The outcome of the US presidential election was at stake on Wednesday as several states continued to count their ballots, including some of the more competitive battlegrounds where the tally could take days.
Democratic candidate Joe Biden has a slight advantage over Republican President Donald Trump with 227 to 213 electoral votes. This leaves 98 electoral votes to be awarded and possible paths to victory for both candidates. The winner must get 270 votes.
Here is the inventory in nine states. The vote count is provided by Edison Research.
Alaska
Trump has a large lead and is expected to carry the state by a large margin. Yet only 56% of the expected votes were counted, with Trump ahead from 62.9% to 33%.
Arizona
Biden has a significant lead, and the Associated Press and Fox News have previously called the state for the Democrat. With 86% of the expected vote counted, Biden leads with 50.7% against 47.9% for Trump, according to Edison Research.
Arizona Secretary of State Katie Hobbs told ABC News that Maricopa County, which includes heavily populated Phoenix, had around 400,000 outstanding ballots to count and would release more results later Wednesday.
Georgia
Trump is holding a narrow lead, but several of Atlanta’s large counties that are lean Democrats still have a substantial number of ballots to count. With 95% of the expected vote counted, Trump leads with 49.7% against 49% for Biden.
Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger said he hoped to get a result by the end of Wednesday.
Under Georgian law, if the margin between candidates is 0.5 percentage point or less, a candidate can request a recount within two working days of certification of results.
Trump’s campaign has taken legal action to require Chatham County, which includes Savannah, to segregate and secure late ballots to make sure they are not counted. The campaign said it had received reports that late ballots in the county were mixed incorrectly with valid ballots.
Maine
Maine is one of two states that divide their Electoral College votes between the winner of the statewide popular vote and the winner in each of its congressional districts.
Edison Research gave Biden two votes for the statewide result, which he leads from 53.8% to 43.2% with 87% of the expected state votes counted. He also called the state’s first congressional district for Biden, giving him a third state electoral vote.
Trump has a 51.4% to 45.1% lead in the state’s 2nd Congressional District. The Associated Press projected that Trump would be the winner of the state’s fourth vote on Wednesday, with just 53.7% of the expected vote.
Michigan
Biden has a growing margin, with CNN and NBC projecting Biden the winner just before 4:30 p.m. EST (9:30 p.m. GMT) Wednesday. Biden leads Trump from 50.3% to 48.1% with 99% of the state’s expected votes counted.
Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson said Wednesday evening that all valid ballots in the state had been counted and that a lawsuit brought by Trump seeking to stop the vote count was “frivolous.”
Nevada
Long seen as a solid state leaning over Biden, Nevada now appears in the game. Data from Edison Research shows 86% of expected votes are taking place and Biden’s lead is only 49.3% to 48. , 7% for Trump.
State officials expect the remaining votes – largely postal ballots – to be counted at 9 a.m. PST (1700 GMT) on Thursday. Clark County, the state’s largest and the seat of Las Vegas, has garnered 84 percent of the expected votes so far and Biden leads there by 52.9 percent to Trump’s 45.4 percent.
North Carolina
The margin between Trump and Biden is less than 2 percentage points as the president clings to a 50.1% to 48.7% lead for the Democrat, with 95% of the expected vote counted.
The state allows the counting of ballots mailed before Tuesday, if they are received by November 12. On Wednesday morning, Biden’s campaign said it expected a final result to take several days, and state officials said on Wednesday the result won’t be known until next week.
Pennsylvania
Of the battlefield states, Pennsylvania is the furthest away for counting votes, and Trump is keeping a lead so far. With 88% of the expected vote counted, Trump is up from 50.8% to 47.9% for Biden.
Officials can accept ballots mailed up to three days after the election if they are postmarked before Tuesday. There are around 1 million votes left, Democrat Governor Tom Wolf said on Wednesday.
If the margin of victory is less than half of 1%, state law requires a recount.
The Trump campaign said on Wednesday it was temporarily continuing with the counting of the votes in Pennsylvania and also asked to intervene in a case before the United States Supreme Court over mail-in ballots in the state, which could determine the winner of the election.
Wisconsin
The Trump campaign announced on Wednesday that it will be calling for a recount of the votes in Wisconsin, where the margin between candidates is less than 1 percentage point.
Biden is up 49.4% to 48.8% for Trump with 99% of the expected vote counted, according to Edison Research. Edison said he would not call a race in Wisconsin or any state where the margin is narrow enough to allow a candidate to demand a recount under state law. Some media, including NBC and the Associated Press, screened Biden as the winner.
