Nov. 4 (UPI) — Americans settled in for a long night of election returns Tuesday, with many states too close to call in early counts and a few states still voting.
President Donald Trump and Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden are facing off in an election that, due to an increase in mail-in voting — may not follow a traditional election night timeline. It’s possible a projected winner may not be known for days.
The race has been called in Kentucky (8 electoral votes), Mississippi (6), Missouri (10), South Carolina (9), Louisiana (8), Alabama (9), Kansas (6), Utah (6), South Dakota (3), North Dakota (3), Indiana (11), Tennessee (11), West Virginia (5), Arkansas (6), Wyoming (3), Oklahoma (7), Idaho (4), Ohio (18), Florida (29), Texas (38) and Montana (3) for Trump. Four of Nebraska’s five electoral votes have also been called for Trump.
And Biden is the projected winner in California (55), New York (29), New Jersey (14), Illinois (20), Oregon (7), Washington (12), New Mexico (5), Colorado (9), Connecticut (7), Washington, D.C. (3), Massachusetts (11), Maryland (10), Delaware (3), New Hampshire (4), Virginia (13), Minnesota (10), Rhode Island (4) and Vermont (3). He also secured one vote from Nebraska
Biden has 220 electoral votes and Trump has 213. The winner needs 270.
In the battleground states of Georgia, Pennsylvania, Florida, North Carolina, Michigan, Minnesota, Ohio and possibly even Texas, experts said they won’t be able to call the state for either candidate until they have a full picture of all the votes.
Early returns in Georgia (16) favored Trump with 91% of precincts voting, as did Michigan (16) with 63% counted. North Carolina (15) leaned toward Trump with 95% of the votes reported.
With 68% of votes reported, Pennsylvania (20) favored Trump, but the mail-in ballot counting is expected to stretch into days so the state may not be called Tuesday night.
As polls closed later in the evening, Biden has leads in Arizona and Nevada with 80% and 74% of the precincts reporting, respectively.
Biden picked up the very first votes counted on Election Day in Dixville Notch, N.H., where the entire town cast ballots for the former vice president, giving him five votes.
The former vice president spoke to supporters in Wilmington early Wednesday, urging them to be patient and to wait until “every vote is counted, every ballot is counted.”
“We knew this was going to go long, but who knew we were going to go into maybe tomorrow morning or even longer,” he said. “But look, we feel good about where we are. We really do.”
Though local elections officials will begin to release some results immediately after polls close, the final outcome of the election won’t be official until states certify their counts in the coming days.
Some, such as Pennsylvania, may not report large chunks of their results for days because they’ll be counting an abnormally large number of mail-in ballots driven in part by the COVID-19 pandemic. Early in the vote-counting process, states are expected to trend toward Trump and then move closer to Biden as mail-in ballots are counted.
