President Donald Trump is chipping away at former Vice President Joe Biden's lead in Arizona, raising the possibility that he could take the state, giving him some breathing room in his bath to the presidency.
CNN analysts said that new Maricopa County data shows Trump is gaining on Biden and, if votes continued that way, could even "meet and beat" Joe Biden in the state. Joe Biden is still winning the county, with 51.4 percent of the vote in the county but around 200,000 votes remain to be reported.
"Trump has been meeting the thresholds he needs to at least pull even," CNN said. "The biggest question is the composition of what's left." Both campaigns will have a strong sense of the makeup of votes still to come in, with analytics on previous voting data which, CNN says, the "Biden campaign says they feel good about."
Until recent results came in, Joe Biden was comfortably ahead in the state with 55 percent of the popular vote but now, that stands at around 50.5 percent, with Trump at around 48.1 percent. There is still around 15 percent of the vote to be reported.
On Tuesday night, the Associated Press and Fox News called Arizona for Biden, giving him 11 electoral college votes. With Arizona in Biden's corner, Trump has to win all five of the remaining states, including Nevada that's leaning toward Biden, but the president's campaign pushed for the outlets to retract calling Arizona before all the votes were counted.
"No news outlet should stand by a called race in Arizona," Tim Murtaugh, director of communications for the Trump campaign, posted on Twitter. "This thing isn't over." The tides started shifting in Trump's favor on Wednesday evening. Unofficial results from 9 p.m. Eastern gave Trump 43,966 additional votes and Biden 30,322, bringing Biden's lead in the state down from 92,817 votes to 79,173.
It put Biden at 1,469,341 votes statewide and Trump at 1,400,951 with 86 percent of the votes being reported, according to the New York Times, with Biden having 50.5 percent of the vote and Trump with 48.1 percent.
"HUGE gains for President Donald Trump in Maricopa County, Arizona," Representative Andy Biggs posted on Twitter. "He is trailing by less than 80,000 votes now STATEWIDE. There are hundreds of thousands of votes outstanding."
With Arizona going to Biden, as has been called by a number of networks, the Democratic candidate is only six votes away from the 270 threshold to become president of the United States. In that scenario, Trump will have to win the five remaining states—Nevada, Pennsylvania, Georgia, North Carolina and Alaska—to win the election, while Biden only needs Nevada, a state that's leaning Democratic.
However, if Trump secures a victory in Arizona, it would move Biden farther from the 270 vote goal post and means Trump could sacrifice Nevada and still have a path to victory.
As has been the case around the country, voters aren't entirely confident in the validity of the election in Arizona. Voters were concerned about the accuracy of the count after people posted on social media that they were given a Sharpie marker to fill out their ballot and the ink caused it to be rendered invalid.
Clint Hickman, chairman of the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors, and Steve Gallardo, supervisor of District 5, pushed back on "misinformation spreading about the integrity of euro elections" and said Sharpies "do not invalidate ballots."
"We did extensive testing on multiple different types of ink with our new vote tabulation equipment," the two officials said in a statement. "The offset columns on ballots ensure that any bleed-through will not impact your vote."
The reason behind the use of Sharpies was that they provide the fastest-drying ink and the officials reiterated that people who voted by mail could use Sharpies and blue or black pens. They also denied that changing results in the vote tally was a case of "fraud," saying it's actually "evidence of democracy."
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November 05, 2020 at 03:07PM
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Donald Trump 'Could Pull Even' with Biden in Arizona Count, CNN Says - Newsweek
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