2020 presidential election updates

photo via Business Insider

photo via Business Insider

As every American knows, Tuesday was Election Day and, since then people, including myself, have been staring at maps full of red and blue non-stop. Although election week is coming to a close, a clear winner of the presidential race still has not been declared. 

For everyone living under a rock, here are a few updates from the past couple days. 

  1. All but five states have been called as of Friday, Nov. 6.

By late election night, there was a clear winner in the majority of states; however, some were still too close to call. As of Wednesday morning Alaska, Nevada, Arizona, Georgia, North Carolina, Wisconsin and Michigan had still not been called. Since then, Wisconsin, Michigan and Arizona have all gone blue. Alaska still remains “up in the air” but there’s no question it will go red. Pennsylvania and Georgia were comfortably leaning red for the past three days but changed blue early Friday morning. North Carolina has also been leaning red and will most likely stay. Last is Nevada and honestly it feels like America is being ghosted by those counters.

  1. Recounts have already been issued in Pennsylvania, Georgia, Wisconsin, North Carolina and Arizona.

All five are key battleground states in this election and, naturally, have been tinkering back and forth between each candidate since Tuesday. In Arizona and Pennsylvania recounts are required if there is less than a .5 margin, which applies in both states. In Georgia and North Carolina, either candidate can request a recount if there is less than .5 percent difference. Lastly, a recount has to be requested in Wisconsin; however, as of Wednesday, President Trump had already made this demand. 

  1. Currently Biden is projected to win.

At some point in the past week both candidates projected victory. In fact, President Trump even declared a win early Wednesday morning. However, because of the influx of absentee ballots, the immediate results seemed to relay false information. Each state took a different approach to counting their ballots, some counting absentee first and some counting in-person first, which caused many states to swing. Now that a majority of the votes have been accounted for, Biden leads in key states Pennsylvania, Georgia and Nevada, giving him a total of 306 electoral college votes.