Officials in several battleground states are urging patience on Wednesday as election workers continued to sort through and count millions of outstanding ballots that could tip the balance of the presidential race.
The election remains too close to call, but Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden had taken narrow leads Wednesday morning in Nevada, and many of the outstanding ballots across other battleground states, like Pennsylvania and Georgia, are believed to be in areas that tend to favor Democrats.
Wisconsin and Michigan went into Wednesday afternoon also uncalled but by Wednesday evening Biden was projected to win both states.
Meanwhile President Trump prematurely declared victory early Wednesday morning, demanding that officials stop counting ballots and threatening to take his case to the Supreme Court.
Here’s where things stand in the uncalled states:
Pennsylvania
Trump currently leads Biden by nearly half a million votes in Pennsylvania, or roughly 8 percentage points, but it’s too early to make a call in the state and there are some positive signs for Biden.
More than 1.4 million absentee votes are left to be counted, and those ballots are expected to heavily favor Biden, who has so far led Trump in mail voting in the state by a nearly 4-to-1 margin.
Pennsylvania’s Democratic Gov. Tom Wolf tweeted early Wednesday morning that “counties are working tirelessly to process votes as quickly AND as accurately as possible,” assuring that officials would “count every vote.”
But counting the remaining ballots is expected to take a while. The state’s top elections official has said she expects the vast majority of the votes to be counted by Friday.
Nevada
Biden holds a scant 0.6 percentage point lead in Nevada — fewer than 8,000 votes — and the only votes that remain to be counted are absentee and provisional ballots, which likely lean Democratic. All of the state’s Election Day votes have been tallied.
But don’t expect the race to be called just yet. Election officials in the state have said that they will not release remaining results until Thursday.
Georgia
Trump currently leads Biden in Georgia by less than 2 points. But officials are still working their way through scores of ballots in the Atlanta area, which leans heavily Democratic. Whether those remaining votes will be enough to allow Biden to overtake Trump, however, remains to be seen.
In an interview with ABC News on Wednesday morning, Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, a Republican, said he expected most of the counting to be done by midday on Wednesday, and that the vote tally would “definitely” be complete by the end of the day.
“By midday we should be pretty much through it. By the end of the day, we’ll definitely have it done,” Raffensperger said, adding that Fulton County, where Atlanta is located, was running “a little bit behind.”
North Carolina
Trump is leading Biden in North Carolina by less than 2 percentage points. But ballots postmarked by Election Day and received by Nov. 12 will still be counted, leaving the outcome of the presidential race undecided for now.
It’s unlikely, however, that late-arriving ballots will be enough to change the tides of the race in North Carolina. Trump currently has a roughly 75,000-vote advantage over Biden.
This story was updated at 6:10 p.m. to reflect the Associated Press calling Wisconsin and Michigan for Biden.