Democratic candidate Joe Biden took the lead in Pennsylvania and Georgia over President Donald Trump on Friday morning.
It will be impossible for Trump to be reelected if he doesn’t win Pennsylvania’s 20 electoral votes, regardless of how many other states he wins.
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As the vote-counting process in Georgia was close to complete, absentee ballots from the Atlanta area helped Biden to move slightly ahead of Trump — by just over 1,000 votes — on Friday morning. He is ahead by 5,000 votes in Pennsylvania.
The outcome in Pennsylvania, Georgia, Nevada, Arizona, and North Carolina will determine whether Biden defeats Trump in the presidential election. Some analysts believe Biden is poised to become the first Democrat in history to win Georgia since 1992.
LATEST NUMBERS: Visit this page for a map with the latest totals in battleground states.
“We’re well aware that with a close presidential election and the possibility of runoffs in some elections that the eyes of the state and the nation are upon Georgia at this time,” Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger said on Thursday.
The Associated Press reported there is a potential for a Trump-Biden recount in Georgia if the final margin is under a half percentage point.
By the time Atlanta’s Fulton County completed the precincts' vote count, Biden had 72.58% of the vote there. It’s not over. More absentee ballots need to be counted there since the deadline for Election Day overseas ballots and corrections on mail-in and absentee ballots in Georgia is Friday, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported.
FAITH IN SYSTEM
The path to possible reelection is getting narrower for Trump. He needs to win Pennsylvania’s 20 electoral votes to stay in the race. Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro told ABC News late Thursday night that there was no evidence of electoral fraud in his state. He also said no one was going to get in the way of the process there.
During a Thursday evening speech at the White House, Trump said he had lost all faith in the voting-counting process. He said he “easily” won the election with “legal votes” and he will prove it in court.
“If a candidate believes a state is violating election laws they have a right to challenge it in court & produce evidence in support of their claims,” Sen. Marco Rubio wrote on Twitter about Trump’s strategy.
A judge already dismissed a Trump campaign lawsuit in the Chatham County ballot dispute.
Biden also delivered a speech on Thursday saying that he was confident that he was going to win. And with ongoing protests in Washington, D.C., New York, Portland, and other cities, he asked supporters to stay calm.
ELECTORAL COLLEGE VOTES
Trump has 214 electoral votes and he needed 56 more, while there are still 68 votes up for grabs. Victories in Georgia, Pennsylvania, and North Carolina would still leave him short 5 votes. The trend in Nevada or Arizona would need to change for Trump to be reelected.
Biden has 253 electoral votes and he only needs 17 more to win. The vote count was changing by the hour, but he was moving close to victories in Arizona and Nevada, which adds up to exactly the votes that he needs to become the next president of the United States.
Georgia could also help Biden get a majority in the Senate, which stands at 48-48, with two Jan. 5 runoff elections. It has yet to be determined if Jon Ossoff will run again against Sen. David Perdue.
This is a developing story.