NYT needle shows election tipping for Biden in Georgia before moving to toss-up

Former Vice President Joe Biden holds an advantage over President Trump for control of Georgia’s 16 Electoral College votes, with just over 80 percent of precincts reporting, according to a New York Times projection Tuesday evening.

The Times’s projection tracker said that Biden was slightly favored to win the state as of around 12:45 a.m., with 81 percent of the expected vote in. Biden trailed the president by slightly less than 300,000 votes at the time.

The newspaper’s needle showed Biden with a 0.5-point advantage in the state but with the “range of estimates” between a 2-point advantage for Biden and a 1.5-point advantage for Trump.

Shortly before 1 a.m., the needle moved back toward Trump into toss-up territory, with 84 percent of votes reported. Biden held a 0.2-point advantage over the president, behind the president by less than 240,000 votes.  

Earlier Tuesday, a pipe burst at a polling location in Fulton County, Georgia’s most populous county, which encompasses Atlanta, resulting in a four-hour delay in processing election ballots, ABC News reported, citing deputy Secretary of State Jordan Fuchs.

Meanwhile, Spalding County — about an hour south of Atlanta — experienced a “county wide technical issue” Tuesday morning, leading to a court order keeping the polls open until 9 p.m., an additional two hours.

Nate Cohn, a domestic correspondent for the Upshot at the Times, noted at about 12:50 a.m. that the needle moved toward Biden in Georgia because the Atlanta vote coming in appeared “really good for Biden.” He added that “there’s a ton of vote left” in the area. 

Trump won Georgia by about 5 percentage points in 2016, with 50 percent of the vote.

Lisa Conley contributed.