Republican candidate President Donald Trump faces Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden. – Copyright AP Photo
Democratic nominee Joe Biden pulled ahead in the 2020 election on Wednesday after winning Wisconsin and Michigan raising his Electoral College votes up to 264, compared to Donald Trump’s 214, according to the AP tally.
There are 538 electoral votes allotted to all 50 states and the District of Columbia. A candidate must secure 270 electoral votes in the state-by-state Electoral College to win the White House.
Biden was also ahead of Trump in the nationwide popular vote, with approximately 2.79 million more votes.
Trump won the 2016 election over Democrat Hillary Clinton after winning crucial battleground states even though she drew about 3 million more votes nationwide.
Five states remain to be called – Georgia, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Alaska –with tens of thousands of ballots yet to be counted, as many of them were votes mailed amid the coronavirus outbreak in the country.
Here are Biden’s and Trump’s paths to victory:
Trump
Trump’s most likely road to victory goes through Pennsylvania, a state he carried in 2016. If he wins there, he will have to win three of the other battleground states to secure 270 electoral votes. If he doesn’t win Pennsylvania, he’ll have to sweep the remaining five.
Trump led the voting in Pennsylvania about 55 percent to 43 percent with about 75 percent of the votes likely counted.
The state’s biggest cities, Philadelphia and Pittsburgh, have reported only a small share of their election results so far, and those results traditionally favor Democrats.
Beyond that, many of the ballots that remain to be counted were filed by mail, and the state has said many more Democrats than Republicans cast mail-in ballots this year.
Pennsylvania offers one other wrinkle: Its state courts have ordered officials to count absentee ballots that were cast by Tuesday so long as they arrive in the mail by Friday. (Trump has criticized the US Supreme Court for permitting the change and the case could return to the court after the election.)
Biden
Biden’s most likely road to victory goes through Nevada and Wisconsin, states where he held narrow leads early Wednesday morning as officials worked to tally the final votes. If Biden wins those states, victories in Georgia, Michigan or Pennsylvania would give him enough to win.
Trump held a lead of about 51-47 percent in Michigan, but many of the votes remaining to be counted there were mail-in ballots from Detroit and its suburbs, where Democrats have historically enjoyed an electoral advantage.
Officials in Nevada, where Biden had a razor-thin 49.3-48.7 percent lead with 86 percent of expected votes counted, said they would not resume counting ballots until Thursday morning.
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