Election results updates: Biden remains close to 270 electoral votes as Trump tries legal strategy
USA TODAY’S coverage of the 2020 election continues this weekend as states work to finish counting the ballots.
All eyes continue to be on battleground states that will ultimately decide the election. Be sure to refresh this page often to get the latest information on how things are going.
USA TODAY will have live election results from across the country.
Biden remains close to required electoral college votes
Democratic nominee Joe Biden is still in need of six or more electoral college votes to push him to the required threshold of 270 needed to win the presidency.
As it stands, Biden has secured 264 electoral votes from presidential races in states that have been called, and President Donald Trump has won 214 electoral votes. Biden could reach the threshold with a win in one of these states: Nevada, Georgia, Pennsylvania or North Carolina. Trump would need wins in all of those states.
“We don’t have a final declaration, a victory yet, but the numbers tell us a clear and convincing story: We’re going to win this race,” the Democratic nominee said in a speech Friday night.
Which states haven’t been called yet?
While there are several states still counting ballots, eyes are on a few battleground states that remain uncalled: Georgia, Nevada, Pennsylvania and North Carolina. Alaska also has not been called but is more likely than not to go for Trump.
In Georgia, Biden gained the lead over President Donald Trump early Friday morning. Over 4,000 votes currently separate the two candidates, or about 0.1%, as of 4 a.m. EST Saturday. Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, a Republican, said Friday morning the state would have a recount because of the slim election margin.
Nevada, meanwhile, has counted about 87% of its vote, with results still coming in from Clark County, the state’s most populous county that leans Democratic. Biden has been leading in the state by nearly two percentage points, over 22,600 votes. Updates are expected throughout the weekend.
More: Why ballot-counting in Nevada is dragging on
Pennsylvania sees Biden leading by a margin of 0.4%, more than 28,800 votes. He surged ahead of Trump on Friday as results were updated with mail ballot counts that heavily favored the former vice president.
North Carolina, where Biden still trails by more than 70,000 votes, remains uncalled as election officials prepare to count late-arriving absentee ballots over the coming days. The outcome might not be final for another week as election officials count what could be more than 150,000 more absentee ballots.
Trump seeks to undermine Biden’s lead with uncertain legal strategy
Trump’s tweets on Friday showed he sees the courts as his best path forward to reelection, but experts say his campaign’s lawsuits in battleground states lack a discernible strategy.
“I had such a big lead in all of these states late into election night, only to see the leads miraculously disappear as the days went by,” Trump tweeted, reiterating a claim that has been widely debunked for days. “Perhaps these leads will return as our legal proceedings move forward!”
Trump’s new campaign: Flurry of election lawsuits in search of strategy
Trump’s early lead was reversed in key states because officials counted in-person, day-of votes first, and those favored Trump. But after the president spent months pushing baseless claims that mail-in voting leads to widespread fraud, record numbers of mail ballots were enough to give Biden the lead in most of the remaining battlegrounds.