US ELECTIONS
US presidential election 2020 results: what Trump and Biden need to win
The US election race is not over yet and there are still several permutations possible. However, the majority of them are in favour of Joe Biden. Trump needs Pennsylvannia, whatever happens.
As things stand, Joe Biden is on the brink of becoming the 46th president of the United States, but the incumbent Donald Trump is still in the race as a few key states continue to count up their votes.
With Biden having secured 253 electoral college votes while Trump is on 213 (as of 11:45 ET on 6 November), the Democratic candidate has several more open paths to victory than the president.
As it stands, an outright winner has yet to be called in six states, where the race remains tight.
Six states still in play
Pennsylvania (20 electoral votes at stake)
Biden leading 49.5% to Trump’s 49.4% (98% of votes counted)
Georgia (16 electoral votes at stake)
Biden leading by 8,867 votes (99% of votes counted)
Arizona (11 electoral votes at stake)
Biden leading 50% to Trumps 48.6% (90% of votes counted)
Nevada (6 electoral votes at stake)
Biden leading 49.8% to Trump’s 48.1% (86% of votes counted)
North Carolina (15 electoral votes at stake)
Trump leading 50.1% to Biden’s 48.7% (94% of votes counted)
Alaska (3 electoral votes at stake)
Trump leading 62.1% to Biden’s 33.5% (50% of votes counted)
Pennsylvania key: Trump needs it
With 20 electoral college votes, the biggest state still in play is Pennsylvania, which could still go either way. As expected, Biden has finally overtaken Trump and is now ahead by more than 13,000 votes after closing a gap that was as big as 500,000 votes on Tuesday. Biden's campaign expects his margin to keep growing.
That is not good news for Trump, who absolutely needs Pennsylvania to have any chance of winning. If he somehow manages to overturn Biden's lead in the state, while keeping his lead in Alaska and North Carolina and overturning a slight deficit in Georgia, then he would claim the 270 electoral college votes required to claim victory.
But that is, indeed, a huge if and looking ever more unlikely as Biden continues to pull away.
Biden’s path to victory
Even before Biden overtook Trump in Pennsylvania, his campaign was very confident he would eventually be declared the winner of the state once all the mail-in ballots are counted. Biden has been significantly outperforming Trump in mail-in ballots in most key states.
If Biden takes Pennsylvania, he wins the election, no matter what the results are in the other five remaining states.
But even if he loses Pennsylvania’s 20 electoral college votes, he will still win the election if he just manages to maintain his lead in two of these threes states: Arizona, Nevada or Georgia.
This race is not over yet and there are still several permutations possible. However, the majority of them are in favour of Joe Biden.