Where The Vote Stands: Trump Demands Wisconsin Recount As Michigan Reviews Votes On “Skewed Results”; Susan Collins Wins

Update (1330ET); Susan Collins of Maine has once again triumphed over Democratic challenger, as the moderate Republican, who has broken ranks with her party on several major issues since Trump took office.

. @SenatorCollins has been elected to a 5th term, after @SaraGideon called just now to concede the race. All the polls showed the race would be close, but Collins survived and may have helped keep the Senate in Republican control. #mepolitics.

— Eric Russell (@PPHEricRussell) November 4, 2020

Susan Collins says Sara Gideon called her to concede the race, Collins told reporters on Wednesday. Her victory is the latest win for the GOP, moving Congress closer to a tight margin between the Dems and GOP in the House.

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Update 1250ET: President Trump’s campaign manager Bill Stepien has issued a statement confirming they will demand a recount in Wisconsin:

“Despite ridiculous public polling used as a voter suppression tactic, Wisconsin has been a razor thin race as we always knew that it would be. There have been reports of irregularities in several Wisconsin counties which raise serious doubts about the validity of the results. The President is well within the threshold to request a recount and we will immediately do so.”

On top of that, a county in the battleground state of Michigan is reviewing the Election Day vote count after the clerk “became aware of apparently skewed results.”

Antrim County Clerk Sheryl Guy learned of the skewed results in unofficial tabulations, the county said in a statement.

Since then, her office has been reviewing the results “and the multiple redundancies to search out any possible discrepancies.”

“By this afternoon, we expect to have a clear answer and a clear plan of action addressing any issue,” Guy said in a statement. “Until then, we are asking all interested parties to bear with us while we get to the bottom of this.”

State Rep. Triston Cole, a Republican, told a local radio station that the results were suspect.

“There is no way that we flipped from 62 percent Trump in 2016 to upside-down this time around,” he said.

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Additionally, Mark Levin is enraged by what is occurring right in front of our eyes…

1. I thought about waiting until my radio show to state this, but it must be said now:

All night and this morning, the media are playing with the electoral map and their declarations of who won what states, and in virtually every case it assists the Biden campaign.

2. North Carolina, Georgia, Alaska should all be called now for President Trump.  There was no legitimate reason to call Arizona early for Biden with so much of the vote out.  There was no reason to sit on Florida and Ohio for hours when those outcomes were quite clear.

3. The purpose is to make it appear that the President is not close to the 270 electoral vote number to win the presidency and to make it appear that the President was never going to be re-elected.

4. And you can see all the delays through the night and beyond, waiting for mail-in votes — Philadelphia, Atlanta, Milwaukee, Detroit, etc.  This is followed by commentators telling us that there’s nothing unusual about all of this.  Delays in counting votes happens all the time

5. Really, we’ve experienced this before?  In all these states?  Nonsense.  Meanwhile, the Democrats have been litigating in states for months to change existing election laws to help Biden and the Democrats.

6. They set in place the mail-in voting chaos, some states literally a few months ago.

This will not end well, or peacefully, unless full transparency is granted.

Meanwhile, Fox News’s decision desk is reportedly “leaning towards” calling Nevada for Biden, as more votes trickle in, which could be a disaster for Trump.

Votes are still coming in, but it’s looking like a Biden win. If Nevada and Arizona swing Biden, as they almost certainly are, and Georgia and North Carolina swing Trump, as they almost certainly are, and the results hold in Wisconsin and Michigan, Pennsylvania doesn’t matter.

— Nolan Gray – VOTE YES PROP 15! (@mnolangray) November 4, 2020

To be sure, tens of thousands of votes still haven’t been counted.

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Update (1145ET): Wisconsin has officially been called for Joe Biden.

Wisconsin Elections Commission Administrator says on @NBCNews: “All of the ballots have been counted.” Joe Biden has won Wisconsin by 20,697 votes.

— Matt McDermott (@mattmfm) November 4, 2020

Meanwhile, Arizona, which Fox News called for Biden last night, might be back in play.

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Now that the ‘Blue Wave’ has been thwarted, and Democrats look to return in the next Congress with an even weaker hand in the House, (not to mention smaller-than-expected gains in the Senate), both team Biden and the Trump Campaign are claiming victory, as Americans wait for the final vote tallies from a handful of swing states that could once again decide the election.

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Biden has reportedly managed to ‘flip’ Arizona, and while Wisconsin and Michigan are currently leaning Democratic, North Carolina, Georgia and PA (perhaps the most important state of them all) are still leaning red.

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As both sides lawyer up, here’s the current state of play in the US, along with a rundown of when Americans and the rest of the world can expect the final results, depending on a number of scenarios.

Pennsylvania:

Pennsylvania was long expected to be under scrutiny in a close race, with both campaigns aggressively courting voters in the final days before the election.

Trump led Biden by about 657,000 votes as of 9 a.m., but there were at least 1.4 million uncounted mail-in and absentee ballots that will determine the outcome, according to the Department of State.

The department reported almost 1.1 million mail ballots were counted statewide, with 77% for Biden and 22% for Trump. By contrast, there were 3.9 million votes cast on Election Day, with 66% for Trump and 33% for Biden.

Pennsylvania has tallied 44% of mail-in ballots across the commonwealth, according to a department dashboard. The outstanding ballots are expected to favor Biden because Democrats dominated the requests. Of the 2.55 million ballots reported returned as of Tuesday, registered Democrats accounted for 65% and Republicans 24%, data show.

In Philadelphia, the commonwealth’s most populous county where 76% of registered voters are Democrats, 141,523 of an expected 350,000 to 400,000 mail-in ballots have been reported counted as the processing and counting continues. Allegheny County, the second most-populous, is reporting about half of its almost 350,000 mail-in ballots counted, according to the dashboard. Bottom Line: Philadelphia is expected to report additional mail-in votes on Wednesday morning. State officials say a final result should be ready “within days.”

Wisconsin:

Biden had a small lead in Wisconsin, which has 10 electoral votes, after several metropolitan areas submitted their absentee ballot counts early Wednesday morning, overturning the lead that Trump had maintained since the polls closed at 8 p.m. By late in the morning, the Biden campaign was calling it for Joe after state officials said all votes had been counted.

Although Biden was ahead by almost 21,000 votes as of 8:40 a.m. local time, no major network had yet called the state. With the two candidates within a percentage point of each other, the loser when the final precinct’s numbers are in has the right to request a recount. Meanwhile, the state’s election commission said that clerks will be randomly selecting 5% of reporting units for voting-equipment audits. The process for official certification of results doesn’t start until Nov. 10.

Bottom Line: Biden is penciling in a win, but the state is still in play as of late Wednesday morning.

Michigan

Michigan — a state Trump narrowly won in 2016 — expects to complete most of its ballot counting by the end of the day, Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson told CNN Wednesday morning.

Ballots from Detroit, Flint, Grand Rapids, Warren and Sterling Heights were still being recorded. The state likely won’t have final results until later in the day because Detroit is the largest precinct and had a record turnout this year, with a large swath of absentee ballots that take longer to count than in-person votes.

Benson, who has scheduled an update on the counting process later Wednesday morning, did say that other Michigan counties will be reporting in the coming hours, which could give election watchers an idea of where the state is headed. Biden started pulling ahead Wednesday morning as more absentee ballots were tabulated.

Benson said that 3.3 million absentee ballots have been received and are being tabulated and another 2 million to 2.5 million voted at the polls Tuesday.

“We’ll know much more in the hours to come and we’ll have a much more complete picture of Michigan later today,” she said.

Bottom Line: State election officials said Wednesday morning that an ‘unofficial’ result should be known by Wednesday evening.

Georgia

All but one of Georgia’s counties had completely reported vote totals as of Wednesday morning. But in Fulton County, which includes most of the Democratic stronghold of Atlanta, only about 77% of the estimated vote has been counted.

Fulton, the largest county in Georgia, suffered a setback earlier Tuesday in counting mail-in ballots, after a water leak forced officials to stop tallying and tens of thousands of ballots were left uncounted.

Trump led Biden by about 102,000 votes on Wednesday morning, though the remaining ballots are likely to break heavily for Biden. As of late Wednesday morning, 200k votes were left to be counted.

Bottom Line: Georgia expects all votes to be counted by the end of the day.

North Carolina

North Carolina’s race was tight on Wednesday morning, with Trump leading by about 77,000 votes.

About 62% of the state’s voters cast ballots before Election Day. More registered Democrats voted early than Republicans, but one-third of the electorate is unaffiliated with either major party.

The state Board of Elections said that 100% of precincts have reported Election Day votes, but that the state still had to count about 25% of the total ballots cast, or roughly 1.9 million votes.

Democrats took some solace in Governor Roy Cooper winning re-election, but it’s not clear if that’s a signal Biden can flip the traditionally Republican state.

Bottom Line: The state has as long as nine days to count mail-in ballots sent before Election Day.

Nevada

A final count in Nevada isn’t expected for several days as it awaits ballots mailed as late as Election Day to arrive, though it isn’t clear how many people waited that long to vote. With about 82% of votes counted, Biden was holding a lead of less than one percentage point.

“Clerks have until Nov. 10 to receive mail ballots and until Nov. 12 to count them,” said Jennifer Russell, a spokeswoman for Nevada’s secretary of state. Bottom Line: The state began posting partial results late Tuesday, with Biden holding a slim lead over Trump. That count, which included early and Election Day voting, will continue to trickle in on Tuesday.