by hand, slowing the count.

“It will take longer to count them by hand,” she warned. 

Former Sen. Rick Santorum, a Republican from Pennsylvania, slammed President Trump’s claims of election fraud, saying that his were not factual and “was at times incendiary.”

“No Republican elected official will stand behind that statement,” Santorum said at CNN’s special election coverage. 

The former senator went on to criticize the President over his claim of voter fraud without evidence.

“We don’t know that right now, and for the President to go out there and claim that without any evidence of that is dangerous,” Santorum said.

Santorum went on to call out Trump over his attacks on mail-in voting.

“I sat there I listened to him talking about the votes being taken away from him, and then he shifted to Arizona and said hey, ‘I win this thing if they count the votes.’ Well, how can you say we have to wait and count the votes in Arizona and I can win this thing, but if you count the votes in Philadelphia you’re stealing them? The reality is, in Pennsylvania Democrats voted by mail and Republicans voted — in person and it’s because you asked them to do so.”

CNN’s Van Jones thanked Santorum for being critical of Trump’s remarks.

“I just want to thank you for what you just said,” Jones said. “I hope that other Republicans will also stand with you.”

Hear what Rick Santorum had to say:

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A Republican observer watches as Lehigh County workers count ballots as vote counting in the general election continues on Thursday, November 5, in Allentown, Pennsylvania.

A Trump campaign lawyer admitted before a federal judge on Thursday that observers for the campaign were allowed to watch ballot canvassing in Philadelphia, after they claimed in court and the President’s supporters alleged they were being deprived unfairly. 

But the federal judge was having none of it, instead asking Philadelphia city officials to confirm Democrats and Republicans were being treated fairly to watch the ballot-counting and that they were allowed to watch the ballot counting in the city from six feet away.

When the judge pressed the Trump campaign lawyer if there were observers in the room from the campaign, the lawyer, Jerome Marcus, said, “There’s a non-zero number of people in the room.”

The judge, Paul Diamond of the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, a George W. Bush appointee, also pointed out he believed the President’s case appeared to have no reason to be in federal court, and even cracked a joke that the lawyer “shouldn’t quit his day job” when the campaign handed the judge a hand-drawn map of the ballot counting room.

After the judge confirmed the parties would have the same number of observers in the room, he dismissed the Trump campaign’s request because it was moot.

Election officials arrive for work at the Maricopa County Recorder's Office on Thursday, November 5, in Phoenix.

An Arizona state judge ordered the Trump campaign and Maricopa county officials to propose a joint scheduling plan by Friday morning to handle a dispute over the use of Sharpie pens to fill out ballots.

Judge Margaret Mahoney of the Maricopa County Superior Court dismissed a suggestion by a lawyer for the Trump campaign to postpone legal arguments in the case for more than two weeks – a timeline that a lawyer for the Arizona Democratic Party argued could delay the final vote tally for Arizona, a key battleground state in the presidential contest.

Thomas Liddy, a lawyer for Maricopa County, asked the judge to move swiftly to restore confidence in the system.

“The voters have a right to know that the allegations flying around the internet about Sharpies being dropped from black helicopters to cheat people out of their votes is fake. It’s not true but it’s really scaring people.”

He added that the vendor for the voting machines said that Sharpies are the best pen to use because the ink dries quickly and won’t smudge the glass readers in the tabulation machines.

“All of this, frankly, is a waste of time,” said Liddy.

Some context: On Wednesday a lawyer and the Public Interest Legal Foundation filed a lawsuit representing 11 voters – only one is identified by name – against the Maricopa County Recorder, Clerk of Maricopa County and others asking that voters be permitted to observe the counting and adjudication of ballots.

Lehigh County workers count ballots as vote counting in the general election continues on Thursday, November 5, in Allentown, Pennsylvania.

The presidential race between President Trump and former Vice President Joe Biden remains on a razor’s edge as election workers in key states continue to count ballots.

Biden currently has 253 electoral votes, while Trump has 213.

Here’s a look at where vote counting stands in two key states:

Trump cannot find a route to 270 electoral votes without Georgia and Pennsylvania, so his chances of securing reelection will hinge on developments in these two states in the coming hours.

President Donald Trump entrenched in false claims that a count of legally cast ballots would show him winning the presidential election, using the White House briefing room to espouse claims that he is being deprived the presidency by fraud.

“If you count the legal votes I easily win,” Trump said, providing no evidence for his claim. “If you count the illegal votes, they can try to steal the election from us.”

His message came as new tallies show his lead dwindling in Georgia and Pennsylvania. While Trump retains a pathway to 270 electoral votes, it is growing smaller.

Trump said he was advocating for a halt in counting of “votes that came in late,” and went on to tout races that had already been called for him.

“I’ve already decisively won many critical states, including massive victories,” he claimed.

CNN’s Dana Bash and abby Phillip react to Trump’s speech:

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President Trump is speaking right now from the White House briefing room.

Trump was last seen publicly early Wednesday at the White House, where he delivered a speech and claimed some legitimate tallying efforts should stop. The President also tried to assert victory in the election.

Trump currently has 213 electoral votes, and Joe Biden, who has taken the lead in the race, has 253 electoral votes.

As President Trump prepares to speak from the White House, Joe Biden tweeted moments ago, again pressing his case that all votes need to be counted in this election.

Some context: The tweet echoes his messages throughout the past 48 hours, including in his remarks earlier today urging calm and patience as the vote count continues.

Biden’s advisers believe those remarks – along with his focus on coronavirus and the economy in his briefings – projects a responsible tone and shows he’s preparing himself for the challenges ahead if elected.

Gwinnett County elections supervisor Kristi Royston

The only remaining absentee ballots to count in Gwinnett County are absentee ballots that require “adjudication.”

Ballots in this category require additional review because there was some issue on the ballot that was picked up by the counting machines.

Two important caveats: First, local officials cannot say exactly how many ballots still require adjudication. And second, it’s not clear how many of these ballots could affect the presidential race. That’s because if the vote-counting machine didn’t pick up an issue with the presidential vote when the ballot was first scanned, that vote has already been counted and reported to the public.

Some context: Election workers have already done about half of the adjudication that is needed, Gwinnett County spokesperson Joe Sorenson told CNN. New staff for adjudication came in at 3 p.m., but Royston said they are scheduled to close down for the night at 9 p.m.  

These ballots are grouped in batches of 25, and if there is a problem with just one ballot, the entire batch of 25 must be pulled aside. They pulled 3,200 batches of ballots, which means that the total number of ballots needing adjudication could be anywhere between 3,200 and 80,000, but the number of ballots needing adjudication is likely on the low end of that range.

“If 49 are good… it holds the entire batch up,” Gwinnett County elections supervisor Kristi Royston said.

Lawyers for the Trump campaign and Nevada Republican Party said they have reached a settlement with the Clark County Recorder that will allow for additional observation of the ballots in the key area that includes Las Vegas, according to a new court filing.

In a court filing, the Trump attorneys ask the appeals court for an additional seven days to file its briefs, giving them room to obtain the signatures of the intervening parties to the settlement.

“On Nov. 4, 2020, appellants and respondents Barbara Cegavske and Joseph Gloria were able to reach a settlement agreement,” according to the court filing.

Under the terms of the agreement, “The Registrar shall allow the public to have additional observation access to the ballot duplication in the Greystone Facility such that all tables where the duplication process is occurring shall be visible to public observers.” 

In addition, the GOP will dismiss its appeal and lawsuit, according to the court filing.

Some context: Last week the Trump campaign and Nevada Republican Party challenged the signature-matching and verification process on absentee ballots conducted by computer in Clark County. A state court judge has already dismissed the lawsuit, but the Trump campaign appealed.  

The Trump campaign claims that the computer signature matching wasn’t as stringent as human checks, and fraudulent ballots could have snuck through.

The smallest state in the nation will no longer have the longest name.

CNN projects Rhode Island voters have approved a measure that will strike “and Providence Plantations” from the state’s name: “State of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations.”

This year’s Question 1 ballot proposition asked voters whether to amend the state Constitution by trimming that name to simply “State of Rhode Island.”

The measure passed with 52.9% of the vote, according to CNN’s projection.

“Nobody is trying to eradicate the history that has been in play,” Democratic state Rep. Anastasia Williams of Providence, who worked to get the question placed on the ballot this year following George Floyd’s death at the hands of Minneapolis police and worked with the “Yes on 1” campaign, said before the vote. “But we need to present the true and accurate history of it entirely, as opposed to just bits and pieces.”

Read more about the measure here.

A Trump adviser described the bleak state of the president’s reelection chances as the campaign awaits the final returns from Pennsylvania and Georgia. 

The adviser defended Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump going after some of the 2024 hopefuls on Twitter for not saying more about the President’s performance in the 2020 race, lifting some GOP contenders to victory in certain races.

“They can’t hide their emotions. That’s normal,” the adviser said.

Some of the 2024 hopefuls appear to have responded to the Trump children, including Nikki Haley, the Indian American former ambassador to the United Nations and former governor of South Carolina, and Sen. Tom Cotton, who have have both released statements.

A separate adviser said it’s starting to feel like the bottom is about to fall out from under the President, as the campaign waits on returns from Georgia and Pennsylvania.

“It’s not good,” the adviser said.

Montana has voted to establish 21 as the legal age to purchase, possess and consume cannabis by constitutional amendment, CNN projects. This adds to the growing list of states to approve marijuana-related ballot measures this year. 

Arizona and New Jersey voted to legalize recreational marijuana while South Dakota approved legalization for both recreational and medical use, CNN projects.

South Dakota will be the first state ever to approve medical and recreational marijuana measures at the same time.

Results have not yet been determined for Montana’s other ballot question that would legalize recreational marijuana and Mississippi’s medical marijuana measure.

Pennsylvania Secretary of State Kathy Boockvar speaks during a news conference, Thursday, November 5, in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.

Pennsylvania’s Secretary of State Kathy Boockvar reassured voters this afternoon that their ballots will be counted and county election officials “take this so seriously.”

Boockvar said all of the ballots would be counted by Friday.

“They are such professionals,” Boockvar said about the election officials. “So, you know, I can just say really no matter how you chose to vote this year and so many Pennsylvanians have, and it looks like it’s really going to be great turnout when we finalize the numbers that every method is incredibly safe and secure.”

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President Trump’s lead in Georgia has dropped to less than 10,000 votes as ballots continue to be counted.

“The same thing is happening in the commonwealth of Pennsylvania,” CNN’s John King said this afternoon. “Inside of Trump’s campaign they keep saying they have lawyers in both places. We know the President’s been on the phone to the Republican governor here, Republican governor there. At the White House and Trump campaign headquarters, they’re doing the math.”

Watch John King break down the latest numbers:

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The Trump campaign filed a new lawsuit Thursday afternoon against Philadelphia elections officials for allegedly violating their due process rights by blocking the observation of ballots in the city.

This complaint doesn’t seem to include any details about how and why canvassing might have been blocked.

This case appears to be mirroring the case in the Pennsylvania Supreme Court from earlier today.

This is a new claim in federal court alleging violations of constitutional instead of state law. There is a 5:30 p.m. hearing scheduled.

Pennsylvania’s attorney general told the Supreme Court Thursday that he objects to the Trump campaign joining a pending dispute concerning late arriving ballots in the Commonwealth.  

The justices are currently considering a case brought by Republicans challenging a Pennsylvania Supreme Court decision that allowed ballots to be counted up to three days after the election even if they don’t have a legible postmark. The Trump campaign is asking the justices to allow it to become a part of the dispute arguing that the election could come down to those ballots.  

But in legal papers filed Thursday afternoon, Attorney General Josh Shapiro said that the current challenger, the state Republican party, is “capable and willing” to make all the arguments the Trump campaign would make. Shapiro also argued that the case has been pending for weeks and that the campaign “has not provided any justification for its delay in seeking intervention in the court.” 

Some context: Neither the campaign’s request to intervene in the case, nor the Attorney General’s choice to object is unusual. They are normal tactics associated with a legal challenge. 

As things stand, there are more than 10,000 ballots that have arrived after the election. They will only come into play if the race is extremely tight.

Officials in the state have segregated the ballots in question pending the legal dispute but Pennsylvania’s Secretary of State Kathy Boockvar told CNN Thursday that they would not likely sway the final outcome. 

“From what we’re tracking so far, you know, counties are reporting anywhere from, smaller counties report from zero to some larger counties reported about 500 ballots received the day after Election Day,” Boockvar said.  

“So, you know, that’s not that many really, so unless it is super close, I don’t see them making or breaking this one way or another. In the meantime, we are counting every ballot,” Boockvar. 

Arizona Secretary of State Katie Hobbs said there’s roughly between 400,000 to 450,000 outstanding ballots statewide and just under 300,000 of those ballots are in Maricopa County — the biggest county in the state.

Hobbs told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer that she expects the bulk of those outstanding ballots to be tabulated by the weekend.

Hobbs added, “I think that after today and tomorrow we’ll have a really, more clear picture on what Arizona looks like.”

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Ballot counting continues in a handful of key states crucial to determining whether Democratic presidential hopeful Joe Biden or President Trump will win the presidency.

Biden just delivered short remarks from Wilmington, Delaware, and urged Americans to remain calm and patient as votes are counted. Trump has not delivered public remarks today.

Here’s what we expect from those states and campaigns in the way of news conferences and polling results later today:

News conferences: 

Ballot counting results: 

CNN projects that Republicans will win these House races:

Joe Biden projected optimism about the election results and vote counts, saying “The process is working.”

Biden urged for patience and reiterated that “every vote must be counted.”

Biden spoke from Wilmington, Delaware, after attending a Covid-19 meeting. He briefly acknowledged the pandemic and the lives lost to the virus. “Our hearts go out to each and every family who’s lost a loved one to this terrible disease.”

Watch Biden’s full remarks:

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Former Vice President Joe Biden delivered a statement to reporters at the Queen in Wilmington, Delaware. He urged patience as the votes are still being counted.

Biden and running mate Kamala Harris just finished up the second of two briefings, according to reporters traveling with the former vice president.

Ballots continue to be counted in several battleground states, and some of them are receiving extra scrutiny in a process known as ballot adjudication.

Intricacies of the process vary by state and sometimes by county, but it typically involves a small panel of people reviewing a ballot to determine either the voter’s intent or whether the ballot can be counted at all based on whether the voter was eligible to cast it.

The adjudication process is underway in a number of the battleground states, including Georgia and North Carolina  — where President Trump and Joe Biden are locked in a close race.

The process could be used in the counting of provisional ballots, which are cast when there’s a question about a voter’s eligibility, or to count ballots that, for example, might have gotten “physically mangled in the process of trying to put them through a scanning machine,” according to Rick Hasen, a CNN contributor and election law expert at the University of California, Irvine.

Hasen stressed that the process is routine and is not unusual for this election,” but that “we care about it now because of the prospect of a close election.”

He also said that although ballots in these states are being adjudicated, it’s unlikely that the process will play an outsized role in the overall vote count in those states.

Read the full story here.

Poll workers count ballots inside the Maricopa County Election Department in Phoenix, Arizona on Thursday, November 5.

The presidential race between President Trump and former Vice President Joe Biden remains on a razor’s edge as election workers in key states continue to count ballots.

Biden currently has 253 electoral votes, while Trump has 213.

Here’s a look at where vote-counting stands in five key states:

Read more here.

President Trump’s lead in Georgia has been “shrinking consistently” since election night, CNN’s David Chalian said as he looked closer at what the President and Joe Biden need to win the Peach State.

“Statewide, Joe Biden would need 63% to 65% of those 48,000 votes that are left to be counted in order to overtake Donald Trump and win Georgia. Donald Trump only needs 34% to 36% of them,” Chalian explained.

Currently, Trump has a 12,768-vote lead over the former vice president.

“These votes that are out there to be counted are coming from Democratic powerhouse areas in the suburbs, and it’s the mail vote, which is a Democratic-leaning universe of voters,” Chalian said.

“And so, Joe Biden has been collecting north of 63% to 65% in this last day in Georgia, as votes have been coming in, and if he continues to overperform what he needs here, he can remain quite hopeful that there’s a chance to overtake Donald Trump in Georgia.”

Remember: Sixteen electoral votes are at stake in the state. Both candidates need 270 electoral votes to win the presidency. Biden currently has 253 electoral votes, while Trump has 213.

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Gabriel Sterling, Georgia's voting system implementation manager

As the remaining votes are being tabulated in Georgia, a state election official says the priority is getting every legal vote counted.

Sterling noted that his is hardly the only state still counting votes. It’s simply that Georgia has earned an increasingly bright spotlight as one of the final states yet to have projected a victor.

“The issue we have in Georgia is… it’s a close vote,” said Sterling. “There’s other states that have more votes to count than we do, but it’s a wide margin, so nobody cares.”

As a result of Covid-19 precautions, Georgia was forced to alter its voting operation, a pivot that sacrificed speed in favor of safety.

“This is the first time we’ve used paper ballots in this state in 20 years,” Sterling stated, adding, “This is going to take a little more time.”

In a race this tight, and in a state with ever-increasing importance, Sterling stressed the need for patience, and above all, accuracy. 

“These close elections require us to be diligent and make sure we do everything right.”

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Republican Carlos Giménez will win Florida’s 26th Congressional District, CNN projects, beating Democratic incumbent Debbie Mucarsel-Powell.

Pennsylvania Secretary of State Kathy Boockvar

Pennsylvania Secretary of State Kathy Boockvar says she believes late-arriving mail ballots – which are the subject of ongoing litigation and could be invalidated later by the courts – probably won’t decide the outcome in the state. 

The big question: How many of these ballots are there? About 10,000 of them were received on Wednesday across the state, an Allegheny County official told CNN, based on information from the governor’s office. The deadline is tomorrow.

There is an ongoing dispute about late-arriving ballots in the critical battleground state. The Pennsylvania Supreme Court previously ruled that ballots postmarked by Election Day, or with ineligible postmarks, that arrive by Friday should count. The US Supreme Court allowed that ruling to stand after deadlocking 4-4 on two requests from Republicans to intervene.

A source involved with the canvassing in Philadelphia says they estimate there will have 1,000 of these late-arriving mail-in ballots received by the Friday deadline.

These segregated ballots have not been counted there yet. Officials in Allegheny County, which includes Pittsburgh, told CNN that they had received around 500 late-arriving ballots since the polls closed. 

US District Judge Emmet Sullivan has ordered the USPS to sweep all processing facilities, twice daily, in states that allow for properly postmarked ballots to count, if they arrive after Election Day.

The sweeps include USPS processing facilities in the critical, and still undecided, battleground states of Nevada, Pennsylvania and North Carolina.

Ballots  — postmarked by or on Election Day — can count in North Carolina and Pennsylvania, according to state law, if they are received on or before Nov. 6. In Nevada, ballots –postmarked by or on Election Day  — can count in Nevada, according to state law, if they are received on or before Nov. 10.

The USPS must perform the first sweep in the morning, no later than 10 a.m. local time.

They must also sweep the facility in the mid-to-late afternoon, in time for any local ballots found to be delivered to the local election officials.

During a hearing Thursday, DOJ lawyers indicated that USPS district managers started the morning sweep for the day, before the order came into effect.

USPS must also report the number of ballots found during the sweep, and confirm they were delivered in time to meet the state deadlines.

About 47,000 ballots are outstanding in Georgia as of 3 p.m. ET, election official Gabriel Sterling said in a press conference Thursday.

Here’s the county-by-county breakdown Sterling provided:

Chatham County: 17,157

Clayton County: 6,026

Cobb County: 700

Floyd County: 682

Forsyth County: 4,713

Fulton County: 7,305

Gwinnett County: 4,800

Harris County: 3,641

Lawrence County: 1,797

Taylor County: 456

“We hope to have clarity on the outcome of these elections as soon as possible,” Sterling said.

Pennsylvania Democratic Sen. Bob Casey told CNN Thursday afternoon that he firmly believes there are enough uncounted votes in the Keystone State for Joe Biden to overtake President Donald Trump.

Casey predicted that Biden could overtake Trump by a 100,000 vote margin in Pennsylvania, but that it might “only reached when the vote is certified, which is down the road.”

“But for the short term, no question, I think, Joe Biden will win the state,” Casey, who has served in the US Senate since 2007, continued.

Casey added that he thinks Biden’s Pennsylvania win is “inevitable” because the remaining vote results that have yet to be tallied reside in and around cities and are mail-in votes.

“The reason for that is most of the vote out, as you know, is in Philadelphia, Delaware County,” he said. “Even in the counties that President Trump will win big, there’ll be scattering of Joe Biden votes because they’re mail-ins and they obviously tend to favor the Democrats.”

There are approximately 369,364 mail-in ballots left to be counted in the state as of 3:00 p.m. ET, according to the Pennsylvania’s secretary of state website. Philadelphia County estimates that they have 92,000 to 95,000 mail-in and absentee ballots left to count.

Trump is currently leading in Pennsylvania, but margins have narrowed as the commonwealth has tallied more voting results and more mail-in ballots have been counted. Trump cannot secure enough votes to win the presidency without winning Pennsylvania.

Casey said that Democrats have learned that they “have to try to get votes everywhere,” even in areas where Trump is popular.

“You gotta go everywhere. You have to have a message for every part of the state. And I think that lesson’s been learned,” he said. “But even when you do that, you have to accept the fact that sometimes the margins won’t change.”

Casey also called Trump “the most effective republican presidential candidate in Pennsylvania I’ve seen since Reagan” in rural parts of the commonwealth, asserting that future Republican presidential candidates will find his record tough to beat.

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On an ongoing caucus call, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is giving a positive assessment of the outcome of Tuesday’s election, a Democratic source on the call tells CNN. This is despite House Democratic losses that likely mean she will hold a smaller majority in the new Congress. 

“This was a big win,” she told House Democrats, referring to Joe Biden nearing a White House win, keeping the House majority and likely gaining at least a seat in the Senate.

Pelosi said that they “recognized from the start [2020] would be a steeper climb” to hold some of their seats because House Democrats did so well in deep red districts in 2018 when Trump wasn’t on the ballot.

Pelosi is also talking up the importance of the two possible Georgia Senate runoffs to take back the Senate majority.

Rep. Cheri Bustos, a who chairs the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, blamed bad polling for the outcome and for the bullish predictions headed into Election Day, according to two sources on the call.

“Voters looked more like 2016 than projected,” Bustos told Democrats, one of the sources said.

Pelosi, giving an upbeat assessment, tells Democrats that “we have created a mandate for Biden to lead our country in a unified way.”

The source said that Pelosi is using the word “mandate” repeatedly.

The call with her members comes amid Democratic hand-wringing about what went wrong Tuesday for their congressional candidates.

Democratic Presidential Candidate Joe Biden arrives at the Queen in Wilmington, Delaware, on ThursdayNovember 5.

Joe Biden is in Wilmington, Delaware, receiving a Covid-19 briefing as he awaits election results.

“That is what Joe Biden has done today. He’s attending a meeting on Covid,” CNN’s Anderson Cooper said.

Biden is receiving this update a day after the US hit its highest number of new coronavirus infections in a single day with more than 100,000 cases reported, according to data from Johns Hopkins University.

“We’re already on track, today, to have it be even worse,” Cooper added.

Cooper highlighted the stark contrast in how Biden is handling the pandemic compared to President Trump.

“What do you want to bet the President of the United States is certainly not being briefed on Covid today. It’s doubtful he’s being briefed on anything having to do with America’s business, national security,” Cooper said.

“To me it’s emblematic of the two approaches that Joe Biden who is not in office, is being briefed on Covid, as he has been all along, and taking it seriously enough that on such a difficult day in the pandemic, he’s taking time to be briefed on this,” Cooper said.

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Joe Biden is cutting into President Trump’s lead in Georgia and Pennsylvania, but the race in those states is still too early to call as votes continue to be counted.

Paths to 270 remain for both Biden and Trump.

CNN is yet to project a winner in these six states:

Biden currently has 253 electoral votes while Trump has 213.

Republican lawyers told a federal judge Thursday that they’d like to withdraw their request for a restraining over 93 ballots in Pennsylvania’s Montgomery County that voters were allowed to cure before Election Day after their absentee ballot wouldn’t be accepted.

A day before, the judge suggested the case was an attempt to disenfranchise voters and toss out the votes, though he did not rule. 

The Republicans noted they have a hearing on a similar case they’ve brought in Pennsylvania state court scheduled for Friday.

President Trump’s edge in Pennsylvania is growing smaller each day. As votes have continued to be counted in the hours since Tuesday, Democratic rival Joe Biden has been inching closer, says CNN’s John King.

A lead that was once as large as 500,000 votes, has dwindled to a figure slightly north of about 114,000.

With 92% of the votes counted, the President still holds an edge — 50.2% to 48.5%  — but Biden’s pursuit has been steady.

“Every time we’ve gotten significant amount of votes, Joe Biden has exceeded that bar that he has to be over to keep tracking on that lead, and to have a chance to win the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania,” King noted.

With other outstanding states, including Nevada and Arizona, still tabulating votes, locking up the Keystone State could be the fastest way for Biden to reach 270 electoral votes and stamp his ticket to the White House.

“If you’re Joe Biden and you get this,” said King, pointing to Pennsylvania on the map, “then you’re done.”

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“I think we definitely could” know the result in Pennsylvania by the end of the day today, Secretary of State Kathy Boockvar told CNN Thursday.

“I think there’s about 550,000 some-odd — plus or minus — ballots that are still in the process of being counted today. Some of those may have already been counted but are not yet uploaded. But yeah, they’re coming in,” she said, adding that the counties are ahead of schedule.

There are approximately 370,000 ballots left to count in Pennsylvania, according to the state’s website.

The largest number of outstanding votes remain in the big population centers, she said.

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UPDATE: This post has been updated with the latest numbers of outstanding ballots in the state.

A state court judge on Thursday dismissed a lawsuit brought by the Trump campaign that asked for an immediate halt to the vote counting until its representatives had “meaningful” access to ballot counting and adjudication.

Judge Cynthia Stephens was highly skeptical throughout a virtual hearing on Thursday about the lack of admissible evidence in the case and whether the campaign had sued the right party (Secretary of State Benson).

The lawyer representing the state, Heather Meingast, said the case was essentially moot because the counting had already concluded. “The ship has really sailed on the relief that they’re requesting in this case.” 

The judge said that the Trump campaign’s request is going to be denied in a written order, which will not come today, but she was not convinced of any substantial likelihood of success on the merits of the case. She said she will get an order out tomorrow afternoon if she can.

The judge seemed to express exasperation that this case was brought by the Trump campaign and ended the hearing by saying she adjourns the matter “where everyone here seeks to have a full and fair election process.”

Election workers count ballots at a convention center in Philadelphia on November 4. 

Philadelphia elections officials have asked the Pennsylvania Supreme Court to reverse a ruling that allows canvass observers for the Trump campaign to sit closer, and observe more closely, as mail-in ballots continue to be counted. 

The legal filings forced election workers to briefly stop the process of counting mail-in ballots just before noon ET. They have since resumed.

“The count is going forward,” said Kevin Feeley, spokesman for the city commissioners, who are overseeing the election in Philadelphia.“There was a brief pause earlier today in light of ongoing litigation but it has resumed in accordance with the law.” 

Philadelphia election officials argued that allowing the canvass observers to sit closer jeopardizes both the safety of ballot processing and the privacy of voters, according to the latest court filing.

The Supreme Court in Pennsylvania has yet to weigh in on the request. 

“There’s was a petition for allowance of appeal by The board of elections in Philadelphia. The court has taken no action on this filing,” said Stacey Witalec, spokesperson for the Supreme Court. “They will review it and determine either to grant or deny the appeal.”

According to the city officials’ filing:

You can read the court filing here.

Clark County election official Joe Gloria speaks at a press conference in Las Vegas on November 5.

Clark County, Nevada, election official Joe Gloria said staff is preparing to count “a little over 51,000 ballots” today that will be reported on Friday morning.

“The bulk of our ballots we’re hoping will be ready by Saturday or Sunday, this weekend. And again we won’t complete until Nov. 12 with all of those ballots that serve as exceptions,” he said.

Clark County is a major population center in Nevada, where Las Vegas is located.

Gloria said the county received a total of 63,262 mail-in ballots that need to be counted and processed. This number includes ballots that were dropped off at voting centers, ballots that were mailed through the US Postal Service and ballots that were pending ahead of Election Day.

Gloria added that the US mail will continue to deliver ballots that were postmarked on Nov. 3, through Nov. 10.

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A Georgia state court dismissed a lawsuit filed by Georgia Republicans to prevent the “unlawful counting of ballots received after the election” in Savannah. They filed the lawsuit after a poll watcher for the party allegedly viewed unprocessed absentee ballots mixed in with absentee ballots that were set to be tabulated. 

Judge James F. Bass made the ruling orally in court Thursday morning, and it was filed with the court this afternoon. 

The state Republican party and the Trump campaign said they filed the court documents in Chatham County Superior Court on Wednesday evening after a party poll watcher “witnessed absentee ballots that had not been properly processed apparently mixed into a pile of absentee ballots that was already set to be tabulated.The proper chain of custody for the ballots was not followed,” they alleged according to court documents.

The ballots in question were small in number: “one stack of three ballots, and a second stack of fifty-three ballots,” according to a copy of the filing provided by the state Republican party. 

Election workers count Fulton County ballots in Atlanta, Georgia, on November 4.

As of 12:45 p.m. ET, there are approximately 50,401 ballots still outstanding across Georgia, according to a statement by Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger.

Almost all of these outstanding ballots are absentee ballots, Georgia Deputy Press Secretary Jordan Fuchs tells CNN.

Fulton County — the largest county in the state and home to Atlanta —has finished processing ballots, the county commissioner said in a news conference.

President Trump’s lead in Pennsylvania has significantly gone down in the last 48 hours, with him leading by about 115,000 votes. At one point Trump led by more than 600,000 votes.

What’s being counted now are mail-in ballots, which are disproportionately coming in for Joe Biden, King explained. The momentum is currently working in favor for Biden.

The President cannot win reelection without the state’s 20 electoral votes. “The math doesn’t work,” CNN’s John King said.

In large population centers in the state like in Montgomery County, Biden is outperforming Trump with mail-in ballot counts and we’re still waiting for results to come in from Philadelphia, which has 12% of the state’s population.

In 2016 Hillary Clinton won 584,000 votes in Philadelphia County. Currently Biden is just 100,000 votes shy of that with votes still to be counted.

“The expectation is that turnout will be up, so it is not unreasonable to think Joe Biden’s going to get really close or maybe even higher than that Hillary Clinton total, which is a game-changing event,” King said.

King added that the votes are there for Biden.

“Joe Biden is on the trajectory, if he keeps getting those mail-in ballots, the percentages he’s been getting over the last 24 hours, the math is certainly within possibility,” he said.

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Biden campaign manager Jen O’Malley Dillon is urging patience as the results continue to filter in, saying that while the story is going to be “very positive” for Biden, the counting is still happening and it’s going to take time. 

She said she believes the counting will go “throughout the day and into tomorrow.” 

“And we are equally confident that we are going to be able to watch the counting throughout the day and into tomorrow to finalize these last states that are going to put us over the top to 270,” Dillon said.

Dillon outlined how the campaign sees the result in each state, cited below. On Arizona specifically, a state two outlets have called but the majority have not yet, Dillon stressed that they expect the race to be close and the margin to grow tighter but ultimately she believes they will win the state by “tens of thousands” of votes. 

“It wouldn’t be a presentation if I didn’t say I’m bullish on Arizona. We expected it all along to be close and as we look at the data that’s outstanding we see a number of Democratic counties that are yet to report,” she said. “We do expect the margin to be closing. This is the trajectory. We will win by tens of thousands of votes but that margin will close.” 

Remember: Each candidate needs 270 electoral college votes to win the presidency. Based on CNN’s projections so far, Joe Biden leads the race for the White House with 253 electoral votes. President Trump has 213 electoral votes. CNN is yet to project a winner in six states.

A county election worker scans ballots at a tabulating area at the Clark County Election Department in Las Vegas on November 4.

Joe Biden’s lead in Nevada has gone up from 7,647 to more than 11,000.

Biden holds 49.5% of the vote, while Trump holds 48.5%.

Officials in Clark County, Nevada, which includes Las Vegas, are set to give an update.

The county has the largest share of votes in Nevada, and was silent on updates yesterday. Across Nevada, Biden holds a slim lead.

There are six electoral votes at stake in Nevada.

A Pennsylvania court ruled that Trump campaign observers could stand closer to watch ballot processing in Philadelphia—a relatively inconsequential ruling that Trump campaign associates quickly touted as being a massive win. Votes that could decide the state are still being counted there. 

No court has found wrongdoing in the ballot-counting process in Philadelphia.

“It allows their observers to stand a little closer, but it is not an order that will have any impact on the outcome of the election,” law professor and CNN elections analyst Franita Tolson said Thursday, noting that the decision was “not massive at all.”

Allegheny County will not count any more ballots until tomorrow because of a court order over some 29,000 disputed ballots, according to county officials.   

But the county will still be preparing for a resumption tomorrow of the counting.  

“They’re processing them. No one has the day off. They’re working,” Fitzgerald told CNN.

There are approximately 36,000 ballots left to count, according to Allegheny Executive Rich Fitzgerald. Beyond the court ordered pile, the county has some 2,800 that were partially damaged and another 4,000 that need to be evaluated because of issues like missing dates or signature problems. 

In addition, 500 ballots arrived yesterday that were mailed before the election.

Fitzgerald said the county was told by the governor’s office that statewide there are probably 10,000 ballots that were received on Wednesday after the election.

The order stems from a legal challenge over misprinted ballots that had to be reissued to some voters. The county agreed not to count the potential pool of reprinted ballots until Nov. 6 at 5 p.m. local time, the deadline for receiving mail-in that were sent by election day.

Allegheny County poll workers will not be counting today because the bulk of the remaining pool of ballots in the county are the disputed pile.  Allegheny Executive Rich Fitzgerald said they would be continuing to process ballots on Thursday but they might not be scanning them.

County Council member Bethay Hallam said that the county should put more information out about what is going on.

 Hallam added that “there is nothing malicious going on here.” “It is frustrating that there isn’t more information of what they are actually doing today.”  

“The Elections Division staff will be using the day to do administrative work,” according to an internal county communication obtained by CNN. They will resume counting on Friday.

UPDATE: This post has been updated with additional details from county officials.

As vote counting continues in Pennsylvania, Attorney General Josh Shapiro said Americans may get a better sense of the result “by the end of the day.”

He said he’s basing this off the secretary of state’s earlier comments where she said the “vast majority of these ballots would be counted by the end of the day today.”

Shapiro also asserted that the mail-in ballots are “every bit as legal as the ballots that were cast on election day.”

Workers will “secure, protect and count all these votes,” he assured, adding that regardless of the outcome, the will of the people will be respected.

“Whoever gets more votes in that election will be deemed the winner by the commonwealth. And we will respect the will of the people. That’s the law, that’s how the process works.”

Why this matters: Pennsylvania is one of the key states CNN is yet to project a winner in. Each candidate needs 270 electoral college votes to win the presidency. Based on CNN’s projections so far, Joe Biden leads the race for the White House with 253 electoral votes. President Trump has 213 electoral votes.

Democratic and Republican representatives review absentee ballots in Atlanta on Novmeber 4.

President Trump’s lead in Georgia continues to narrow as votes are counted. An election official said that more than 60,000 mail-in ballots are still uncounted during a brief press conference.

Joe Biden has been making up ground in areas where there are the most outstanding votes like Fulton County and Clayton County, CNN’s John King said.

In Fulton County, where there are several thousand votes outstanding, Joe Biden has been receiving nearly 73% of the mail-in ballots cast, King reported.

In Clayton County, where there are also several thousand votes, Biden is getting 85% of the vote in this county. 

“It doesn’t guarantee that when they count the mail-in ballots, Joe Biden is going to get 85% of those but…. your assumption there, Anderson, is that Biden is going to make-up some ground there,” King explained.

The question still remains if Biden can overcome Trump’s current lead of about 18,000 votes.

“As we’ve watched this lead shrink, the President’s lead in Georgia shrink, it is because Democrats disproportionately did vote by mail,” King said.

Watch John King’s full analysis here:

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As the President’s lead in Georgia slims, one of the state’s largest remaining blocks of uncounted votes says they are nearing completion.

Factoring in provisional ballots, including overseas and military votes, Barron noted that the county’s overall count of unknown ballots is just shy of 5,000.

“The provisional ballots are being researched and processed now. Then we will tabulate those tomorrow,” he told Burnett.

With about 61,000 ballots still to be tabulated statewide, President Trump holds a lead of about 18,000 votes.

Georgia’s Fulton County is home to the large city of Atlanta, a region of the state that has trended towards former Vice President Joe Biden to this point.

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According to data submitted Thursday in federal court filings, the United States Postal Service processed 305,184 ballots the day after Election Day.

In analyzing the data, 3.8% of the ballot – or 11,676 ballots – were processed in states where ballots are not accepted if they arrive after Election Day.

This data does not tell us if the ballots were postmarked by or on Election Day, or if they were delivered yesterday.  

The overwhelming majority of the ballots processed on Wednesday were in California. Those ballots, if properly postmarked, are counted if they arrive by November 20.

These figures do not include ballots being returned through what USPS calls “local turnaround.” That’s the process USPS says some post offices have implemented, where ballots are being delivered directly to local boards of election – they are postmarked, but don’t go through normal mail processing. 

They also do not include data on ballots that don’t have barcodes.

USPS has reiterated that the delays are largely due to staffing shortages due to Covid-19.  

To fix the issues, USPS has provided “multiple layers of operational oversight,” is coordinating closely with the USPS inspector general, and has been holding daily troubleshooting calls with problem areas.

Georgia election official Gabriel Sterling said state election officials are trying to determine how many outstanding provisional ballots still need to be counted. He added that he hopes there will be a resolution by the end of the day. 

“We are working with the counties to try and get a full understanding of how many provisionals might be available,” Sterling said.

If the vote tally between the two candidates is very close towards the end of the counting, Sterling said there is anticipation military ballots, curable ballots, and provisional ballots may play a role in the outcome, so the final count “may take a minute.”

The election in Georgia “is going to be an extremely close margin, especially in the presidential election,” he added. 

Workers prepare mail-in ballots for counting, Wednesday, Nov. 4, 2020, at the convention center in Lancaster, Pa., following Tuesday's election. (AP Photo/Julio Cortez)

Trump campaign manager Bill Stepien continued to project confidence in the President’s path to winning Pennsylvania and securing 270 electoral votes on a Thursday morning campaign strategy call with reporters – even as Donald Trump’s lead in the commonwealth continues to shrink.

Saying that he is basing his statements on “numbers and data not gut or spin,” Stepien criticized “the media and the insiders in this city” who have been “trying to count Donald Trump out for years,” from his primary to his impeachment.  

“Donald Trump is alive and well,” Stepien said.  

Stepien noted that Trump is “cutting into the Democrats’ lead” in Arizona and the race “is getting closer and closer.” He said that Trump is “still leading” in Georgia and North Carolina, and continued to suggest Trump will win Pennsylvania.  

“We still have confidence in Pennsylvania. Our data tells us that we are winning by more than 200,000 votes,” Stepien said, suggesting that votes will come from both Philadelphia and “Trump counties.”

He added, “We will win Pennsylvania.” 

At this point, Trump cannot lose Pennsylvania and still secure enough electoral votes to win the presidency. And despite the Trump campaign’s confidence about winning Pennsylvania, his lead has been shrinking as mail-in votes in the commonwealth were being counted.

The Trump campaign is pursuing several legal disputes over the electoral process in Pennsylvania, including a lawsuit claiming that Democratic election officials are not being transparent about the ballot counting process and hiding the process from Republican poll observers.

Meanwhile, a senior Biden campaign adviser told CNN Thursday that the campaign expects to win Pennsylvania by a “sizable” margin. 

According to data submitted today in federal court filings, the USPS processed thousands of ballots Wednesday in critical battleground states. If properly postmarked, those could be counted in accordance with state laws.  

This data does not tell us whether the ballots were postmarked by or on Election Day, or if they were delivered Wednesday.   

Here’s a look at the processed ballots:

Remember: CNN has not yet projected a winner in the presidential race. Six states remain too close to call, and both Trump and Joe Biden have pathways to the 270 electoral votes needed to win the election.

Joe Biden’s campaign announced it will be holding a livestreamed press conference at 11 a.m. ET.

Campaign manager Jen O’Malley Dillon and senior adviser Bob Bauer will provide an update on the state of the race, as votes continue to be counted.

About 60,000 votes are being counted today in Georgia, election official Gabriel Sterling said in a press conference Thursday. Here’s the breakdown provided:

The counting process will continue today and into the evening if necessary, he added.

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A Georgia election official says the state’s main goal is accuracy as the vote count continues.

He also noted this is the first time Georgia has used paper ballots in 20 years.

“We told people they could expect some results on election night, we got a lot out there,” Sterling said. 

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Georgia officials are holding a press conference to give an update on votes counted so far.

There is currently a razor-thin margin between the candidates in the state, and with 16 electoral college votes, a win in the state would be a huge prize for either candidate.

Based on CNN’s projections so far, Joe Biden leads the race for the White House with 253 electoral votes. President Trump has 213 electoral votes.

Reminder: Each candidate needs 270 electoral college votes to win the presidency.

While both Biden and Trump still have paths to 270, a win in Georgia could decide the election for Joe Biden.

Two days after Election Day, it’s still too close for CNN to project a winner in six states: Alaska, Arizona, Georgia, Nevada, North Carolina and Pennsylvania.

The process that goes into CNN projections is careful and complicated. It involves both real-time results and information from exit polls.

CNN, NBC, ABC and CBS work with the polling firm Edison Research in what is known as the National Election Pool for results and exit polling data. Fox News and the Associated Press have a separate arrangement.

CNN’s polling director Jennifer Agiesta explains more about this process:

Read here for more from Agiesta and Washington Bureau Chief Sam Feist.

An election official counts absentee ballots in Atlanta on November 4.

Democrats’ only path to avoid a Republican majority in the Senate could require winning both seats in Georgia.

Here’s how:

The balance of power in the Senate currently sits at 47 Democrats and 47 Republicans, with six seats to be decided.

Democrats need four more seats to get to 51, which would flip the Senate in their control. If Joe Biden wins the presidency, Kamala Harris would be a tiebreaker in the Senate.

Currently, Republican incumbent Sen. Thom Tillis is maintaining his lead in North Carolina and incumbent GOP Sen. Susan Collins has a lead in Maine. In Alaska, GOP Sen. Dan Sullivan is leading Democrat Al Gross.

There is an opportunity for Democrats is in the Arizona race, where Democratic challenger Mark Kelly is maintaining his sizable lead over incumbent GOP Sen. Martha McSally.

This makes the two seats in Georgia indispensable for Democrats. The race for incumbent Sen. Kelly Loeffler’s seat will go into a runoff with Raphael Warnock. This election will be held on January 5.

In the second race, Republican incumbent David Perdue is currently ahead of his Democratic challenger, Jon Ossoff. Perdue has exactly 50% of the reported votes but he needs to maintain that, because if Ossoff keeps narrowing this margin as he has been so far, the race could also go into a runoff election.

As we wait for more election results and the counting of all legally cast ballots, the Trump world is giving mixed messaging on vote counting. 

President Donald Trump offered a three-word, all-caps message in his first tweet of the day Thursday. 

It’s unclear whether Trump’s missive was directed at a particular state or states, since his campaign has also advocated for counting every ballot in places where Joe Biden is ahead. And, if the count were to be halted as it currently stands, Biden would win in Arizona and Nevada, putting him over the top with the electoral votes needed to clinch the presidency. 

Minutes before Trump’s morning tweet, a top former aide, Kellyanne Conway, was on Fox News, where she urged patience and a full count. 

She continued, “Why are we in such a rush to finish this election prematurely? Let’s be patient. Let’s take a deep breath. Let’s count every legal vote. I think it’s a time to be methodical and not emotional.” 

Trump, however, repeatedly called to have final election results on election night, saying as recently as Tuesday afternoon that Americans “should be entitled to know who won on November 3.”

Remember: CNN has not yet projected a winner in the presidential race. Six states remain too close to call, and both Trump and Joe Biden have pathways to the 270 electoral votes needed to win the election.

Reacting to protests outside the election facility where votes are being counted, Arizona Secretary of State Katie Hobbs reiterated that officials will be counting all the votes that were cast in the state.

“I don’t understand the objective of these protesters. Of course, we’re going to count all the votes. We are legally obligated to do that,” Hobbs said in an interview with NBC this morning.

She added that election workers in the county “have been working around the clock to get these ballots counted” and that “they’re going to do their jobs whether or not there’s protesters outside urging them to do that.”

Hobbs said there are approximately 450,000 ballots left for the state to count – about 300,000 of those coming from Maricopa County alone. Former Vice President Joe Biden currently holds a narrow lead of more than 68,000 votes over President Donald Trump in the state.

Hobbs did not have an estimate yet on how long it would take for the remaining ballots to be counted.

Those ballots are “early ballots that voters dropped off on election day at polling places,” she said adding “they’re in the process of being signature verified before they can be tabulated.”

She also debunked an online conspiracy theory known as “Sharpiegate,” where it’s being claimed the state is invalidating ballots filled out with sharpies.

“There really is no merit to this,” Hobbs said. “It’s a conspiracy theory, that people were given pens to deliberately invalidate their ballot. That is absolutely not happening.”

US stocks surged again in what’s shaping up to be the market’s best week in months. States are still counting election votes, but Wall Street is growing increasingly confident – and excited – the result will be a divided government.

Investors are hoping Joe Biden will take the White House while Republicans will keep the Senate, and that such as combination will lead to more moderate policies including a quick stimulus deal but limited tax increases. 

All three indexes rallied at the opening bell in New York on Thursday. The Dow jumped 1.3%, or some 360 points, while the S&P opened up 1.6%. The Nasdaq rallied 1.9%.

Even though a delayed election result was deemed the “nightmare scenario” before the vote, stocks have rallied every day this week. 

The S&P 500 and the Nasdaq Composite are on track for their best week since April. For the Dow, it’s shaping up to be the best week since June.

Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden speaks on November 4, in Wilmington, Delaware.

Democrats woke up Thursday morning cautiously optimistic with how presidential results are trending, with party operatives – like everyone else – keeping close tabs on four states: Arizona, Nevada, Georgia and Pennsylvania.

Joe Biden holds a lead in both Arizona and Nevada, two states where more votes are expected to come in on Thursday. But the belief is that Biden’s narrow margins in each state could shrink as incoming votes continue to trickle in. The question that remains: Will President Donald Trump’s margins in these new votes be enough to cut into the leads Biden already enjoys?

Most Democratic optimism comes from Pennsylvania, a state that has dominated Biden’s focus throughout the general election. Although the former vice president trails Trump in the state with roughly 10% of votes yet to be reported, it is where those votes are coming from – Democratic strongholds like Philadelphia and Pennsylvania and thee suburban counties in Southeast Pennsylvania – that has the party confident.

A source told CNN on Thursday morning that there are approximately 140,000 outstanding mostly mail in ballots in Philadelphia alone. Although Trump enjoys a lead of over 160,000, the bulk of votes from Philadelphia are expected to go for Biden. Additionally, there are still thousands of votes outstanding from the areas around the city – like in nearby Bucks County, with 28,000 mail-in ballots left to count. Biden has consistently maintained a significant lead in mail in votes.

“I mean, it depends. I know there is enough out there in the state as long as those trends continue, I believe personally, a margin that will carry Pennsylvania for the Vice President,” Pennsylvania Lt. Gov. John Fetterman, a Democrat, told CNN’s Chris Cuomo on Thursday.

Then there is Georgia, a state that has continually narrowed as votes from the more Democratic greater Atlanta metropolitan area have come in. Trump is up by less than 20,000 votes in the state, with around 50,000 votes left to be counted, according to Walter Jones, spokesman for the Secretary of State’s office. The key for Democrats will be how many of those votes come from reliably Democratic areas like Fulton and DeKalb counties around Atlanta and Chatham around Savannah.

It’s Thursday morning in the US, and the race for the White House is still too close to call.

As votes continue to come in, former Vice President Joe Biden has edged closer to the 270-electoral-vote threshold needed to win the presidency, but razor-thin margins separate him from Donald Trump in key battleground states.

Here are the six states where CNN has not yet made a projection:

What we know:

Based on CNN’s projections so far, Joe Biden leads the race for the White House with 253 electoral votes. President Trump has 213 electoral votes.

Reminder: Each candidate needs 270 electoral college votes to win the presidency.

What to expect:

Here’s a look at when we’ll get updates from local officials today:

Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer speaks during a canvas launch event in Detroit, on Monday, November 2.

Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer praised the way her state has handled the election, and said that Democratic nominee Joe Biden was focused on unity.

“We were able to get these votes counted, 5.1 million votes, and with Joe Biden ending the day with about 13 times the margin that Donald Trump had just four years ago,” she told CNN’s John Berman. “It feels a lot more decisive than what we’re seeing play out in other states potentially.”

As the nation awaits the final result, and with the state of the race still in the balance, Whitmer emphasized the need to let democracy run its course.

Whitmer said she spoke with Biden on Wednesday, and should he ultimately win the White House, his goal will be American unity.

“He called me. He is focused on how do we heal this nation? How do we bring people together? How do we build bridges and start the common ground that has been so severely lacking these last few years,” she told Berman. 

As for the election itself, Whitmer condemned any attempt to interfere with the political process.

“There’s no question that efforts to undermine the integrity of and the confidence in this election will have ramifications long past when all the numbers are finally in,” she said, adding “that is something that is anti-American.”

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An election official counts absentee ballots at State Farm Arena in Atlanta, Georgia, on Wednesday, November 4.

As of this morning, there are close to 50,000 votes left to be counted in Georgia, according to Walter Jones, spokesperson for the Secretary of State’s office.

There were no further immediate details. 

Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger is scheduled to give an update at 10:30 a.m. ET. Georgia is one of six states CNN has not yet projected a winner in. Alaska, Arizona, Nevada, North Carolina and Pennsylvania are also still too close to call.

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Bucks County, which is north of Philadelphia, has about 28,000 ballots left to count as of Thursday morning, according to a county official, who says they should wrap up today. 

Public Information Officer Larry King issued a press release saying overall, the county has counted more than 356,000 votes, with Joe Biden’s vote total at 177,019 and President Donald Trump at 173,467. 

The totals include all votes cast in person at the county’s 304 voting precincts, plus more than 129,000 mail-in and absentee ballots so far, according to King. 

King told CNN over the phone:

“The number of mail-in ballots is also expected to increase slightly as county officials continue to count ballots received on Election Day and through Friday’s deadline for receiving ballots in the mail,” he said. 

As several battleground states continue to count votes and the margins remain razor-thin, Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden tweeted Thursday morning: “Every vote must be counted.”

The tweet included a short video showing people who, presumably, voted.  

Philadelphia County employees process mail-in ballots on November 4, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

There are about 140,000 outstanding mail-in ballots in Pennsylvania’s Philadelphia County, a source involved with the canvassing in Philadelphia told CNN.

The Secretary of State’s website still reads 120,128 remaining to be counted. 

This suggests that the total mail-in ballots received has increased which would not be surprising – in press conferences, Philadelphia Commissioner Lisa Deeley has said that she was estimating 350,000 total mail-in ballots, but that number did not include ballots received after Sunday. 

And state law allows for mail-in ballots post marked by Election Day can be received and counted until tomorrow.  

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Workers for the City Commissioner's office count votes at a convention center in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on Wednesday, November 4.

Pennsylvania Sen. Bob Casey said he is confident Joe Biden will win the state, and that ballots still being counted from Philadelphia alone may decide it for the former vice president.  

Casey said he predicts counties surrounding Philadelphia, including Montgomery, Bucks and Delaware, will also push Biden to a win. 

The state as a whole has about 750,000 mail-in ballots to be counted, according to the secretary of state’s website, though this figure has not been updated recently.

Casey said that Biden could overtake former President Obama’s numbers from the city. “President Obama almost won Philadelphia by 500,000. Because the turnout is so much higher, Joe Biden might get to that, but he doesn’t necessarily have to,” he said. 

Casey also said that he spoke with Biden after midnight on Wednesday morning and the former vice president was “very upbeat.”

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President Trump speaks on November 4 in the East Room of the White House in Washington, DC.

A team of international observers from the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) has called President Trump’s claims of voting irregularities “baseless” and says they “harm public trust in democratic institutions.”

The organization — of which the United States is a member — complimented the voting itself, calling it “competitive and well managed despite legal uncertainties and logistical challenges,” according to a preliminary report released on Thursday. 

Despite the various compliments, the OSCE said “late legal challenges and evidence-deficient claims about election fraud created confusion and concern among election officials and voters.”

It also criticized Trump’s claims of irregularities in the vote.

The OSCE praised the arrangements put in place by election officials across the country contributed to a higher turnout “despite challenges posed by COVID-19 pandemic,” rejecting President Trump’s criticism of the postal voting system. 

“Despite numerous public statements by the incumbent President over the integrity of postal voting, the number and scale of alleged and reported cases of fraud associated to absentee ballots remained negligible,” it said. 

About the group: The OSCE sent a team of 102 observers to oversee the voting process in the United States, at the invitation of the US authorities. It will publish a final assessment after the conclusion of the electoral process. 

Election workers count Fulton County ballots at State Farm Arena in Atlanta, Georgia on November 4.

If everything is on track, an update is expected from Fulton County, Georgia, officials around 11:00 a.m. ET about the final votes being counted in the county.

President Trump’s lead is narrowing in Georgia as more mail-in votes are counted, Director of Registration Richard Barron told CNN Thursday.

Barron said there are 10,000 to 11,000 ballots left to count. He said they have scanned 137,134 ballots and adjudicated 132,272, and they will continue to open and scan ballots this morning.

The vote review panel will then return at 10 a.m. ET, Barron said, and that the review should take an hour. 

The certification of the final results from Fulton County is scheduled for Nov. 13.

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Maricopa County Elections employee Alba Parra tabulates early ballots at the Maricopa County Elections Headquarters in Phoenix, Arizona on November 4.

Two days after the election, Joe Biden is nearing 270 electoral votes, but CNN has not yet projected a winner in the presidential race.

Paths to 270 remain for both Biden and President Trump as votes continue to be counted in the six states where CNN has not yet projected a winner.

Here’s a look at when we’ll get updates from local officials today:

Maricopa County elections officials and observers watch as ballots are tallied at the Maricopa County Recorders Office in Phoenix, Arizona, on Wednesday, November 4.

It’s the Thursday after Election Day, and CNN has not yet projected a winner in the presidential race.

Ballots are still being counted in several key states, with elections officials expected to provide updates later today.

Here’s a look at four states we’re watching today:

Election workers count Fulton County ballots at State Farm Arena in Atlanta, Georgia on November 4.

President Trump’s lead in Georgia has narrowed over the past few hours, and that just happened again. That’s due to another batch of votes that just came in from Fulton County — the largest county in the state and home to Atlanta — according to CNN’s Phil Mattingly. 

Fulton County reported the results of more than 8,000 additional ballots. Trump’s lead in the state narrowed from more than 30,000 at midnight to just more than 18,500. 

Overnight, Fulton had about 20,000 absentee ballots to be counted. The county just reported the results of 8,351 of those, with Biden getting 6,410 of those votes and Trump getting 1,941 of them.

County election workers have been processing and counting those votes all night and continue now. 4% of the vote in Georgia still remains to be counted. 

While some counties that have voted overwhelmingly for Trump are still waiting for votes to be counted, most of the outstanding ballots are from more populous blue areas around Atlanta, Savannah and Columbus, Mattingly explained. 

“To give you some context here, the vote that was coming in out of Fulton County over last couple of hours has been coming in at a rate of 80% to 20% Biden. That is above that 60 to 62% range. Will that hold? That will dictate whether or not Joe Biden ends up overtaking Donald Trump in the state of Georgia, but there’s a pathway right now for Joe Biden in Georgia,” he added. 

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Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden speaks to supporters in Scranton, Pennsylvania on November 3.

If Joe Biden wins Pennsylvania, he will get to the 270 electoral votes that he needs to win the US presidency.

Currently, President Trump is leading the Keystone State, but his lead has significantly narrowed in the last 24 hours. As more mail-in ballots were counted, Trump went from an over 600,000-vote margin to now being ahead with about 164,000 votes.

“Joe Biden has been, with regularity, progressively eating away in major chunks at Donald Trump’s lead,” Mattingly said, adding that with 11% of votes in Pennsylvania still to be counted, it means Biden can overtake Trump and lead in Pennsylvania based on the current state of the race.

In Philadelphia County, for example, Biden leads with 79% of the counted vote in his favor. It is yet to report about 30% more of its outstanding vote here. Given that Hillary Clinton won this county by about 584,000 votes in 2016 and 2020 has produced a record voter turnout, the number of votes for Joe Biden is likely to increase.

But remember: The path for 270 is still open for both candidates.

Joe Biden could lose Pennsylvania and could still win 270 electoral votes if he wins Arizona and Nevada.

If President Trump holds on to Pennsylvania, he can get to 270 electoral votes with Arizona, North Carolina and Georgia. It will have to be “some combination of Pennsylvania and three other states,” Mattingly said.

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A county election worker scans ballots in a tabulating area at the Clark County Election Department, in Las Vegas, Nevada, on Wednesday, November 4.

The 2020 election was unlike any other with millions of people going to the polls during a deadly coronavirus pandemic.

As a result, there was a surge in the number of mail-in ballots around the country and a series of state law changes designed to make it easier to vote early, whether in person or by mail.

When you double the number of early votes and keep the same rules in place about when and how they will be counted (and the same or fewer number of election officials to count them), the situation we are seeing play out is to be expected. Every vote needs to be counted – even if that tabulation process is slower than we would like.

Five critical battleground states -– Arizona, Georgia, Nevada, Pennsylvania and North Carolina – along with the state of Alaska, remain uncalled by CNN for either President Trump or former Vice President Joe Biden. Those states will, without question, determine the identity of the next president. Both men retain paths to victory, though Biden is closing in on the 270 electoral votes he needs to take the White House.

What’s difficult to remember – but critically important to remember – amid this ongoing uncertainty is that this is all a) totally expected and b) totally normal.

Reminder: There is absolutely nothing in the Constitution or any federal law that mandates a winner of the election be declared on Election Day. In fact, for much of the 19th century, it took days – if not weeks – for the winner to be declared.

Even in more recent elections, declaring a winner usually extends beyond election night – as the state-by-state counting of votes can often drag for hours or days, even without a pandemic. In 2000, we didn’t know who the president would be until December 12 –– more than a month after Election Day.

People demonstrate in support of counting all votes, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on November 4.

It’s Thursday morning in the US, and the race for the White House is still too close to call. However, as votes continue to come in, former Vice President Joe Biden has edged closer to the 270-electoral-vote threshold needed to win the presidency.

Here are the six states where CNN has not yet made a projection:

Election personnel handle ballots as vote counting in the general election continues at State Farm Arena in Atlanta, Georgia, on Wednesday, November 4.

The race for the White House is too close to call, but contests are tightening in the key states of Georgia, Arizona and Pennsylvania.

Ballots are still being counted in several key states, with elections officials expected to provide updates later today.

If you’re just reading in, here’s what you need to know about the race:

Where things stand: Biden holds a 253-213 lead in the Electoral College. In addition to Arizona, Georgia, Nevada, and Pennsylvania, the races in Alaska and North Carolina remain still too close to call.

Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden leads the race for the White House with 253 electoral votes. President Trump has 213 electoral votes.

It’s still too close to call in six states: Alaska, Arizona, Georgia, Nevada, North Carolina and Pennsylvania.

Based on CNN’s latest projections, this is where the race to 270 currently stands.

CNN projects Biden will win at least three of Maine’s four electoral votes, plus Wisconsin, Michigan, Hawaii, Rhode Island, Minnesota, Virginia, California, Oregon, Washington state, Illinois, New Hampshire, New Mexico, Colorado, Connecticut, New Jersey, New York, Vermont, Delaware, Washington, DC, Maryland, Massachusetts and one of Nebraska’s five electoral votes. Nebraska and Maine award two electoral votes to their statewide winners and divide their other electoral votes by congressional districts.

CNN projects Trump will win Montana, Texas, Iowa, Idaho, Ohio, Mississippi, Wyoming, Missouri, Kansas, Utah, Louisiana, Alabama, South Carolina, North Dakota, South Dakota, Arkansas, Indiana, Oklahoma, Kentucky, West Virginia and Tennessee and four of Nebraska’s five electoral votes.

Reminder: Each candidate needs 270 electoral college votes to win the presidency.

President Trump speaks at the White House in Washington, DC, early on November 4.

President Trump’s team launched a series of lawsuits in key battleground states that seemed less about sound legal reasoning and more about slowing Joe Biden from marching over the electoral vote threshold. 

At times, the lawsuits have contested ballots in the double digits — hundreds if not thousands of votes away of potentially swing any state’s result.

“I think much of the litigation is a longshot and unlikely to succeed,” said Franita Tolson, a law professor at USC Gould School of Law and CNN contributor. 

She pointed to a lawsuit in Georgia the Trump campaign announced Wednesday night over a poll worker mixing unprocessed and processed absentee ballots. That might have the potential to affect few votes, she said. 

“I suspect that a big goal of this litigation is, in the short term, to change the narrative” from a potential Biden win to a conversation about election mismanagement or even fraud, Tolson said.

Another law professor and CNN contributor, Rick Hasen, said the lawsuits appeared to be more public relations than serious litigation. “These lawsuits so far are not tackling any major problem that would seem to call overall vote totals into questions,” he said.

Justin Levitt, another elections expert and law professor, called some of the suits, like in Michigan, “laughable.” 

“One says you didn’t put people by absentee dropboxes, so stop the count. Huh?!”

Even a Republican-appointed federal judge in Pennsylvania cast doubt on the validity of a suit from Republicans on Wednesday, when they challenged fewer than 100 ballots that absentee voters corrected in a county outside Philadelphia. At a hearing Wednesday morning, the judge, Timothy Savage, did not rule, yet he suggested the lawyer for Republican canvass observers was seeking to disenfranchise votes. He noted the lawsuit appeared to have other problems in its arguments. 

Some legal challenges in Pennsylvania from the Trump campaign were quickly dismissed on Election Day, with Trump touting his appeals of those losses apparently as new cases Wednesday. For instance, a Philadelphia election day judge had shot down a Trump campaign case over ballot processing access, writing that “observers are directed only to observe and not to audit ballots” and deciding that the city’s board of elections complied with the law. Another Election Day challenge from the Trump campaign to the ballot observation process in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, also near Philly, was dismissed by a judge, though Trump is now appealing, according to Pennsylvania court records.

Lawyers for the Trump campaign sued in Nevada on Tuesday, too, claiming that their observers were not given enough access to all aspects of the ballot counting process — from opening the ballots, to machine and manual signature checking and duplicating spoiled ballots. A Nevada judge denied the GOP challenge to the early voting process in the heavily Democratic county.

“If this last-minute suit were successful, it would require a major change in how [Nevada] processed absentee [ballots] to determine if the signature on the ballot matched the voter’s prior signature on file,” said Richard Pildes, a constitutional law professor at New York University and CNN election law analyst. “Courts are typically unwilling to let plaintiffs come in the door so late in the day and ask for major changes to a process that’s already well underway.”

However, one suit, the petition before the US Supreme Court on Pennsylvania’s ballot deadline, may be a more serious litigation challenge. It challenges the validity of potentially several thousand votes cast in good faith by voters, but received by officials after the election through the mail. 

For this case to make a difference, Pennsylvania would need to be the deciding state for the election, and the margin of difference between Trump and Biden would need to be a few tens of thousands of votes.

CNN’s Maeve Reston and Stephen Collinson contributed to this report.

To see more live election coverage from overnight, go here.