battleground states it is way too close to call and they are still counting the votes. >> right. these are states that include the so-called blue wall that joe biden has been promising for months to build back for democrats from michigan to wisconsin and pennsylvania. we simply do not know what is going to happen in those states, particularly a place like pennsylvania where the secretary of state said that they could be counting the votes until friday of this week. >> pamela brown just said they still have 2 million ballots, vote by mail ballots to count. >> yeah. you know, frankly we have been telling everyone this for days and weeks, so it is happening. we hopefully prepared everyone at home to be patient and just to wait for this to happen. i think what we are about to witness as we wait for president trump to come out is really

important. it is a very important moment for him. he is the incumbent president of the united states. he gets to set the tone for how it goes for the rest of the country. will he give us the unfiltered trump that we saw earlier on twitter, or will he give us something more restrained and thought through that allows the american people to remain in a state of calm while we wait for the ballots to be counted, or will we get something that is trying to declare a victory where there is no victory to be declared? >> i think you are being charitable. >> will he read a read a teleprompter or just riff. >> we always hope for the best when it comes to his behavior. but he has already gone on twitter and said falsely and misleadingly and potentially

dangerously that democrats are trying to steal the election and there is no evidence of anyone trying to steal the election. there are election workers in georgia, pennsylvania, michigan, wisconsin, nevada, counting the votes. >> i am not suggesting there will be a new donald trump tonight by any stretch of the imagination. what i am saying is that i wonder if there are people in the white house that recognize the historical importance of what he is going to try to do. will he try to declare victory on election night when votes have not been counting. i think that would be a completely different situation. >> as you know because you covered the trump white house. there are people that understand the historical importance, but the question is whether the people are going to get to -- either want to get to the president at this point to try to get him to tone it down as it relates to the earlier tweet or whether it is even a lost cause for the president because he has been saying what he said in the tweet earlier every single

chance he got on the stump. >> he has been saying it for weeks. even if he sticks to the teleprompter, he already said what he has said and put the lie out there among his supporters is all i am saying. hope springs eternal. i hope you're right. >> i completely agree with you. i do think that the night of the election when both candidates come out and they say their peace, these are things that history will remember. i think that people recognize that in this white house. the tweets are the tweets but history will remember this moment. we will see what he does. the wise thing for president trump to do is to write something that is similar to what joe biden did. joe biden came out and said i think i am going to win. it is probably okay for president trump to say i think i

am going to win. but to say i won and this is being stolen from me. it would be a techtonic type of event in american politics. >> you mentioned history. to point out in most cases historically the american people didn't know who won the presidency that night. it has taken time to count votes. that is something i have seen historians reminding us of going back election after election. and that is not going to change if and when the president says something different. >> sure. >> it is just not. >> this is the sixth presidential race i have covered and the first, two 2002-2004 we didn't know who won that night. we didn't know. >> hope it is not 36 days, but it could be. >> but it could be. we don't know. there are a lot of write-in and mail-in ballots being counted in several states, and just like

the trump campaign, the white house doesn't want to prematurely call arizona or nevada. the biden people don't want us to prematurely call any other states. the president already is a little bit late based on what we were told in when he was going to come out. what do you anticipate he will say? >> just to anticipate the mood the trump campaign is white hot on this call on another network for joe biden. that is part of what is driving some of the president's anger. i think we will see some of that expressed when he comes out in a few moments. he will try to make the case, as he did on twitter, that just counting the votes in some of the left over battleground states deprives him or cheats him out of a victory. keep in mind counting the votes in the remaining states is not a victory for democrats, it is a

victory for democracy. i think to some extent there needs to be a surgeon generals warning on what the president says when he comes out. he is going to express, i think, in front of the cameras what he was saying a few moments ago in the tweets that he feels the election is being stolen from him when it is not being stolen from anybody, it is just a natural process of counting votes. some of this i think is being driven by extreme tension inside the trump campaign headquarters right now. they thought things were moving along well tonight. they saw some of the margins and a lot of the states not matching what was out in the polls over the last several weeks, so they thought they were beating the polls as they did in 2016. when some of these, you know, results were coming in arizona being called by another network. that did not come in to their plans. and i think that also what happened in nebraska with the

one electoral vote going to joe biden that wasn't in the trump campaign's plans. things are not going according to what they were hoping to see tonight and they are reacting accordingly. i do think that when the president comes out here it is likely he is going to say things that are flat false. he is going to be making claims about voter fraud and so on. we have to remind our viewers that there is no evidence of widespread voter fraud in this country. just because the president says something, doesn't make it so. he doesn't get to declare who the president of the united states is. >> that is right. we are still waiting for president trump to come out and give his statement. he has been saying things about the election being stolen from him that are false that twitter and facebook labeled false because he put them out on social media first. we don't have the capability of

doing that like on vh1. >> we will explain what vh1 is later. >> it is important that if the president comes out saying that the election is being stolen from him and he has won -- we don't know. it is a much closer race than a lot of other people predicted. >> you pointed out earlier the hypocrisy in the same breath saying please count all of the votes in arizona but they are saying in pennsylvania, they are saying in pennsylvania, if you keep counting after tonight then you are stealing the election. it does not make any sense. both the votes in arizona and pennsylvania are just as legitimate and need to be counted. but we need to be prepared for the president to make all kinds of out landish claims. there are all kinds of things outstanding on the board including georgia. that is close and there is a lot

of outstanding votes and the democrats think they have a chance there. >> if there is anybody just tuning now at 2:08 a.m., we are still waiting for the final results from georgia and north carolina. they looked to be states that president trump is leaning towards victory but haven't been called and there remain outstanding votes. the blue wall states hillary clinton lost in 2016 that joe biden wants to return and rebuild, those are states wisconsin, pennsylvania, michigan, not only there are outstanding votes but many outstanding votes that were vote by mail that are disproportionately from democratic leaning counties. we are told there is more than 2 million outstanding ballots in pennsylvania alone which would be quite significant. out west we have nevada and arizona. president trump and his campaign taking the opposite attack

there, states president trump is behind and another network called arizona. we have not called arizona. but the trump campaign hypocr e hypocritically is saying don't count arizona they haven't counted all the votes and saying the opposite with pennsylvania, wisconsin. >> if we do hear the president saying things like counting votes after election day is not real or it is fraudulent, it is important to note that just because a vote is counted after election day does not mean it came in after election day. some states actually allow votes to come in after election day. >> what we are largely going to see the swing states do is count

votes that came in as part of early voting and absentee voting. they came in on time. i am sure that there will be a lot of votes that will be contested. the lawyers are champing at the bit. but that is the most important part of the story to remember. >> yeah. counting every vote is a familiarity democratic principle and it is part of what is important when it comes to democracy. part of the reason states bend over backwards to make sure as many valid ballots can count as much as possible, and the idea that the president is looking to disenfranchise people, tens of thousands no doubt voted for him. it is just remarkable. >> it is something that even republicans like ben ginsburg, a republican lawyer who has been involved in voter fraud related issues for the republican party for many years basically has said it is completely

undemocratic, the idea that you can say just because votes are coming from more democratic leading part of the country they shouldn't be counted is really beyond the pail and it has no historical precedent for a president of the united states in particular to make that argument before the election has been completed. >> he has been saying it for a long time. he said that early voting in pennsylvania is not acceptable while early voting in florida is acceptable. obviously each day has it own rules and differences. yet that is how he has been waging the campaign when it comes to counting the votes but as jim acosta pointed out and we pointed out, it is not up to him. it is up to the individual states. >> no. that is exactly right. and you know, when you look at what donald trump is saying it

is pretty clear that he knew going into it that it would be a possibility. that is why we heard from joe biden and his campaign leading into election day the answer to what we could see right now is to win decisively. and the biden campaign hasn't won decisively. that is out of the window. now we have to deal with whatever we are going to see. patience and time and counting votes in the key states. >> the biden campaign hasn't won early, but we do not know yet if it will be decisively. just because we don't know what the outcome is in these states does not mean it won't be a decisive victory. >> that is really important. >> it is just not an early call. >> such a good point. i think what they are meaning is early and decisively so to overcome that psychological.

>> if they could have flipped florida we would be having a completely different conversation right now. >> yeah. >> but that did not happen. now this will be a protracted process. >> americans are not known for our attention spans. >> sorry, what did you say? >> one of the things a lot of people were hoping for was an early decisive outcome whether for trump or biden. that there would be closure so everybody would know who the president was and go to bed by midnight. but this is not an hour and a half thriller. this is like a netflix ten part miniseries. >> this is the year 2020. >> this is a divided country. >> it is a very divided country. that is bearing out in the results we are starting to see

tonight. >> including the fact we have not talked about it too much this evening but we do not know who will control the senate. looks as if republicans could possibly hold control of the senate even while possibly a democrat is elected to the white house, but i don't know that either of those will be the outcome. but it could happen. >> yeah. i think that a lot of people thought they would know what would happen at the presidential level or the senate level but things are turning out to be more complicated. we are waiting on things i don't know we knew we would be waiting on. georgia and arizona. certainly the biden campaign hoped those states would be within their reach but this is an unpredictable environment that we are in and part of it has to do with the fact that four years ago donald trump changed the landscape in an important way and we are still figuring out what it looks like

all over the country, not just in the upper midwest but in parts of the south. what does it mean for the turn out of non-white voters. we are living through a big change in the country and we are not there yet. >> that is an excellent point. one of the things that we are witnessing is a realignment that is happening in this country. for instance virginia used to be, when i was young a battleground state and now it automatically goes to democrats. on the other hand we have seen inroads with latino voters, a lot of those votes are being tab lated. but in terms of the margins that we did not anticipate would happen necessarily, but certainly people were sounding the alarms about joe biden and latino voters. there is a realignment going on

and the votes are so close in each state to tab late the ballots. >> arizona and georgia are the prime examples of that tonight. arizona we have been talking about the dramatic demographic shift in that state and georgia, the same thing. i mean georgia was so incredibly red two years ago. and now we have two senate races in georgia, and the presidential race is seeing a battlefield. we don't know how it will turn out because of the outstanding votes in the major population center of atlanta. we just don't know. you know, it is people moving in and the populations being more diverse and younger. >> one thing is for sure, we are still talking about michigan, wisconsin, pennsylvania four years later, and it could very well be that the states remain battlegrounds. they hoped after tonight if joe

biden would win them back it would be in such a decisive manner that it would take it off of the board. i don't think that will happen tonight. i think those are going to be states that are fought over, which is a big change. they really have not been up for grabs for a long time. that is why 2016 was a big deal. >> wisconsin, pennsylvania, michigan are always battleground states but usually the type that republicans two weeks before the election pull out of and compete in and focus on florida or virginia. now they are truly battleground states. donald trump tore down the blue wall democrats used to rely on. joe biden trying to rebuild it. we don't know what will happen. they literally have millions of ballots that remain needed to be counted and they are going through that and they are doing it the best they can. again, we are waiting for president trump to come out to the east room of the white house, and we are expecting

based on his tweet earlier in the evening that has been labeled as misleading by twitter and facebook, we expect the president will prematurely and falsely declare victory and say any efforts by any states other than the ones he wants to do counting is stealing votes and that is not accurate. that is not what is going on. there is no evidence of ballots or votes being stolen in the states. there is evidence that election officials are trying to count the votes. >> you do have to wonder what is taking the president so long. >> it is a long four minutes. >> it is a little bit of -- it is interesting. he seemed so sure when he tweeted what he tweet ed an hou and a half ago. i just wonder what is the delay in coming out saying what he needs to say.

joe biden came out saying what he needs to say that it is headed in his direction. the president feels the same. it should be easy to say that. we are still waiting. >> he has a good, positive story to say. this is closer than the pundits predicted. jim, what is the hold up. we were told by the president's team he would be out a long time ago. >> only one person can answer that question. i just noticed mark meadows and don jr. walking out, ivanka trump, other members of the trump family. i think the president wants to put the best face on it. i was with the best four years ago at this time. donald trump is not in the same place he was four years ago. he is hanging on to his political life right now and no matter what the president says in a few moments projecting he will win the race. we expect him to say that.

he is not out of the woods by a long shot. >> here he is. let's listen in. >> the president of the united states, donald j. trump. ♪ >> well, thank you very much. thank you. please sit, thank you. this is the latest news conference i ever had. thank you. thank you. i appreciate it very much. i want to thank the american people for their tremendous support. millions and millions of people

voted for us tonight. a very sad group of people is trying to disenfranchise that group of people. we won't stand for it. we will not stand for it. i want to thank the first lady, my entire family and vice president pence, mrs. pence for being with us all through this. we were getting ready for a big celebration. we were winning everything. and all of a sudden it was called off. the results tonight have been phenomenal. we are getting ready, i mean literally we were all set to get outside and just celebrate something that was so beautiful and so good. such a vote, such a success. the citizens of this country have come out in record numbers.

this is a record. there never has been anything like it to support our incredible movement. we won states that we were not expected to win. florida, we didn't win it. we won it by a lot. we won the great state of ohio. we won texas. we won texas. we won texas by 700,000 votes, and they don't even include it in the tabulations. it is also clear that we have won georgia. we are up by 2.5%, or 117,000 votes with only 7% left. they can't catch us. likewise we have clearly won

north carolina. we were up 1.4%. 77,000 votes with only approximately 5% left. they can't catch us. we also if you look and you see arizona, we have a lot of life in that and somebody declared that it was a victory. maybe it will be. i mean that is possible. but certainly there were a lot of votes out there that we could get. we are now just coming into what they call trump territory. these were friendly trump voters, and that could be overturned. the gentleman that called it, i watched tonight, he said we think it is fairly unlikely. well, fairly unlikely. we don't even need it. we don't need that. that was just a state if we would have gotten, it would have been nice. arizona. but there is a possibility, maybe a good possibility and in fact since i saw that originally

it has been changed and the numbers have substantialally come down just in a small amount of votes. but most importantly we are winning pennsylvania by a tremendous amount of votes.vote. but most importantly we are winning pennsylvania by a tremendous amount of votes. we are up -- think of this. think of this. we are up 690,000 votes in pennsylvania. 690,000 votes. these are not even close. this is not like it's close. with 64% of the vote in it is

going to be almost impossible to catch. we are coming into good pennsylvania areas where they happen to like your president. so we will probably expand on that. we are winning michigan. i looked at the numbers and said wow, that's a lot. by almost 300,000 votes. 65% of the vote is in. and we are winning wisconsin. well, we don't need all of them. because when you add texas in, which wasn't added. i spoke with the really wonderful governor of texas a little while ago, greg abbott. he said congratulations. he called me to congratulate me on winning texas. we won texas. i don't think they finished the tabulation but there is no way. almost complete, but he congratulated me. he said what is going on.

i have never seen anything like this. can i tell you what, nobody has. so, we won by 107,000 votes with 81% of the vote. michigan. so when you take those three states in particular and you take all of the others. i mean we have so many. we had such a big night. you just take a look at all of the states we have won tonight. then you look at the margins we have won them by. it is not like we are up 12 votes and have 60 left. all of a sudden i said what happened to the election. it's off. we have all of these announcers saying what happened. then they said oh. you know what happened? they knew they couldn't win so they said let's go to court. and did i predict this? i said this. i said this from the day that i

heard they were going to send out -- i said exactly that. even if they were going to win or if they didn't win they will take us to court. so florida was a tremendous victory. 377,000. texas, as we said. ohio. ohio, a tremendous state. big state. think of it, almost 500,000. north carolina, big victory with north carolina. so, we won there. we lead by 76,000 votes with almost nothing left. and all of a sudden everything just stopped. this is a fraud on the american public. this is an embarrassment to our

country. we were getting ready to win this election. frankly, we did win this election. so our goal is to ensure the inti integrity for the good of the moment. this is a major fraud on our nation. we want the law to be used in a proper manner. so we will be going to the u.s. supreme court. we want all voting to stop. we don't want them to find any ballots at 4:00 in the morning and add them to the list, okay. it is a very sad moment. to me it is a very sad moment. we will win this. as far as i am concerned we already have won it. i just want to thank you. i want to thank all of our

support. i want to thank all of the people that worked with us. mr. vice president say a few words, please. please. >> thank you mr. president. i want to join you in thanking more than 60 million americans who have already cast their vote for four more years for president donald trump. while the votes continue to be counted we will remain vigilant as the president said. the right to vote is at the center of our democracy since the founding of the nation and we will protect the integrity of the vote. i really believe with all of my heart with the extraordinary margins mr. president that you inspired in the states that you

just described and the way that you launched this movement across the country to make america great again, i truly do believe, as you do that we are on the road to victory and we will make america great again again. thank you mr. president. ♪ >> all right. president trump as we anticipated falsely and prematurely declaring victory, saying that he won. he did not win. he hasn't won. the president depicting the counting of votes as a fraud and embarrassment. that is not what is going on. what is going on is the normal in factic process. almost everything he said in his

declaration of victory wasn't true. he is ahead in georgia, florida, north carolina. it is not true he is winning pennsylvania or winning michigan or winning wisconsin. they are still counting votes. they literally have millions of vote by mail ballots those three states are counting. it may well be that president trump ends up winning the election. but what president trump just said was undemocratic and false and premature. it is not accurate to say that he won. we do not know who won the election. it is not a surprise, but still, years into the presidency i find it shockingly disappointing that

he would continue to erode faith that the american people have in institutions. what is going on right now is a clean and a fair election and there is no evidence to the contrary. >> i know we expected him to say something like that, but hearing the president of the united states in the middle of an election, in the middle of an election where they are counting votes all over the country to say what he said from the white house is just not something that i don't think any of us expected to see and hear in our lifetime. that is not what democratly elected candidates say. when he said that he -- that people are going to be disenfranchised. the only person right now at this stage of the game trying to disenfranchise voters is donald trump. he is saying the voters whose votes haven't been counted in the states he does not want them to be counted in don't count. >> we should under line what he

is saying. he kept saying that i want the voting to stop. that is not what he is saying. he is really saying that he doesn't want the votes that were already cast to be counted. there is no justification for it. it is shocking. it is really beyond the pail. he called it a fraud to count ballots in the united states of america? >> it is undemocratic. >> it is completely ridiculous. but notice that vice president mike pence came up a few minutes afterwards and tried to paper over what the president had just said. he doesn't want the votes still outstanding in states that he did not win to not be counted. >> vice president pence tried to something that is a more traditional idea. grateful for the people that voted for us. we want to be vigilant and make sure that all of the ballots are

counted and we are confident we will be victorious in the end as if president trump didn't say what he just said which was a premature and false declaration of victory. let me say it may be that president trump ends up being reelected. if he is, it will be because of the fair and the diligent counting of ballots in states like arizona and nevada where he wants the county to continue because biden is ahead and states where he does not want the counting. not the voting. but the counting to continue where he is ahead because they have not brought in and counted all of the millions of vote by mail ballots, by the way that were cast vote by mail because we are in the middle of a pandemic that the administration hasn't been able to get a voel over.

jim, we were hoping the president would not go there and lie and falsely declare victory. as always, it is not a surprise, but it is shocking. >> reporter: absolutely, jake. i think our founding fathers are rolling in their graves right now. they did not envision a president of the united states delegitima delegitimizing an american election. one thing we will have to wait to see them deploying an army of lawyers to all of the states where they want to contest the results of the election to try to cast aside votes that are still being counted. they want to question the legitimacy of the timelines for counting ballots in states where ballots are coming in after election day. it does not compute with the president that states are

allowed to have varying ways of counting votes. that is one of the traditions of our democracy, states sort of run their own affairs when it comes to counting votes. the president doesn't get that. we did hear vice president mike pence get up there to the podium and contradict the president immediately saying the votes continue to be counted. there was at least an ounce of decency in the room. if you read between the lines he was allowing for the fact that the votes will continue to be counted. >> let's bring in the republican election lawyer benjamin ginsburg on the phone with us. first of all, before getting to the morality of what the president did, if you can walk us through it. the president said that he is going to go to the supreme court

to try to stop the ballots from being counted. is there a way for him to go to the supreme court and ask them to stop the counting of valid legal ballots from voters? >> no. there is really not. there are procedures for continuing to count the votes. you can contest the process of the way that the election took place and ultimately you can try to get an appeal before the supreme court. there is no direct right of appeal for something like this to the supreme court. >> the president is taking issue with the counting of ballots in michigan, wisconsin and pennsylvania. he describes it as stopping voting but that is not what is going on. these are legal votes that have

taken place, they just need to be counted, right? >> yes. they are legal votes that have taken place. the voters have made their expressions. they are in the receipt of all of the states with the exception of pennsylvania which hads it own law that extends the deadline. so, these are all legally cast votes. the process of trying to toss them out i think would be viewed by any court and including the supreme court as a massive disenfranchisement that would be frowned upon. >> i am looking at the numbers in wisconsin and michigan and pennsylvania as well as arizona and nevada and north carolina and georgia. if you were advising him, what would you be advising him to do

right now? >> i think you need to let all of the votes be counted and watch it carefully. if you have objections to either particular ballots or to the process then you have remedies after the fact after each state's recount laws if the margins are close enough. these are legally cast ballots or are determined to be legally cast. for a president to say we are going to disenfranchise those legally cast ballots is extraordinary. >> and beyond the democratic part of this and beyond the immorale part of this, i do not know of an election lawyer that would tell president trump to do something like this, given the

fact he could very well win still. >> well, it is conceivable that he has found some. but i am not -- i don't know how it would be successful and how to a large extent they will be able to justify it to just bypass the state procedures and to disenfranchise people who legally cast their ballots under state law. >> ben, i am old enough to remember when there was a big election fight in florida. and one of the things that was going on at the same time is that there was a very close election in new mexico where al gore won new mexico and george w. bush's campaign was thinking about challenging that and realized that it would be inconsistent and hypocritical to be making one argument in florida and the complete opposite argument in new mexico. you dropped the new mexico thing

because there was one principle that you wanted to fight on. here we have president trump in the course of one speech talking about how mad that he is because fox called arizona for joe biden and at the same time and in the same breath arguing the exact opposite that we shouldn't be counting on votes coming in and still being counted in michigan, pennsylvania and wisconsin. >> yeah. it wasn't really a consistent position. and one of the things about being in a recount or a contested election is that you do have to maintain consistency. but the consistency begins with recognizing the right to vote in this country and how each individual voter has a right. now there may be rules for ways that the ballots themselves need to be verified, and there may be

instances when the margins of elections are breathtakingly close and fall within a state's required recount. but that is very different from what we heard tonight. >> ben, you have been a respected republican lawyer, election lawyer for decades. i think you go back to indiana's bloody eighth which is an obscure reference and only a political super nerd would recognize. but have you ever seen anything like this before from a president of the united states? >> no. not even close. >> what is your take on it? what is your take on the republican president of the united states coming out, and in your view as you already said, attempting to disenfranchise hundreds of thousands if not millions of american voters? >> well, it is a distressing moment for me as a long time republican to see it. i mean the republican party --

and i think that everyone who was on the ballot in the senate, house or local office today recognizes the value of individuals votes and how what we do is trying to preserve them and to honor them. so, what the president said tonight is not only unprecedented and not only lacks any basis in the law it is a disservice to all of the other men and women who are on the ballot as republicans today. >> ben, thank you for your time and expertise. we really appreciate it. get some sleep. i am sure we are going to be calling on your services in the next few days, weeks, months, who knows how long. thank you so much. ben ginsburg, very respected republican lawyer, shocked. distressed about the fact that an american president is openly seeking to disenfranchise

american voters, and in the words of john bolton, president trump's former national security advisor commit a fraud or a c con on voters. >> you heard ben ginsburg call it unprecedented. if we were watching it in another country right now we would be shocked. i think it would be setting off alarm bells and i am sure it is all over the world. the president of the united states just said at 2:00 in the morning on the night of the election that he wants to stop counting the votes in certain parts of the country but not in other parts of the country because he thinks he has already won because he thinks he has won. that is something that anywhere else in the world would be a sign of a democracy that is in peril. i think it is a sign that our democracy is in peril. what is going to happen tomorrow? will anyone speak up about this?

i think that is really where we are. we have to wait for the votes to be counted. will republicans just sit in silence and allow the president to say i don't want to count the votes in a handful of states in the country because i think i already won? >> as you are talking i am thinking about the fact that american observers are sent around the world to observe democracies in action, and one of the things they try to do is to prevent exactly the type of thing president trump was just calling for. it is hard to wrap your mind around. i want to underscore what we talked about earlier and that is a lot of people out there who believe everything the president says. that is why this is potentially dangerous. >> absolutely. >> you know, we all hope that it is not. this is a norm-busting and

institution-busting president. he ran that way four years ago, and even though he is president of the united states, he ran that way this campaign cycle. hopefully this is not a ramification of the erosion, thanks to him, of institutions not just the media and others but those that we all need. basic democratic institutions. >> i am wondering what the former senator rick santorum, republican senator who ran three times in the commonwealth of pennsylvania three times and won two of three. i am wondering what you make of what we heard from the president? >> i was very distressed. the president is prone to bluster and fits of being upset about how he is being treated. i don't have a problem. i think joe biden said similar things. i think i won. that is fine. the idea that he is using the word fraud by people counting

votes is wrong. i understand he sees votes potentially being shifted around in some places. but look, the reality is that what is happening -- i can tell you in pennsylvania what is happening is that they are counting the absentee and mail-in ballots right counties counting. why? because it is 2:48 in the morning. that is why they stopped counting. people get tired. when they are tired they make mistakes. you stop counting and take it up when people are fresh and everybody has a chance to make sure they are not making mistakes. they are not stopping counting because they are trying to fix anything or create any sort of fraud. there are plenty of people there. you know poll watchers and others watching the county. i know the city of philadelphia there are cameras on the people who are actually doing the

counting. look, i understand the president's frustration because some of the states were not called as early as he would have liked. but at the same time he complained about one of the states being called early like arizona. so, i understand that the president feels like it is a grievance against him and somehow or another this is another example of the media not treating him fairly. i would just say i could not disagree more in this case. i think cnn has been quite responsible and been very slow to declare winners. i think that is the right thing to do. you have to be sure we don't do what may be a mistake in arizona. they are not confident that state has been decided yet. and, you know, we need to be cautious. there are plenty of votes out there. all of the blue wall states out there, wisconsin, michigan,

pennsylvania, they could flip it. i think it is highly unlikely in pennsylvania, as i know it well, but it is still possible. as long as it is still possible you need to take your time and >> is there anybody left in that white house who the president listens to who could tell the president, mr. president, it's undemocratic what you're saying, it's distressing what you're saying. we need the votes to be counted for your own second term, should you win one, you need to have the people have faith that this happened the right way. is there anyone who can tell him that any more? >> i suspect the reason the four minute-call that went out and the time he did speak, there was probably a lot of discussion what he should say, and the president is a 70-some-year-old man at 2:30 in the morning, a

very stressful time. i think he was just unfortunately being being more a raw version of himself. so that's just disappointing. i hope that the place -- they walk it back tomorrow and say we want the votes to be counted particularly in arizona. need to have them counted in arizona, need to count them in pennsylvania, wisconsin and georgia. >> that would be a consistent position. wolf? >> it is outrageous what the president said, a fraud. frankly we did win this election. they're still counting ballots now, john. by our count, 220 votes for biden and the electoral college, 213 for trump, there is still a way to go until you get to the 270 needed to win. >> right. let's give senator santorum some credit there, let's count the votes. this is the united states of america, not belarus. let's count the votes. the leader doesn't decide when

we're done, states count their votes. that's how we're going to do it. states count their votes. there are some things we can be reasonably certain about this map, which is when hawaii comes in, we can expect it to go democratic. i can say now these aren't done yet. nevada, biden is leading in nevada. that would be a hold, it was a clinton state. biden was leading in nevada. the map has five leading in arizona. let's give him that for now. let's come back here and go to the red. we assume when alaska's votes come in, that will stay in the red. let's get that to change. that gets you to 241, 216. where are we? we come back over here. georgia the president is leading. we're not done yet. north carolina the president is done, it's close, we're not done yet. in maine we're not done yet either here. here's what we expect to happen in maine. let me bring maine out here. i tapped that in the wrong place. take this off, bring this here. this district here, trump is winning here. biden, we expect to win more of the state. trump is leading right now in the second congressional district. if you do it like that, you give trump one and you come out.

that's a pickup for joe biden we know. that would be a pickup if that holds right there. so now you're looking at the map. if we go where the president is leading right now, this is going to anger democrats. if we just say that we'll see, we still have votes to count. we're not done in georgia. the lead has shrunk a little bit. we'll pickup fulton counsel contin county, atlanta suburbs. it's 78,000, that's a little bigger. let's leave those there for now. that gets you 248 to 244. that would have just these three left. two out of three. if joe biden can do these two, he wins the presidency with 270. if for some reason let's just say donald trump got this one and this one, donald trump wins the presidency. if joe biden came back in pennsylvania, he would win the presidency. if this plays out, if georgia stays red, north carolina stays red, and the rest of it goes as we think, it's two out of three

in the blue wall states. >> let's look at pennsylvania. kamala brown has new reporting what's going on in pennsylvania. what are you picking up, pamela? >> we're seeing how tight of a race it is, outstanding mail-in ballots. according to official numbers from the pennsylvania website, there are still 1.4 million, more than 1.4 million mail-in ballots that have not been counted. so those ballots, those outstanding ballots are not in the account right now. they are working. they are in several counties through the night. in fact, in philadelphia alone, the democratic strong hold, they still have 270,000 mail-in ballots to count. 270,000 mail-in ballots to count in the philadelphia strong hold there. and so we're told that officials are working through the night in many places in pennsylvania because, as we have been pointing out, they started the morning of the election. this takes awhile. it's a process. deep rust as it comes to

pennsylvania. >> that's interesting. john, take a look at pennsylvania now. they're still counting votes. it it's not over with by any means. >> it's not over. we need to watch, need to be transparent. if they have 1.4 million left and the president is up, joe biden has to win 75% of these votes. right now he's not doing that statewide, but these are mail-in votes. these are mail-in votes. we do he was disproportionately winning, democrats are disproportionately winning the mail-in votes. can he win it? it's a rough number because we're getting the numbers from county to county. if it's in the ballpark, that's the president's lead, joe biden will have to win in the area close to 75% of those ballots to catch up. can he do that? we're going to have to see and count. that's a steep hill. remember four years ago we were in michigan, we were in wisconsin, hillary clinton were behind. democrats kept saying the votes were there. in this case mathematically it's possible. when they count the votes, his execution among those mail-in

ballots, his return rate among those mail-in ballots is going to be off the charts. we know from data that's possible because democrats did disproportionately win the mail-in vote. that's a number to watch as we count them and most of that counting will continue through the night. we'll be counting tomorrow. >> in michigan as well. >> let's go through and look at the president's lead. again, the president looks 307,000 right there. as we count, and in wisconsin 116,000. but again, votes to count. >> stand by. we're going to continue our special coverage right after a quick break. (gong rings) - this is joe.

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♪ all right. it's 3:00 a.m. here on the east coast, but we are just getting warmed up. we do not know the winner of the 2020 presidential election, and that is not a surprise. not to me, chris cuomo, not with my brother don lemon and not to any of the team or any of the people who have been watching with what reasonable expectations are for tonight. so, welcome back to cnn's continuing coverage of election night in america. votes are still being counted in key states, and that was always going to be the case.

and yet president trump is falsely claiming victory. let's move past the noise, focus on poise and the facts. we have key race alerts for you, okay. let's start with pennsylvania. you see there right now, those 20 electoral votes still up for grabs. but the president was right, he has a big lead. 670,000 votes, 55.6 to 43. but how many votes are outstanding? wait for us and we'll take you through it. first the headlines. michigan 16 electoral votes. again, the president ahead 288,000 votes, 52.7 to 45.5. 70% of the estimated votes, but that can be misleading. what are we waiting on and when will it come in? those are our two big questions. we'll answer them for all these states. next, north carolina -- sorry, wisconsin, 10 electoral votes. the president there 116,000 votes ahead.

51.1, 47.1, 81% of the estimated vote there. again, the question will be are these early votes, day of votes, absentee votes? we'll take you through it. georgia, the president 117,000 votes ahead, 50.6, 48.1, 90% of the estimated vote. you have to look at the areas that haven't come in yet because some of them are are the most populist. we'll take you through it. next, north carolina, 15 electoral votes. 76,000 votes ahead, 50.1 to 48.6. that is a tight race. 95% of the vote, the president in good position there. we'll show you why in just a second. next, arizona 11 electoral votes. 51.8, 46.8. joe biden up 130,000 votes as you've heard all night from john king. this was the big flip.

82% of the estimated vote is in, so why hasn't it been called? good question and it hasn't been called for good reason. it has to do with counting all the votes. the president and his campaign arguing in arizona it shouldn't have been called until all the votes are counted, but then said, none of the counting should continue anywhere else. last state, nevada, joe biden 26,000 to the positive, 50.3 to 47.8. what's going on there? again, 79% of the estimated vote. again, the key on all of these as we go over to phil mattingly at the magic wall, we'll take you through them. let's look at the wall. 220 to 213. that's where it stands right now and we're still early, okay. why? let's start discussing why. phil mattingly is at the magic wall. let's start from west to east about what we're watching and let's just start with the macro

point. >> have we just stopped? did things magically stop at any point or what is going on with the process? >> votes are being counted. votes are being counted. it's entirely normal. it happens every four years, it happens every two years, it happens with every election. they count until they are done counting. as we move west to east, you are going to see several states with outstanding votes and their in the process of doing the counting. as we move east, others -- let's start where you finished off. nevada is a crucial state for democrats to hold onto. right now joe biden with a 26,948 lead. here's what democrats are focused on any time you're talking about the state of nevada, clark county. this is their firewall. they want to keep this margin above 10 points. that a that's when they feel comfortable. they're 45% reporting. still votes to come in. this is the home of las vegas, largest coin ti in t largest county. 72% of the population. it's a firewall. they want to keep this above 10,

somewhere between 10 and 11. joe biden is doing that. democrats starting to feel more comfortable. however, still 21% outstanding. you see a lot of the red here. this is the rural counties coming in, has come in strongly trump, but this i think is also a big deal for democrats. washio county, swing county in the state. second largest county in the state, 15, 16% of the population, joe biden with the lead. 2016, narrow win. narrow win in the county for hillary clinton. joe biden doing better. that is giving democrats some optimism with the state as the vote continues to come in. so that's nevada. i want to keep going and moving down into arizona. this is probably the biggest state right now that's furthest along because this is the lone potential flip that's still on the map right now for joe biden. the state of arizona back in 2016, donald trump won this state by about 3 1/2 points. everybody going into this year was focused on one county, 20, the presidential, right here. right here, maricopa county. 60% of the population lives in this county. this is the county where you make or break the state of

arizona. look at this margin right now. joe biden with 53% to 45% lead. 81% reporting. flip back to 2016, where was this county sitting? donald trump won this county. this is a county, phoenix suburbs, demographic shifts over the course of the last several cycles. democrats thought this was moving into their direction. it did in the 2018 senate race. right now it has. we'll see how it holds as the rest of the night pans out. republicans, as you noted, have been urging, wait, don't call the state of arizona. count all the votes. contrary to what we're telling you about the east coast, we'll have to see how this comes in right now. democrats feel good, not comfortable. it's not done yet. we haven't called it yet. but because of maricopa, because of their strong hold in prince william of their strong hold in pima county, they thought they were putting up large enough margins. >> as a reminder in 2016, president or then candidate trump won arizona, but he didn't win it on election night.

>> right. >> it took days to count because that happens almost every time, which is why we've been saying from the beginning you almost never know the winner on election night. let's keep going. >> one final point to make on that. if you flash back to arizona in 2018, the senate race took several days, if not weeks to finally count. now, arizona changed how they did mail-in ballots this time around that's why they moved a lot quicker. they used in 2018 a process somewhat similar being used out east. it took a lot longer to count. again, it's normal. it's part of the process. nobody is counting new votes. these votes came in in the course of the day. i want to flip to georgia. we've been paying attention to go throu georgia through the course of the night. donald trump has 117,000-plus lead. so why is this not being called yet? why is this not in the red column firmly? take a look right here, right in here. i'll start walking through biggest democratic counties, largest counties in the state. democratic strong holds, fulton

county in particular, largest county in the state, 10% of the state's population. you look at that margin, vote coming in here is almost 3/4 democratic. 72% reporting. that is why people are waiting. keep moving around. dekalb county, only 8% reporting. >> 80%. >> 80% report being. the democrats knew going into georgia, they've been talking about it all cycle, was this the moment georgia would finally flip? if georgia was going to flip, it had to come from right here, and right here is where the majority of the outstanding vote sits right now. so until we get those results, it's difficult to say which way georgia is going. president trump said in his remarks he thought he had won georgia. georgia had not been called. the reason go has not been called, democratic strong holds with a tremendous democratic vote are still outstanding at this point in the night. keep moving on. got to look at north carolina. you talked about north carolina. 95% reporting. donald trump with a 76,000 vote lead as it currently stands. that's narrowed a little bit

over the course of the night. we're still waiting to see how this comes in. republicans are starting to feel comfortable about north carolina particularly in the senate race. we'll see how this comes in over the course of the next couple of hours or so. let's check in on a couple of counties. wayte county, 94% reporting. there will be more democratic vote here. check out the margin. doing better than hillary clinton did back in 2016 when she lost the state of north carolina. that's not a ton of vote left. still stuff to see as the vote comes in in north carolina. where there is a ton of outstanding vote, right here. right here. pennsylvania and the midwest. this was the blue wall. this is where donald trump flipped in 2016. this is what led him to the presidency. if you look at all three right now, they are red. in the state of pennsylvania, donald trump has a 673,000 vote lead. look at this. 74% reporting. there is a lot of vote outstanding right now. let's just top line it.

john mentioned this in the last hour. we're told it's about 1.4 million outstanding mail-in ballots. look, 673,000 votes is a heavy, heavy margin to overcome. he would basically, joe biden would have to break 75% or so in that 1.4 million outstanding votes. however, the mail composition, vote by mail composition, if you look at the polling going into this night, if you look at exits going into this night has broken very heavily democratic. doesn't mean it's an easy task, but it means right now we still have to wait and see what comes in. where does that 1.4 come from? various different places. obviously philadelphia county, largest county in the state. obviously urban population pushing out, pushing out into the suburbs, only 48% reporting right now. look at that margin. you want to look at this top line here. 289,000 votes for joe biden. that's pretty good. hillary clinton had 584,000. there is a massive drop off in the city of philadelphia pushing

outward or a ton of vote outstanding. the answer right now, there is a ton of vote outstanding and it moves into these counties as well. these are democratic strong holds for the most part, moved heavily democratic the last cycle or two. montgomery county only 70% reporting. joe biden with a good margin there. chester county is traditionally a democratic county. what happened back in 2016? hillary clinton won this county by nearly ten points. right now donald trump with an edge. 70% report being. however, remember, the composition of the mail-in ballots leans heavily democratic. does that mean this county is going to flip? we don't know that yet but we know there's a ton of outstanding vote. we know that vote leans heavily democratic. this is traditionally democratic. chris, to your earlier point. we know there are unanswered questions. we know what we don't know. we do know there's a million and a half outstanding ballots heavily skewed democratic. we don't know where this number is going to end up, where this number is going to end up until this number turns into 100% in

the state of pennsylvania. >> wisconsin and michigan, we've been watching them. right now we're both showing them as red. the president's supposition was they just stopped counting there as well. michigan is known to have a slow count. wisconsin, frankly, was rumored to have a quick count this year. hasn't happened so far. what's the state of play? let's start in wisconsin. >> start in michigan. you talked about michigan being a slower count known for that in particular right here. wayne county, home of detroit pushing outward. you talked about the same thing with philadelphia county. 43% reporting. joe biden with a high margin right now. democrats would want that to be higher. in 2016 hillary clinton did better there. look at the top line number for hillary clinton. this was in a turnout fall geof for democrats. barack obama 576,000. hillary clinton 519,000. where is joe biden now? 240,000. again, there is outstanding skro vote that will change the composition and change this top line and add a lot of vote.

move into oakland county suburbs of detroit, flipped heavily democratic the last couple cycles. hillary clinton back in 2016 won this by 8 points. where is joe biden tonight? doing better, winning by 12. 85% reporting. that means there's more vote to come in here. flip over here to mccomb county, this is one of the shockers of 2016 when donald trump flipped mccomb county from president obama back in 2012. again, look down here. 58% reporting. maybe, maybe the outstanding vote is heavily republican. maybe it's heavily donald trump. maybe this margin holds. however, they need to count the votes. that's what they're waiting for right now in the state of michigan. it's a similar story as what you saw in the state of pennsylvania. it's a similar story in michigan and we can move over to wisconsin. take a look. >> which is which we just got information that will be helpful. by the way, after phil and i go through the magic wall here looking at the individual states, while kristen holmes takes us through the early states, absentee votes, what the timing is, that's the essential

unknown. we just got news on wisconsin, they believe at about 4:00 eastern time this morning, whatever that means, like an hour, not even, they're going to have a lot more information about wisconsin. that will be really important. what's the state of play? >> we can talk about where we've been told that information is coming from. and not unlike wayne county in michigan, philadelphia county in pennsylvania, let's pull up milwaukee county, a democratic strong hold. hillary clinton in 2016 won this county 7 1/2 votes. where is joe biden today? smaller margin. there's a lot more to come in. 146,000 votes? hillary clinton in 2016, 288,000. and this was a drop off for democrats as well from 2012. i think democrats thought they would do much better in milwaukee county. the bottom line here is there's a lot more vote to come in here. >> when you say come in, just to clarify the president's context, it's not that they're going to look for votes they may not have seen before. it's votes they know were put in

already and it's just counting. >> let me clarify that. that's a really good point. >> i was disrupted by the president. >> what we're waiting for is votes to be counted, not to come in. votes have come in. we are waiting for election officials to count the votes as they do every single election. also want to point out we've been told brown county, 66% reporting right now. this was republican. donald trump won this by ten points. presumably donald trump would want them to keep counting. a county he won by ten points. m margin higher now for trump campaign. the bottom line is particularly when you talk about a coronavirus election, an election of pandemic, particularly when vote by mail surged to a level nobody had ever seen before, nobody imagined was possible and you recognize the composition of those ballots, when you look at the top line, if donald trump being 118,000 votes ahead here or 650,000 votes ahead in pennsylvania, and you recognize what's still outstanding, it doesn't tell us who is going to

win or who is going to lose. what it tells us is we don't know the answer till we count the votes. >> god forbid you give a state to somebody and they didn't earn it, you have to reverse it, and people have misgivings and rightly so. again, the example this year is arizona. the president's campaign is rightly upset that the state was called before all the votes were counted there. and they make a good argument, which is why we have it. another organization projected arizona. trump's campaign got very upset. we haven't done it, not because they were upset, but because it would be the wrong thing to do because not everything has been counted. that's the principle. and it would be uniform across the country and that's the way we'll do it because it's the right way to have it done. the x factor that phil keeps referring to in all these different states, it gets confusing this year. why? because we have an abundance of turnout. we have congratulations necessary in this country in a way that we've never seen it before. in the middle of a pandemic,

when, let's be honest, there's not a lot of reason for optimism, not a lot of people making you feel good about yourselves in this country to send you out in a virus to vote, and yet you did. in numbers we've never seen before. so what does that mean? not only is it about everybody everybody who came out today, but who voted early, who voted by mail. it's complicated this year. so, kristen holmes, you've been sorting this through for us. what are the high points? i mentioned wisconsin. they say they're getting their hands around the different amounts they need to count. give us some context to what we're dealing with this year and where. >> so, i want to start in pennsylvania because i want to start in pennsylvania because i think that is the most important place to go. yes, donald trump is right. he is winning by a huge margin there because that is not the entire story. take a look at this. only 39% of mail-in votes have been counted. that leaves about 1.5 votes left to be cast. this is a state that had

2.5 million mail-in ballots sent in and the state was not allowed to process any of those ballots until 7:00 a.m. today. we knew that we were not going to have any results in pennsylvania because of this process. take a look at the map. as phil said, can we say that everyone who is a democrat who requested a mail in ballot is going to vote democratic? no, but we do know about 70% of this huge number of mail-in ballots went to registered democrats. and the places where we're still waiting on so many results are traditionally more democratic strong holds. one, of course, being philadelphia. now, i want to go through those numbers for you here. the last time we have heard on where they are in the count, they had only had 76,000 out of 350,000 mail-in ballots counted. they say there is' been an update but they're not going to give us that number until 9:00 a.m. we do know they are nowhere near the 350,000 mail-in ballots counted because they're still at only 48%. the other part to look at is

bucks county here. this is traditionally a democratic area. they have only counted 20,000 of 155,000 mail-in ballots. so, again, huge margins here. the other one, allegheny county. that is the pittsburgh area. they are working through the night. we know right now they had 348,000 mail-in ballots that came in. they've only scanned about 125,000. so, again, very big margins, a democratic strong hold. does that mean that joe biden will win every single vote? no, but it does mean that this race is a lot closer than it appears right now on paper. the other one to look at is montgomery county over here. now, where they are in their ballots, i want to take a look at this because i want to make sure i get the numbers right. they had received 239,000 mail-in ballots and they've counted about 103,000 here. so these are all traditionally democratic areas. we know that there are

outstanding mail-in ballots and that is why pennsylvania is just too close to call. and, chris, on top of all of this that we see here, there are nine counties in the state that decided that they were not even going to start counting absentee ballots until tomorrow. now, many of those counties are republican counties. but again, we know that the break down was 70% to 20% in people who were requesting those mail-in ballots. so at least some of those votes will go to joe biden. so, again, a much closer race here. i want to take a look at michigan because there are three big areas that we're looking at here, and these are basically the different counties. two of them being ones that trump flipped, but we know there's a lot of votes outstanding and one of them, of course, is detroit. now, when it comes to detroit there's at least 92,000 mail-in ballots that we still don't have. so when are we going to get an answer on that? they're telling us probably early in the morning.

that is what we know about detroit coming in. of course, democratic stronghold. mccomb county, 250,000 mail-in ballots still unaccounted for. we're not going to have any information on that until 7:00 a.m. so keep that in mind. again, going to be a long night. we need to count every single ballot here. the other one is kent county. that is the county right over here that went to donald trump. it was flipped to donald trump in 2016 and they still have about half of their mail-in ballots that haven't been counted. some of these counties are working through the night. we know that detroit is. we know mccomb county is. some of them are starting again in the morning. this is a long process. we are counting every single ballot. now, wisconsin, you talked about that. this is really where we're focused on wisconsin right here. this is milwaukee. there are about, what, let me see here on my notes, 169,000 votes that are unaccounted for

mail-in ballot. we aren't going to get answers there until 4:00 or 5:00 in the morning which is basically right now. we'll get answers there soon. and this is what democrats are watching very closely. they needed a big turnout in milwaukee. we just don't have those numbers right here. the other one is brown county here. they're still counting through there. they only have 66% of their vote in. and that is a swing county. so some of them are breaking down what percentage was mail-in, absentee, what was in-person. others are coming out at the same time. that makes it very confusing particularly in wisconsin. this is a state where some of the counties do it one way and some of the counties do it another way. keeping in mind we're looking at milwaukee. that one we know will come out with all of its ballots, all of its totals around 4:00 to 6:00 in the morning. last one, talking about georgia, now, this is really fascinating. again, all of the counties that we're looking at here, democratic strong holds, phil mentioned this, all around the

atlanta area. here's where it gets really bizarre. fulton county, most populous county, it is atlanta. they just stopped counting at 10:30 p.m. they stopped counting their absentee ballots. they said they'd pick it up in the morning. we believe there is a minimum of 48,000 ballots there. these are all areas, all outstanding areas here around the atlanta area that have democratic strongholds. they're democratic strong holds and they are missing a huge chunk of their absentee mail-in ballots. dekalb county is 80% in. they only counted 79,000 of 168,000 mail-in ballots. so this is why we haven't called the election yet, chris, because there are so many ballots -- this is a very different-looking election. it was not show up, vote in person, have a couple of provisional ballots, a big section of mail-in ballots here or there. this was an entirely different structure for most of the

country. and that's why it's taking a longer time and we know these election officials who belong to both parties are doing everything they can in their power to count every single ballot and make sure this is a legitimate election and they are right when they make those calls. >> all right. listen, you've got a tough job because you are controlling the understanding of the x factor tonight. and it is new, and it is a little bit of a blessing because we have more votes that came in in different ways because of people's sense of activism this cycle. so it's a good problem to have, but it is a problem nonetheless. thank you, kristen, for taking us through it. and you're right, at the top of the hour, it's 24 minutes past 3:00 in the morning on the east coast here. at 4:00 a.m., we believe we will have information from wisconsin. wisconsin is going to be a challenge for biden. that means it's an opportunity for trump and it leaves both of them in the same position. here is where we are in this election right now. here's what we know for sure,

okay. this nation is divided and we have to start focusing on what we agree on in this country. and i'm not being pollyanna-ish. we all want the vote to be counted. god forbid we don't count them the right way, biden gets a state he doesn't deserve, trump gets the out come he doesn't deserve, we all have to agree. the votes that come in today have to be counted. if states have different rules -- and a lot of them do, by the way. over a dozen states have rules for allowing ballots to coming in after election day for purposes, including, by the way, military ballots. we don't want to disenfranchise our men and women fighting overseas, right? that's a federal law that allows them to come in seven days after election day. they all have to be counted. i get the frustration. i get why the president would be nervous.

i get why biden would be nervous. that's their problem. our problem is getting it right, and we will track it all through the night. the next big update is in 35 minutes. right now my partner in this practice of accuracy, don lemon. >> and i think we have to get it right. i think people at home and they're watching and they're not as -- they don't follow it as much as we do and they just want to know and get it accurate. chris, stand by. is kristen there? i want to ask her a question. kristen, i think it's really important. here's what people are asking me. unaccounted for or not counted, because those are two different things. unaccounted for in their minds would be for people watching at home, means where are the ballots, no one knows. or just these ballots are not counted. >> they just haven't been counted, don. all of these ballots that we've heard are accounted for. it's just a lengthy process. again, remember this about pennsylvania. this is an envelope, inside of an envelope, signatures have to be matched. they can't do any of this, any of this counting, any of this

processing until 7:00 a.m. on election day, and then they have to put on another entire election day election. so this is a lot to balance, especially for some of these smaller counties. so when we say that they're not counted, they are there. we have heard very little reports of any sort of -- any kind of missing ballots, anything like that. it is just that it's taking time. and we expected that. and we expect that in michigan and in wisconsin because it's just a different process this year. >> great. thank you for clarifying that because i am getting people asking me, is she saying unaccounted for or not counted. so thank you for clarifying that. kristen, thank you. kristen has the most important job explaining to you at home and everyone here as well what is going on, what to look for, what is not counted at this point. so let's bring in some folks who can talk about that as well. john harwood is here, jennifer granholm and allison stewart. here we are, i don't think anybody would have thought at

3:27 in the morning we would be in the position we are now. we did tell the viewers, we have been telling people things are so different this time around because of the pandemic, because of some new rules in certain places, that we may not know. but, man, at almost 3:30 in the morning to be in this position, john, i want to go to you first. if you listen to kristen and she said, these ballots are not counted. as chris said, you've got to count all of them. there are so many different rules this time. for the president to come out and say, well, you know what, stop the counting. stop the counting in certain places, except for the places where he wants the counting to continue to go on. what did you make of that when he spoke from the east room tonight? >> it was outrageous. it was a lie what he said, we have won the election. he obviously has not won the election. and it's the kind of behavior you expect from an authoritarian leader in a nondemocratic

country. so i think it's clear that what he said was out of bounds. in fact, you could see it was clear because vice president pence said something totally different when he went to the microphone. he said, you know, we're on a path. he said we're going to let the votes be counted and be vigilant and watchful. that sort of thing. that's perfectly appropriate. that's what joe biden said earlier in the evening. and you could tell by the fact that mike pence felt compelled to say it that he was separating himself what president trump -- from what president trump did. but what president trump did is important because he's the president. i think what we know now, as you were discussing with both phil and with kristen, is that we have not gotten the sort of decisive early results that would have put to rest some of the fears people had about unrest and protracted

litigation. we do not know the winner of the election. and we do not know whether or not we will have a clear result. we could still have a clear result. joe biden, if he holds arizona, if he wins georgia, which is still a possibility, if he ends up winning those blue wall states, he could have a comfortable electoral victory. donald trump could also win. but those are the things that the uncertainty over that is a little bit reminiscent of 2018 when we had a protracted count, where democrats ended up doing better at the end than it looked at the beginning. we don't know if that's where we're headed. >> we want all of it to stop, all voting to stop. alice stewart, considering the number that's up and by the margin the president is ahead in a number of states, these battleground states, he could very well win by just allowing them to count. >> exactly, don. and, look, both president trump

and vice president biden do have a viable pathway to 270. so there is no need to muddy the waters. let the process play out. i think every american can take great pride in the fact we had record numbers of people coming out to vote, for whatever reason. whether it was referendum on this president or whether it was the candidate of your choice because there is such a stark contrast. and with that, it goes to show how phenomenal and how great our democracy is. but following that with questioning the integrity of our election is very problematic. look, we had millions and millions of people come out to vote and let their voice be heard. i think it's really important. part of that is to let the votes be counted. i served as deputy secretary of state in arkansas. i know how this process works. county elections officials across the country are counting every vote and making sure it is done accurately and fairly and in due time. and the winner is announced when

all the votes are counted and this president is a powerful person, but he does not have the power to tell secretaries of state to stop counting. i do have concerns about him already talking about the supreme court. that's a little bit premature. we don't see any activity of fraudulent behavior here. so i think it's important to have trust and faith and confidence in the state election officials. let them count the ballots. as we have heard, there are many reasons why it is taking this long. it can be because of absentee, early voting, military, overseas votes, and there's all very time c consuming. it's important for us to be patient. we all want our person to win. we all voted for the person we think is the best. they both have the opportunity to do so. but it's important to take time, use patience and get this right. not just right now, but get it right. and we can -- either candidate

can get a home run here, but you can do it with the base on ball, hit it go yard. but this takes a lot more time and we have to be cautious and do it with accuracy and not with expediency. >> jennifer granholm, you know about michigan, one of the battleground states still on the board. last check, 72% of the vote is in. a difference there, trump is winning about 200,000, close to 300,000. take us through the process in michigan and where we are in that process right now. is there still a chance in your belief, having won elections there, is it your belief that the president still has a chance? or is it joe biden's to lose? >> absolutely. i think that joe biden -- if i had to guess right now -- and i'm not putting on my partisan hat and saying that. i believe that joe biden will win michigan when all the votes are counted. and this is why, it's because, number one, in detroit the detroit clerk had said that

detroit's turnout was a record turnout, which means that it was significantly above 2016. 2016 hillary clinton lost by 10,704 votes, a very tiny amount. if detroit alone, we're not even talking about mccomb county or kent county. that alone is a big number, that 90,000. and that is overwhelmingly democratic. this is not a surprise. none of this is a surprise. even what the president said tonight, it's just not a surprise. democrats encouraged their voters to get people to vote by mail. we know that in michigan and wisconsin and pennsylvania, the mail-in votes were going to be counted last. those who voted first, their votes are counted last unfortunately and donald trump has been making this noise about these mail-in votes for months.

so none of this is a surprise. but the good news is that donald trump doesn't get to call this. it's not his call. it is the call of the election officials -- >> you weren't surprised when he came out tonight and said what he said? he said, listen, what happened to the election that they couldn't win, he believed? it's a fraud on the american public. it's an embarrassment to our country. you weren't surprised by the president of the united states coming out and casting doubt on the electoral process in this country? >> were you really surprised, don? i mean, after all that he's been tweeting all of these months, he's been leading up to this for months to say this exact thing. forget about it. he doesn't get to say. now, i know he appointed a supreme court justice and ultimately this might end up in the supreme court. but, you know what? the supreme court also has to consider their legitimacy. those justices may end up -- certainly there are partisans on the court. but if it is clear through this

process that these votes have been counted and counted in the right way and that everybody is doing the right thing, they can't just toss them out. this is an election. and if we can agree on anything, it is that the process matters, and in michigan i can tell you that, you know, the secretary of state and the thousands of people who are -- who have not just cast a ballot, but who are working in these polls to make sure that it's done accurately, they are ensuring the proper count. they are not -- i mean, you know, this is all done aboveboard and with witnesses. every boat has, you know, a every vote has a tracking device so you know who it came from. the ones that are left are people who voted and they voted before the deadline. so their votes count in america. and if we can agree on anything

as democrats and republicans, it's that this process is sacrosanct. >> thank you, guys. stand by -- >> can i say one other thing on that, don? just quickly, michigan, you know, michigan's vote by mail was larger than their in-person vote. and this is why -- you know, obviously there was a huge number in wisconsin -- >> what does that pertain to you? it will skew democratic? >> oh, i know they will because that was the strategy. the strategy of the democrats was to get people to strovote b. the strategy of the republicans was to get people to vote in person. it is skewing votes. that's why the president is saying what he's saying. >> the question is -- stand by, guys. we'll get to you. the question is, chris, during the lockdown, right, during the quarantine, republicans and the president's folks did not stop their-on the-ground efforts to sign up voters, new voters, door

knocking, what have you. the democrats abiding by the rules did not do that. it's going to be interesting to see how that plays -- how that factors into whatever the outcome of this election is. we see it playing into the early mart of this clearly because at least the polling is off. maybe that factors into it. i don't know. we'll see over the coming days and weeks. >> i think it's a provocative question. this was always going to be a battle of intensity. this is a country in search of itself. you have two choices here that are very different definitions of the soul of america. and i think that it's not just about who did what during the lockdown. it was always going to come down to which side wanted to make its point more vigorously. and what we found out was both sides delivered, right? because turnout is the likes of which we've never seen, which is why the counting is a little bit more extenuated. >> chris, very pleasantly

surprised, democrats and republicans, people were surprised the president was very moderated. didn't say anything, right? and then came out and said, you know, just giving a fairly run of the mill speech, not declaring victory, but then towards the end, went off the rails a little bit. not a little bit, a lot. saying we're going to get the courts involved. we're going to go to the supreme court and so on. i think that was shocking obviously to most people including our very own rick santorum who is a trump supporters. >> it may have been surprising to him. i'm surprised at how measured rick santorum is when he describes this president, and i think it really is about what people want to define themselves by. rick santorum has made his choice. everybody in this country is making their choice. and i think the difficulty is if trump wins, he's going to have to figure out how to bring people in this country, at least half of it, that is repulsed by

who he is. >> how to govern a divided nation, even more divided. >> he it's divided along the lines to him, to tax or not to tax. it's not war or go to war. it is him and not him. he is going to have to see or biden is going to have to see that the answer to this country is not in them, it's in us. they're going to have to tap into what this country shares and it's going to have to happen fast because we're in the middle of the pandemic. let's take that question to mind as we go to break. one of the mysteries of the night to unravel. so in arizona we're talking about demographic shift where you have an influx of latino people in key counties like maricopa county that is changing red to blue. but in florida we see the latino or the latin ex vote undoing joe biden. how do both those things happen?

>> they're different latinos. in florida you have cuban-americans, venezuelan americans, evangelical puerto ricans as well, and dominican republic cans, too. and you also have a situation in florida where rick scott has been very good at courting latino voters and doing very well with them. he speaks spanish. so they have that history there and that showed up. if you think about what's going on out west it's a different population. it's mexican americans. we've seen this in another state like colorado, like new mexico that increased presence of mexican americans in the electorate has really benefited democrats. and you saw that happen in arizona. we haven't called arizona yet. i think some other people have called arizona. but biden certainly feels good about arizona. >> right. but we haven't called it because it ain't ready to be called. and that is benefiting the president and that's why his comments about wanting to stop counting elsewhere is just not

how a democracy works. harry, let me jump to you for a second. we just heard the governor there, granholm, why she makes the case michigan goes the right way for biden whom she supports. michigan is not the issue. wisconsin is the issue, isn't it? i think if you were to layout the states and what's left out there, we know there are plenty votes left, milwaukee city. when i look at the numbers, it's the most uphill climb for bide en en. doesn't mean he can't do it. pennsylvania, for example, there's a lot of vote by mail. we know biden is winning that vote big. we'll have to wait on that. the key point here is when i'm sort of doing the math, right, georgia, pennsylvania, wisconsin, michigan, biden in my mind has to win two of those four states. can he do it? there is the vote left to do it, but it's tough. we have to actually see him lead in one of those states

eventually. >> otherwise it's 216. we sat around until 11:00, 11:30, doesn't he have to win somewhere? isn't that what we're doing now? >> what concerns me is what we saw 45 minutes ago where the president comes out and delivers the speech, so in discord and chaos. most of america is in bed. you would hope they're in bed trying to get some sleep. they're going to wake up about what exactly happened. what we're seeing because of the rhetoric or indecision because we don't have any result yet is that we've seen the stock market, more importantly world leaders around the world are waking up and watching this insanity happening here in the united states. that is not good for a super power as the u.s. which is always talking about building up democracy in its own self can't buildup democracy.

you have two things where someone is saying stop it here, let's get off this ride. we have orders so an autocrat can't do that. our system taking time and embracing the suck of the grind, it's democracy. >> you want an accurate count. it might take a little longer. we've seen it in previous elections, you don't get the full vote total a couple days after the election. that is' what's going on now. listen, it's not a surprise the president did what he did, but it is shocking, it is appalling. it is antidemocratic as well for him to say stop the voting, saying he's going to -- essentially declaring victory tonight. he certainly primed the public for his actions tonight but it was a terrible thing for him to do. >> there is nothing unusual about counting votes that have been cast after election day, right? those votes come in and sometimes it takes some time to

count those votes. it is so much more important, those secretaries of state, boards of elections, they are good public servants. we should give them the time they need to get an accurate count. >> chris, one day to keep in mind, january 20th, 2021. that's when the president gets sworn in. there's plenty of time to get there. >> right. got a safe harbor period, see it every election. let's do this. what are the big issues here? you really have michigan and wisconsin and pennsylvania. we have been through them. let's go over the magic wall. and, phil, the idea is we have two main questions. these two are gray marks because the votes are just starting to come in. the president's supposition is, but i'm ahead. it's kind of over. they just don't want it to end. why is that not true. i want to top line it first.

>> are there enough votes to be counted that the outcome can be different now? >> there are. the race would be called. the answer is the composition of the votes. because of the votes, a lot of them are vote by mail, it's a different election, different year. the vote by mail is skewed toward biden and his campaign. let me start -- layout some pathways and explain why michigan and pennsylvania to some degree have become more than everything. it happened. guess what, we're here. for sake of argument joe biden is leading in nevada right now. joe biden likely to win the state of hawaii. likely to win the state of maine. i'll take off the electoral vote, that's still up in the air. you can go ahead and give alaska to president trump. go ahead and give him north carolina. we're trying to game things out

to underscore pathways to the extent they exist. 244 electoral votes for biden, 231 for president trump. these are the states that are left. say donald trump wins the state of pennsylvania -- >> what about georgia? >> we'll get there. say trump wins the state of georgia. he's up 15 votes. the vote outstanding is not enough to make up for what he needs. that doesn't get him over 261 electoral votes. then all of a sudden you're talking about state of michigan and the state of georgia. again, we don't think we're going to have the results for georgia until a couple hours from now. wait and see on that one. what i'm pointing out is really all coming down to these four states. >> what happens if biden gets michigan and georgia? >> biden gets michigan and georgia, he gets over 270 electoral votes. keep in mind where the vote is right now. i want to show pathways, give

people some ideas maybe best case scenarios for biden, best case scenarios for president trump. then let's go in and look at the vote. let's see what's outstanding. i want to start with wisconsin. we're going to start finding more out about wisconsin pretty soon. let's dig in here right now. donald trump 83 votes ahead, 83% voting. we talked about milwaukee county, milwaukee itself pushing outward, 48% reporting. how are we baselining this now? half the vote is in, about half the vote is in. 278,000 votes, maybe there's 275, 280,000 votes left roughly, roughly. howl does that break? here's the biggest unanswered question we have right now. we know it's going to come in big democratic because it is a democratic county. but the composition of mail-in. the composition of mail-in ballots have been submitted, are being counted should come out soon. how heavily democratic is it? is it a 60/38 split? if it's a -- >> what about registration of the ballots? do we know? >> we might.

what i have on the wall right now is what -- >> also in the control room, that's what kristen holmes is taking, she knows the composition of the registration of the requested ballots in milwaukee county. just give me the answer, pop it in my head pretend i knew it make me look smarter. the audience will be better for the information. let's keep going. let's do apples to apples 2016 to now just to see what it looked like then. >> this is where you're going to see how big of a gap there is. in 2016 hillary clinton 288,000. donald trump 126,000. shift in about 18, 19,000 for the third parties there. put it up to 100,000. >> 400,000. >> up here we know turnout is higher, turnout is higher this time around. we know there's 50% left here. >> that's significant. >> it's significant. there is enough outstanding vote for joe biden to win the state of wisconsin. again, the question is, it's not just milwaukee that's outstanding right now. it's also brown county.

now, in 2016, donald trump won this county by ten points, almost 11 points. you look at the margins right there. obviously there's more vote to come in here. 66 reporting. >> could be another 40, 50,000 votes. >> here's the question, here's what we don't have the answer to right now. is all of the majority of the vote that came in here we knew was going to break republican, was that all in-person election day and counted? everything is coming in via mail, would skew heavily democratic. so what i'm trying to underscore here is i'm laying out questions we don't have answers to, which help answer why these states have not been called yet, and why even though donald trump has 108,000-vote lead, we don't have certainty in terms of where this is going. 83% reporting there's not a ton outstanding. i'll take this down and show you what this kind of leaves. this is the problem if you're the biden campaign. we talked about this many times. you know milwaukee county is going to come in big for you. we know there is a lot of vote outstanding. the biden campaign is looking at that. look at the other counties where

there's 15% or less outstanding vote. red. red. red. red. red. now, they're not necessarily huge counties. dig in here. you know, this is -- >> whatever, they're all red in disposition. now, a fact heq here, frequentl asked question. this is outstanding, you say this is inclusive of the outstanding ballots. >> yes. >> this is where people asked for ballots so they are part of the mix. >> this is how our team is estimating outstanding vote. again, the wild card when you talk about the state of wisconsin and the state of michigan and the state of pennsylvania is just because they're republican counties is the 10, 15% that's left over tracking with traditional republican/democrat split or is it more heavily democratic. i want to move to michigan and talk about the same thing. again, similar type deal. we know a huge amount of vote is outstanding in wayne county.

they feel more comfortable in michigan. go back to 2016 where there was a massive turnout drop off. there is a huge amount of vote outstanding and expected to come in me havely democratic. you heard governor granholm talk about the expectations wayne county might set, turnout records. they are very, very short of turnout records there. there is vote to come in here. but, but this is another key point. take this down, look what's outstanding right now. you see a lot of red. you see a lot of red. now, one of the questions -- i'm bringing this up because i want people to understand kind of how we're thinking through this right now and how our very smart math people who are working at our decision desks are going through things, too, as we wait for more results to come in. kent county, donald trump back in 2016, won kent county by three points, right. in the 2018 governor's race this moved toward democrats. kent county was one of the counties that was not going to

swing toward democrats but donald trump got an edge in. he has a bigger margin than he had in 2016. does that mean with 29% of the vote outstanding the vast majority of the outstanding vote is, in fact, skewing heavily democratic because it's mail-in? those are the things we're trying to figure out now. those are the unanswered questions. those are the things if you're the biden campaign, you're looking at kent county we know there are outstanding vote mail-in. we thought we were going to do much better in kent county. the margins look off to us and therefore we think more of the vote that's coming in will come our way. >> you know what trump's campaign is thinking. since 2018 what happened in michigan? you got whitmer. you also got the pandemic and the people there were up in arms about what was happening in terms of the lockdown. so maybe that's why he's doing well in kent county. >> there's no question about it. if you want to know why people want to finish the counts, if you want to know why you should finish countering the votes, it's because you don't know, michigan might go more heavily toward president trump. again, we're going off of what

we know and what happens' outstanding, mail-in is largely outstanding. that's why you count the votes. there's michigan. let's go to pennsylvania as well. again, right now that is a very large lead for the president with 74% reporting. it is a heavy lift. it is a heavy lift. we know this whole area right here is both expected to be blue and is expected to come in heavy blue. we know last check and it might still be shifting right now, 1.4 million ballots outstanding. we know that they are supposed to based on polling, exit skewed heavily towards democrats. however, however, when you look at that margin -- when you look at that margin and you factor in the fact this is heavily democrat, allegheny county home of pittsburgh right now, still with about 25, 30% outstanding, it's still going to have to be a major, major biden win in the outstanding votes to be able to make up that gap. be able to make up that gap. so that brings me back to what i was initially pointing out. if you were the biden campaign right now, if you're democrats, yo more skeptical pennsylvania, is unsure right now where wisconsin is because

we just don't know the composition and we should get answers to that fairly soon. want to keep an eye on that. maybe your pathway is michigan and georgia. >> right. >> if you hold nevada, if you hold arizona, and you win michigan and you win georgia, that's 270 electoral votes. so there are pathways here. there are pathways here we aren't necessarily going to have immediate answers to. the state we'll have the earliest answer to is here. the state of wisconsin. >> that's in how long? >> soon. >> like a casino in here, there are no clocks. in like 15 minutes or so, we will have an update from wisconsin with a lot of its reporting. and that will be very helpful. your head is swimming. your stomach feels weird. that's okay, okay. this all matters tremendously. you don't do the counting, we don't do the counting. but we will do the accounting for you. we will make sure that the numbers make sense, that people are doing their jobs. you know, slow and low. that is the tempo, all right. we'll all ignore the noise, keep going with the facts as they come in. stay with cnn.

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we don't know the winner. the president claimed victory. he said he wouldn't, he did. none of that is a surprise. nothing happening right now is a surprise except this. millions of you came out more than anybody anticipated. yes, it's making the job harder, that's a blessing. there's more counting going on. we are minutes away from what we believe will be a big set of new information and numbers from wisconsin. i'm chris cuomo along with don lemon. welcome back to cnn's continuing breaking news coverage. again, we are standing by for a news conference at the milwaukee board of elections. right now let's go to a key race alert, okay? we start with pennsylvania. 20 electoral votes. 74% of the estimated vote is in. just an estimate. what has to happen? the president has a big, fat lead. 677,000 votes. 55.7 to 42.9. where are the remaining votes?

when do they come in? how many days left is there of potential counting? we have all of that for you, but that is the key race alert on that. next, michigan has 16 electoral votes. again, we're waiting on information from this state. 74% of the estimated vote. a lot of mail-in ballots still to be processed. the president has a 240,000 vote lead but there aren't a lot of votes in there in big areas that matter. we'll take you through it in a minute. 52.0 to 46.3. wisconsin, this is the state to watch for donald trump. 10 electoral votes. he's up 108,000. 83% of the estimated vote is still in. 50.9 to 47.3 for biden. we are waiting on this press conference. this state will be active in the smallest window of time. we're going to get new information here in just moments. next, georgia.

16 electoral votes. now this is a big question mark. why? tell you in a second. donald trump up 102,000 votes. 50.5 to 48.3. 92% of the estimated vote. why the big question mark on this? because the remaining areas that we are waiting for vote counts could be very high and rich in democrat votes. we'll take you there. big lift but big question mark as well. next, north carolina. 15 electoral votes. the president up 76,000 there. less of a story evolving in this state. 50.1, 48.6. 9 r5 perce 95% of the electoral votes. let's check in with the campaigns. we have ryan nobles dealing with what's happening in and around the white house. the president came out, obviously said what he said he would not say about declaring a winner before we knew, but he did it anyway. what's the buzz?

>> well, chris, the next stage for republicans and president trump is the legal battle that is set to take place in all of these states that are still being contested right now. you heard the president elude to that in his statement a couple of hours ago where he suggested he was prepared to go all the way to the supreme court to prevent some of these ballots from being counted. tonight the trump campaign not providing too many specifics about what the president is talking about, how he would offer up the legal challenge and what path it would take to ultimately get to the supreme court. we do know the republican national committee and the trump victory already have lawyers on the ground in all of these battleground states. a rnc spokesperson telling me not only do they have a whole bunch of volunteer lawyers to wage this battle if it comes to that, they also have a number of high profile law firms in these states on retainer and ready to go. the other thing republicans are talking about here tonight,

chris, is the ground game that the republican national committee and the trump victory organization put into place shortly after president trump was inaugurated. this was an effort that cost $300 million. it put boots on the ground in many of these states and it never slowed down despite the coronavirus pandemic. and in the closing days of the campaign i had a number of trump officials tell me that despite what the polls were saying, that they firmly believe that that ground game was going to be a big part in narrowing these states. they're seeing that play out in real time as these votes come in. >> ryan, you have the president always calling himself a populist now he's saying he wants lawyers and judges to decide this at least when it comes to the count. know this, threatening a lawsuit works in a lot of contests. it does not work in election. you have to show there's proof of an irregularity.

the president may feel it's irregular because he's uncomfortable with the state of play. it's not how democracy works. the counting and rules have been in place for a long time. some have been lit at this gated, some are old, some are anticipated. where are the irregularities? the president suggests them. doesn't mean they exist. let's get reaction about what he put out into the universe about how this is a fraud from the biden campaign. that takes us to m.j. lee in wilmington. what's the response? >> reporter: well, chris, we have just gotten an official response from the biden campaign to the president's speech prematurely declaring victory and casting doubt on the democratic process. let me read a part of that statement. this is from the campaign manager jenn o'malley dillon. she said the president's statement about trying to cut down the country was outrageous,

unprecedented and incorrect. it was outrageous because it is a naked effort to take away the democratic rights of american citizens. she goes on to say that the country simply will not stop -- the counting simply will not stop. what the president is suggesting, that the counting now needs to stop because it's no longer election day, obviously the biden campaign is dismissing that. i just want to point out that the amazing thing is that the biden campaign actually exactly predicted this kind of scenario, that this kind of speech very well might come from the president on election night. they have been predicting for days that the president might get on stage on election night and prematurely declare victory, that he might be casting doubt on certain kinds of votes or certain kinds of vote counting. they are saying, we are going to be prepared for it. we heard biden's top lawyer, bob bauer, telling the media, telling the public earlier this week that we are going to be

ready for all different kinds of legal high jinks. this is a scenario amazingly the biden campaign has been prepared for to come from the president. i want to give you a quick outlook from the biden campaign. obviously we heard from the former vice president himself earlier this evening. he basically said i feel pretty good about where things stand right now. that really wasn't it. when you speak to the biden advisor, they are cautiously optimistic right now. this was not the big sweep that some had hoped for. this was not the sort of early victory or even an election night victory that some had even fantasized about. obviously they don't have florida, they don't have ohio, they don't have texas. those states are gone. all three of those states i just mentioned are states that the biden campaign has made a last-minute push for even though they knew those states were neither competitive or would be

reaches. however, we heard biden say he thinks he's going to win pennsylvania. he feels like, the biden campaign feels like the blue wall states are going to come for them in the end. the bottom line is that right now obviously a lot more counting to be done, however, the biden campaign basically feels like they are going to be able to pull through. they do think they have a better path to 270 than the president does right now, chris. >> m.j., appreciate it. ryan nobles, let us know if there is any other information. phil mattingly over at the magic wall. let's stick with wisconsin, i like this that you have the popular vote out. it's a reminder of what we're waiting for. 66 and 64 million last race was about 120, 130 million. we were expecting at least 150, 160 million. what does that tell you? a lot of millions of votes outstanding. wisconsin. waiting on the press conference.

be in milwaukee. take us through the plus/minus and what we're waiting to hear. >> the outstanding vote, there is no more outstanding vote than in wisconsin. we should get answers soon. milwaukee is the biggest outstanding vote. we're waiting for the city of milwaukee to report. donald trump state of wisconsin ahead by 107,400. 84% reporting. it's all about what's outstanding. democrats have been pointing, as they normally do, to milwaukee county. only 49% reporting. it is expected to come in heavily democratic. 60% biden, 38% trump. there will be a lot of vote there. how much vote? joe biden, 174,000 votes. flashback to 2016. hillary clinton got 110, 115,000 more. there's expected to be higher turnout. that's something the biden campaign is looking for. >> is it enough to offset all of the red boxes?

>> this is the question. let's go back to 2020. i wanted to take this down. take it down to 91%. you look and you see milwaukee count county, how much from portage? not a huge amount. it's the red counties that are the biggest unknown. the red counties some are pointing to. brown county, home of green bay. donald trump up 50,000, 40,000 votes. just because the outstanding vote here, 66% reporting, that means there's a sizeable chunk of vote here. just because it's from a reds county doesn't mean it will come in heavily republican. >> why do we think a blue county comes in democratic? >> vote by mail. went heavily democratic in the state of wisconsin and one of the outstanding areas in terms of absentees, my understanding is, is green bay.

green bay leads a little more although the rest of the county is red. look at the margin right now. look what happened in 2016. 2016 donald trump won by about 10 points. had a lot more vote back in 2016 than he has now. there's so much left outstanding. right now that margin is higher. they expect that margin to narrow. they believe, this is what they believe, a lot of the outstanding vote will skew towards them even though it's in a red county. how much is that going to continue amongst other counties. kenosha, trump was in kenosha. kenosha was very narrow. very narrow back in 2016. less than half a point separated them. look at the margin right now. that's a huge margin. maybe because trump came to kenosha. maybe because what occurred in kenosha or maybe it's because 70% reporting the democratic vote went heavily mail and that's what's outstanding right

now. when you're looking for how does joe biden get 107,000 votes but make up 107,000 votes without losing a significant amount to donald trump when a lot of the outstanding votes are red. there's a lot of hope that that belongs predominantly through absentee mail. >> let's see if we can get some context on milwaukee. the control room will let us know as soon as the press conference is in effect in milwaukee. we're waiting on it. it's the only one reporting results any time soon. while we wait, kristin holmes is looking at absentee ballots and what's still out there. kristin, do i have you? >> yes. >> what do we know about what wisconsin is getting ready to tell us about? what kind of numbers are in the mix? >> okay. so this is going to piggyback off of what phillip said. the big thing we're waiting on is milwaukee, right? last time they gave us an update

there was still an outstanding 169,341 early and mail-in ballots that had not yet been counted. so that is what we are waiting for, to see how those numbers go. as we had talked about all night, it's been clear since the beginning of the pandemic that generally biden supporters are much more in favor of mail-in and early absentee voting. trump supporters are much more in favor of voting in person on election day. the other thing to watch is brown county. here's what's interesting. 66% of the vote in. this is a mixed bag. these votes are coming in altogether. it's unclear how exactly this is going to shift or change because they're not differentiating where exactly each group comes from the way they do in milwaukee, for example. now this is -- >> kristin, let me -- i'm a good test case for you in terms of how people are processing this at home. i have had a lot more caffeine

than most of them hopefully. they're waiting to fall asleep. i'm going to be up as long as this takes. 1 6 169,000 in milwaukee, okay. then does specificity drop off as far as what kinds of numbers are in any of those red boxes? >> when we go through the red boxes, this is the thing about wisconsin. it is incredibly complicated when it comes to how exactly the mail-in and absentee votes are counted. so each precinct, each county does it differently. even within the county they do it differently. so i'm not going to bore everyone with all of the logistics, but the big thing they're waiting for is milwaukee. that is the one coming in separately, that we know there's a big chunk of those absentee ballots. that only happens in about a handful of these wisconsin counties. probably like 30 if i went back and checked but the rest of them come in together. that's why we're keeping an eye on brown but also, again, really

this is going to tell us a lot. once we see these numbers come in. we're supposed to hear about brown county, too. they said 3 or 4 a.m. it's 4:15. we're missing those numbers and waiting for milwaukee. i think that is going to really tell us where this race stands once those numbers come into milwaukee. >> we're focusing on this not just because they're the first ones up. obviously the recency of when we get the numbers dictates our attention. this is the toughest haul for biden. we need to know this. even the 169,000 number is a big number. it's going to matter. you're at 107,000 plus for the president here but what percentage of that is biden and what about all of the other little pieces that they're looking for? there's a lot of wood to chop in wisconsin especially if biden is going to have any chance there. if he doesn't, the window gets small fast. appreciate that. we're waiting on wisconsin to give us this press conference. once we have those numbers, now we'll know, okay, so here's all

the counting they've done.

michigan, wisconsin seem like the best bet for them. you have to have one of three would be what they're pointing to. michigan, similar dive. michigan, 76% reporting. donald trump, a significant 238,000 vote lead. however, it looks less significant when you look here. this is wap county. home of detroit. detroit out to the suburbs. a little bit more out here as well. if you look at the top line vote count, you understand how much is outstanding. only 43%. it's not rare wayne county is going slow. >> why? >> it's wayne county. maybe they don't count as fast as you want. there was talk wayne county turns out records. here's what happens. we have to gauge where things stand. in 2016, flip back to 2016, look at the top margin, hillary

clinton crushed president trump in wayne county. she lost by 10,000 votes. she had 76,000 fewer votes than president obama back in 2016. turnout fell off the map in wayne county particularly among african-americans. now joe biden is only at 240,000. now he's also got less major margin. they want to push that up. but what that tells you is there's major vote outstanding. that vote will almost certainly skew heavily democratic. we're waiting for it to come in. 43% there, add another 240,000 votes give or take here or there, where does that put snim now if it was just 240,000 votes net, he would be above. we're not talking about net here. it's like wisconsin. in the state of michigan, you see a lot of red here. this comes to the biggest question. i want to bring it back up again. kent county was a county that went democratic in the 2016

race. donald trump with a margin. in 2016 before the county moved away, he won this county but only by 3 points. the democrats feel like if they lose kent county, the margin is narrower. maybe it's not. >> maybe they're wrong. >> maybe they're wrong. president trump has been to grand rapids. president trump focused on the state. how many times -- >> pandemic, lockdown, acrimony that the president became a player in. maybe that won him some favor. >> entirely possible. as things stand, 29% of the vote outstanding. donald trump has 53/44% lead. democrats believe much of the outstanding vote will skew their way and male skews democratic. we'll go through this in every single vote that we go through. the outstanding vote isn't going

to track with whatever the margin is. democrats get x, republicans get y. the outstanding question is how much of it is male, we think a lot of it is. we know a lot of it is. what's the composition of that male? we know it will be heavily democratic. how heavily democratic as you move through the red counties? >> gotcha. >> so let's go back to wisconsin for a second. ryan young is where? green bay? milwaukee. ryan jung in milwaukee. there has been a dump of new information from the authorities there in wisconsin. what do we understand, my friend? >> reporter: hey, chris. how are you doing? >> good to see you. >> reporter: good to see you as well. we've been watching them walk in the hard drives that they're going to use to upload the system. we're told in about a half hour we will get more information in terms of how this kourchlt wico

play out. there was a police escort. they put them into the system, stick them into the computer and all of those votes will start to upgrade. >> did you get anything? did you get a taste? you didn't wrestle anything out of anybody the whole time they're walking by with all of that information? >> reporter: well, you know, when they have those three officers walking with them, you understand the importance. we're in a room where the numbers are being updated. you look back at the screens and watching the screens as the numbers update. they bring out forms that show how each county has sort of played a role in this. there are no speed bumps here at all. the election went really smoothly. so many people voted early that yesterday it was almost a snooze fest at some of the locations when it came to voting. the polling location i was at, over 500 people voted but the biggest issue was everybody was worried about social distancing, covid-19. this vote process has gone very smoothly so far.

>> so let me ask you something. the room that you're in right now, is that a press room? you said this is where they're doing the counting. is that actually a tabulation area? how's it working? >> reporter: so great question. we're in the courthouse. we had to go through several checks to get to this point here. they're letting the media sit in this area. you look back in this direction. you have several screens like this posted. every time they get another number, a tabulation, you see the numbers update automatically. press secretary comes out and gives us a heads up when something happens. we're waiting for this milwaukee dump to happen. they walked through the door and gave us an update that in about 35 minutes we'll have the new information about the election and all of the votes that are still outstanding. >> does 35 minutes sound right to you? does it sound like a real time window? have they given you any in the past? >> reporter: everything they've given us so far has been dead

on. >> 35 minutes. >> reporter: we've gotten access to everything. >> all right. so 35 minutes. do me a favor. stand by. let me ask you something else. you see these numbers flashing up on the screen, have you figured anything out? have you seen anything that we don't know already? >> reporter: you know, everything seems to be going -- you know, like the one thing that was kind of confusing at one point, we saw the numbers spike and then we saw half the numbers disappear. what we're told is they do some checks and balances. when they were able to see some of the numbers matching up in a certain way, they were able to pull some of the numbers back based upon the initial tabulation. those are the smaller counties. none of those issues that we heard about earlier throughout the state have sort of shown themselves here at all. that's the good news. there's been no hiccups. we're waiting for the big dump. >> irregularities, that's the ugly word we're trying to avoid. don't want to hear about irregularities. what is the expectation?

when they give us this briefing in 35 minutes, is that it for them? do they believe this is going to be their final assessment? >> reporter: you know, that would probably be the best question so far in terms of what will happen next. i'll tell you one thing, every time they step to the mike there is a certain level of certainty. they give us context for the information they are providing us. there's never that third or fourth question we have to ask about how this is working. they count start counting until 7 a.m. yesterday. that's when they started counting. they had that whole system and whole flow worked out. we haven't heard about any massive rejections of ballots or anything like that. we didn't hear any phone calls about people not being able to vote. you could register and vote the same day. so far so good. >> good. i love it. you and i are hooked up so when they're coming, just get in my

ear. we'll come right back to you. very much. very nice sharing history with you, my brother. 35 minutes. finally a little bit of shape to our night here. so they've been doing it on a micro level. they're coming out now. they didn't tell ryan this is all we'll be able to tell but it's better than where we are right now given what they have. so what do you think will be the two, three things we're hoping to get out of it? >> well, it will be milwaukee county. i don't know if this is the final thing be they give but the way ryan is describing it, it's milwaukee county. it's by far the biggest thing we're waiting for. 49% is in. still waiting, 51% of the vote. the city of milwaukee and all of the outskirts in this blue area. here. kristin kind of eluded to it, the big question, we're expecting brown county. milwaukee county. what milwaukee county will give us and what we're looking for is

the partisan breakdown. it seems very obvious. what is the turnout and does it match up with a pathway for joe biden or does it fall short? all of a sudden it becomes clear donald trump has the path. >> that's the trick here is that there are enough votes in milwaukee and the surrounding areas for the 107,000 vote lead to disappear, however, are there enough to hold off the rest of the ratio and all the places that are assumed to go for the president? they are red. what's the trick on that? should the answer be, it's red, trump wins? no, because these are requested absentee ballots and we know from the research that there is a party bias within that request, so that more of the

requests even in red areas were from democrats, we just don't know the ratio. >> how was that, right? a few hours in? >> i'm not magic. don't you dare touch it. >> it actually scares me. >> all right. obviously very serious. we're talking about milwaukee county. everything else is 86% reporting or less which is a decent sum or less it's in a red county. you were eluding to, it's important to know, start with brown county, only 66% reporting. if it's just green bay that's outstanding and green bay mail that's outstanding, then that should likely skew heavily democratic. should skew democratic. whatever comes in, it's 56% trump -- >> mail, mail? >> yes. >> that's the big thing we don't have answers to and why this

information is so important. well, that's red, that's red, that's red. so what if he makes up 107,000 votes in milwaukee county. these are all republican counties. it's the composition that's outstanding. it largely skews democrat. the biggest question, is it red enough? we don't know the time line. 76% outstanding. take it down here. what's the big, outstanding counties? 89%, 79%? >> take it down here. this is where the most outstanding votes are. if i have this all the way up, it's every county reporting. even those reporting 100%. they're done. counting officials are going home. signed off on. you take this down, you get a better sense of what's outstanding. we've been talking about detroit. we've been talking about wayne county. we know that's outstanding and a huge amount of vote outstanding

there. we've been talking about kent county. kalamazoo county. generally skews democratic. 2.5% of the population. 80% reporting. 20% of the vote. joe biden with a 9-point lead. what happened in 2016? we can use that to inform us. hillary clinton had a bigger margin. does that mean joe biden has more outstanding votes than just a nine-point lead? that's the math we're trying to do in our heads. it's the big unknown variable as we go through the states. >> all right. so what is our move right now? >> our mood is about expecting more information. a little bit of levity, why? because it's in the process. why? because we have to find a better way forward together, right? the real challenge is for us and what we all have to do right now is wait for the vote. it's going to be coming in in wisconsin in a few minutes. we will have it live so please stay with cnn. ♪

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all right. cnn can now project that the state of hawaii will go for joe biden and that means he gets his -- those 4 electoral votes. what does that do to the tally? let's take a look right now. show us up here on the wall with those 4 electoral votes. you get him moving in -- well, this is a key race alert in michigan. you have the president up 234,000 votes with 76% of the votes in, but with those 4 electoral votes you now have 224 to 213. it is a move but it does not change the story. michigan, wisconsin, pennsylvania and georgia. those are the four that we're watching, okay? let's look at the michigan vote here. what do we see? 234, 290 ahead. 51.9, 46.4. 76% of the estimated vote is in. is there enough or are there

enough outstanding votes to make a difference here? absolutely. much more, one would argue, than in pennsylvania or wisconsin. this is an easier path than biden. omar jimenez is in detroit. what do we know about the vote in detroit, my friend? >> reporter: well, chris, as the country waits to see what's going to happen in michigan in regards to how these votes are going to be processed, people here in detroit are furiously trying to get through the absentee ballots that came on the front end of election day. and so as we understand, there are about 92,000 outstanding absentee ballots. that was even at our last check a little bit earlier tonight. downstairs at the tcf center where we are in detroit is where they are continuing to push through these ballots. they did not stop at any point overnight. one shift left, another shift came in and they kept that process moving. then another set of eyes or i

guess a place we're watching very closely is a county in the suburbs, macomb. president trump flipped from democrat to republican in 2016. previously we heard they had been waiting on 250,000 absentee ballot results. that number is now down to 180,000 outstanding absentee ballot results. they told us they were going to try and have all of their -- all of those ballots counted by 7 a.m. which of course is quickly approaching. on the detroit side, the deputy city clerk said they're trying to have their unofficial results by early this morning. you could argue that's now, but my sense is that is going to be a little bit later in this morning. when you look at the state as an entire whole, we've heard from the secretary of state jocelyn benson. in the election day and earlier and later hours and the overnight hours, i should say, and one thing she said was that before we got to election day

she was telling people for the vote to take up to november 6th. after we went through what was a relatively smooth election process or voting process yesterday. that time line has been sped up significantly with her saying that they actually are on a time line at this point to get through all of the votes in the state within 24 hours by the end of today. that's even with the record turnout with more than 3 million absentee ballots and around 2 million they're expecting the same total. >> you're killing me with these numbers, omar. they're all very important but thank you. when you say 24 hours, does that mean that they would be done by wednesday night? >> that's -- so she said that at her press conference at 10:50 p.m. election day night. >> okay. good. >> that's what we're looking for. >> the 90 something thousand

mail ballots you're talking about, that's in the city of detroit, right? >> reporter: city of detroit, correct. >> okay. >> reporter: they're still working through that. that number is likely lower but we're going to go back in there and check. >> let me know. you know how to get me with any information update. anything you hear me saying that is wrong, get me the correct information and i'll put it out right away. thank you very much, my friend. >> reporter: of course. >> here's why i'm trying to keep those numbers in my head, phil, i was trying to get your attention so you could be listening also. in detroit if it's 90,000 in the city and the bigger one was macomb, 180 something,000, how does that help our heads in terms of figuring out the proportionality? >> not a lot. >> i burned all those calories trying to remember those numbers? why not? >> let's explain this. wayne county is more than detroit. detroit is kind of the central hub and a large part of wayne county. wayne county is the largest

county, 18%. more than 90,000 votes outstanding? how do we know that? only 43%, already 240,000 votes in for biden alone at 166,000 plus more for donald trump as well, you get the sense that there's more than 50% outstanding. >> context that if you have about 90, 100,000 in the city, what that means as a ratio, like you know what i mean -- >> like it just depends. it just depends on how everybody is counting. how the different clerks are counting. >> 180 in macomb? >> i cannot stress enough back in 2016 when republican sources of mine saw the numbers coming in in a macomb, 2016 donald tru won by 11.5 points. 224,000 votes to 160,000 votes. that is a night everybody was blown away. in 2020 his margin is significantly higher, significantly higher.

the difference right now between 2016 and 2020 is that macomb, along with oakland county over here, started to move back towards democrats in 2018. democrats worked under the assumption that they wouldn't win but they would bring the margin down. a lot of concerns in the state. given a shock of the macomb numbers, i don't want to assume too much, a lot of the outstanding vote will be one male. in this case it would skew democrat. we don't know that for a fact. that's how people have been operating. it's been borne out in other states that have gone through absentee. >> let me test you a little bit. let's say 200,000, just round numbers. 200,000 outstanding ballots there. if they split 2 to 1. he gets 2/3 of that number, it

would put him up and close but they're going to need a lot more than this. this won't be dispositive of what happens in the state. >> you have to take the whole picture. >> right. you start from this as your baseline with the idea that in 2016 hillary clinton had this many votes and it was one of the worst years. joe biden is at 43% voting. then you add more vote here. i think what this underscores more than anything else is maybe a little bit less than wisconsin. there's a lot of areas of outstanding voting. 76% is not bad. 87% or less is reporting, you see that there are a number of different counties. a number of different counties. going to say this repeatedly throughout the night. the biggest question is composition. it's not so much even what counties come from, what the margins of those counties are. this is a guy where president trump is going to have a

significant margin. not a huge amount of vote. a couple more thousand will come in here. we don't know if that's going to track with this margin, going to track with the 2016 margin, which donald trump is doing much better than. >> the reason donald trump is doing better because the democratic vote hasn't come in by mail. >> that's the big x factor. the smaller the county, the better he does. >> no question. again, i think this underscores the point, right? is what we're trying to figure out right now, particularly in a moment of information darkness or at least kind of a hold on information as we wait for people to do their jobs, to count the ballots as they're supposed to do, respect them for doing it. when you try to do the math and figure it out, we're missing part of the equation. that, boom. >> all right. hold on a second. >> no. no. no. joe biden just took the lead in wisconsin. >> right. we're getting new information.

>> we'll go through it. >> pull it all the way out. votes are coming in right now. let's pull all the way out to the state of play here. we're getting -- i know, that's phil mattingly. new information right now. one of the things you don't get to see is actually what's going on in my head with all of the different voices. that's before i'm on television. tonight we just got new information in on wisconsin and it has changed the state of play in the state for now, okay? right now joe biden is 11,381 votes ahead with 89% estimated reporting. two questions, where did it come from? and what is left? what can we answer? >> let's start with this baseline. before this information came in, donald trump was up by 109,000 votes. now joe biden is up by 11,381. right now milwaukee county is up to 77%. >> it was at, what, 40

something? >> yes, 47%. not all the way in but, again, we knew this was a heavy democratic county. we knew the margin was something like 57% for joe biden was low. it was low for what this county is expected to do. now look at the margin. compare the margin of 2016. he's doing better than hillary clinton did in the margin. that is what was expected based on turnout, based on hillary clinton's dropoff. >> help me. how much vote is left? if it's 77% -- >> take 77% from 440,000. >> you know how many numbers and calculations? >> i got into journalism so i wouldn't have to do the math. somehow i ended up on this wall. >> do this in the control room. while we're going through them. do some calculations for me. we'll do that. let's go to kenosha and look at votes outstanding. >> kenosha hasn't reported anything new. >> static? >> what we've been waiting for has come in. this is what we were talking

about. this is what ryan was talking about. the vote we were waiting for in milwaukee county. it hasn't come in in brown and green bay. not in kenosha. >> still waiting for 23%. >> right now that's outstanding. we don't have an explanation. ryan may have an explanation. what i want to underscore is was there a way for joe biden to overtake. we knew -- >> is it enough to hold? >> right now accounting for the fact that there is more vote to come in here, accounting for the fact that the vote that came in was heavily democratic, moved the margin up 25 points up to what it is right now, 40 points, what does that mean going snoord what it means going forward is -- >> did anybody else come in? any other counties? >> no. what we knew was going to come in, what we've been waiting for. what we knew was coming in in 30 minutes here was milwaukee. >> macomb. >> macomb is michigan.

>> milwaukee has come in. only new number. >> yes. >> waiting on everything else? >> yes. >> what about green bay? >> i just pulled that up. that has not come in. green bay and brown county has not come in. racine has not come in. milwaukee is the new numbers. what milwaukee gave us and what milwaukee has now presented has flipped wisconsin to joe biden with a lead right now. >> reset. where were we? >> donald trump was ahead by 109,000 votes. we were waiting for information and data. we knew the county we were going to get was milwaukee county. they skew heavily democratic. >> now we know how much because of this. >> now we know how much. joe biden was able to make up roughly 121,000 votes in milwaukee county which would track with an enormous democratic skew towards democrats in the outstanding ballot there. now let's take a look. 89% of the state is reporting. what's outstanding right now?

mostly red counties but also still about 23% of milwaukee. if it tracks anything like we have, it will skew democratic. the big question, the lead narrowed a little bit. down to 10,900 votes is what's the composition? what's the composition when brown comes in? is brown going to come in like that? is brown going to come in because it's mail vote? >> just so we get apples to apples? >> not this large. >> he didn't win by 15. >> right. when you're talking 10, 15, 20,000 votes, 5% is enormous. >> right. >> that's the question right now. democrats say we think most of this is absentee from green bay. it's going to skew democratic. if that's the case, perhaps it won't look like this margin when it comes in.

brown county won't look like this. it may not hurt him, it may help him. >> we don't know what the ratio in green bay will be what it was in milwaukee? >> it won't be. we don't think so. as these votes come in, even a smaller county, even washington county, not a small county, had more of a republican strong hold. does this margin hold over the next 12%. take a look back in 2016. where does it stand? sitting about in 2016 margin was. when it comes in, will it be democratic? >> 11,000 went to 10,000? another percentage point in milwaukee. so, again, milwaukee is a good example of this. >> now we're up 90%. >> right. that changed it to the overall. it's not going to come in 100% democrat. >> right. >> red counties won't come in 100% republican.

we're trying to figure out past performances, traditional lean of the different counties to get a sense but because of the mail and how things are being counted, you can't necessarily extrapolate. what we can extrapolate out is the obvious fact that joe biden has started to turn wisconsin blue for the moment. >> right. for the moment, joe biden is up 10,000 votes in wisconsin. in 2016 trump won wisconsin by 22,000 votes. so it was thin then. it's thin now. you don't have johnson and stein in the mix. third party candidate, we don't see them registering in a way that's relevant. this will be decided by a thin margin. can joe biden hold on by 10,000 votes? there is enough outstanding vote to be counted there. certainly much more than this number here. >> yes. >> we'll have to see. when are we going to see? control room, do you have an answer on that? should i go to ryan nobles or

we're waiting? we don't know yet. ryan nobles -- not ryan nobles -- ryan young is in milwaukee, wisconsin. ryan, sorry. so we have the numbers here. did they tell you anything about yearn more numbers coming in? not yet. all right. good. we'll wait. everybody is anxious, right, because we want the information. let's do this. we're going to go through the state and figure out what came in, what we're looking at but here's your headline. i know everybody is a little sleepy. it's time to wake up. we had a movement in wisconsin. joe biden is now ahead. why? votes that are in are being counted in big, populated areas that could break democrat and did. is it enough? we're going to do calculations, see what is still outstanding and get after that right after this break. stay with cnn. want to brain better? unlike ordinary memory supplements- neuriva has clinically

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bounce forward with comcast business. get started with a powerful internet and voice solution for just $64.90 a month. plus, for a limited time, ask how to get a $300 prepaid card. call or go online today. hello, everybody. time to wake up. just a few minutes before 5:00 in the morning here in the east and we have new information.

cnn has key race alerts for you. let's take a look. the state of play in wisconsin has changed, okay? ten electoral votes are up. very important now because remember the gateway, wisconsin, michigan, pennsylvania, maybe georgia. those are the states in the mix that we are focused on. we had a big change in wisconsin. how? 10 electoral votes. 89% estimated to come in. in the last batch of votes it changed the lead. biden now ahead 10,110 votes. 49.3 to 49.0. where are the votes that are outstanding? i'll take you through it with phil mattingly in just a moment. that is the big move. the other state that we're watching in real time, michigan. 16 electoral votes. the president up ahead. a stout 245,000. 52/46.3. that's 77% estimated vote. where it is could make all the

differen differen difference. here's the electoral map. 224/213. it is all about what we don't know on two different levels. the states in gray obviously, but also where the outstanding votes are, whether they're early votes or mail, and what that will mean in terms of breaking along registration lines. let's go to phil mattingly over at the wall. a little bit of coffey. let's see if it helped the old context in terms of what the numbers mean specifically milwaukee. >> milwaukee is what came in. that was the biggest outstanding democratic vote that we knew would skew heavily democratic. it did. majorly democratic. now 90% reporting. joe biden 69.2, donald trump 29.3%.

>> he gets 15,000 votes out of this. that will pad his lead. the question is is that enough votes even if he's up 25,000 to stave off the outstanding vote in the rest of the county. >> right now, 89% reporting. joe biden with a 10,000 vote lead. let's see what's outstanding. let's find the counties and the vote. all that you see that milwaukee is over 90%, you see red counties. here are the open questions. let's start with the match-up of these counties. dunn county, not a big county. donald trump 56, joe biden 41%. about 86% reporting. 14% of the votes still outstanding. two things you need to look at here. look at this margin right now. look at the margin.

back in 2016. right now donald trump has a bigger margin. these are the types of counties donald trump has done fairly well in. its location to eau claire. is that margin because donald trump was able to run it up in a smaller county as he's done throughout the country to some degree or is that because the missing vote is democratic mail-in vote? that's the variable we need the answers to right now. as we talked about, 150,00,000 not a huge lead. that won michigan but factor in it's not just 10,000 right now, it's going to add more from milwaukee county. how much more can it get. >> you have good questions. i think i can get us answers. what do we have? right now we have juliet at tta henry. first of all, thank you very much, ma'am. your whole team for the job you've been doing tonight for your county, for your state, for the country, frankly, because all eyes are on you.

thank you. >> thank you for having us tonight or this morning. >> yes, this morning, indeed. now help me. in terms of milwaukee, we're understanding that there's still about 10% of the vote outstanding. what can you tell us about how much more vote you expect from milwaukee and how much more vote you expect from the other counties that are as yet open? >> in milwaukee county we are now at 100% balance. that does include the center count for the city of milwaukee as well. >> so all the votes in milwaukee are in? >> yes, sir. >> so the 90% estimate reporting, does that mean that we are just waiting for them to be tabulated? have those numbers been released? >> those numbers have been released. >> do you have the numbers? >> we are at a total of -- yes, sir. we have a total cast of 416,300 of which biden received 317,259.

69%. >> go ahead. >> and donald trump received 134,355 which was 29.28%. >> okay. so we're basically there on that. what about remaining outstanding vote in the other counties, ma'am? >> we do not have that information. i can only report for milwaukee county. >> do you have any scoop for us in terms of when we may find it out? >> i don't know but i know that we're hoping everything will be done within the next three hours, but i do know we did speak to someone in green bay. they are at least an hour behind us. >> and you are absolutely sure that you have all the ballots counted, there is no x factor, nothing else you're waiting on? in that context, did everything go according to your plan? the dirty word, irreeg gu larts, any to speak of?

>> no, there weren't any irregularities in milwaukee county. we were anticipating finishing up tonight between 3 a.m. and 6 a.m. and i think we're right on target with the 4:00 completion time. >> nothing else? no other ballots to be counted? >> there will be provision naryury ballots and the clerks have reported those. they should be on their website. they reported those to the state. those ballots will be counted -- they have until friday at 4:00 p.m. to count those ballots and return them to our office. >> all right. >> that will be a part of the official -- this is the unofficial results that you're receiving right now. >> yes. unofficial results but helpful. thank you. what is that remaining number of ballots that have until friday to be counted? >> i don't have that number yet. >> okay. >> we will know it in the morning when the clerks submit all of those files to us.

>> all right. thank you so much. i know it's been a long night. i know being on tv isn't your job and that isn't exciting right now, but thank you for giving us an unofficial number is that we can help people understand such an important piece. thank you very much and thank you for everything that you did with your team. >> thank you so much. all right. so just to put a little button on it. she said it is all in. this is the 100% except for a group of ballots they're wai pr >> provisionals until friday. what is a provisional ballot? >> i think what's going to be interesting, first, is what can we do before the provisionals? >> right. >> provisionals you count afterwards. every state has different rules in terms of how the provisionals operate. this is where we stand in milwaukee. the lead has shrunk for joe biden. it's under 10,000 votes. we're waiting to see. she just mentioned that brown county should be coming in

within the next hour or so. so that's the next thing we want to keep a keen eye on. we want to see what happens tonight and then you start dealing with provisionals. >> provisionals is, hey, you're sure you're here? you're not in the book. your address doesn't match up. fill out the ballot. we'll figure out if it's a legitimate one to be counted later. every state does that. every state will have that quotient. phil is right to focus on this part. is this number too fragile to hold? >> don't know. we don't know. the beauty of this is what we can show you. what we can show you is what's outstanding. the biggest unanswered question when you start to take things down, particularly when milwaukee county is in, is the composition. should find out about brown county over the course of the next hour. that's what we were told. we know that green bay is a significant chunk. >> 1/3 of the vote waiting there. you have about 95,000 votes so you have 30,000 votes? >> right. >> that are still going to come

in in a red county. >> if those votes come in at 56/41, donald trump's a happy guy. that puts him over where joe biden is now. >> yeah. >> again, the wild card here, this isn't just waste con sisco the composition because it's heavily mail, heavily absentee, is it primarily driven democratic because they've been voting heavily democratic and absentee? is it heavily centered absentee and mail? donald trump is ahead by 14 points doesn't mean that's going to have any bearing whatsoever on the composition of what comes in. what we know at this point in time is the counties with the most outstanding vote, including brown, including kenosha, which is still 30% outstanding right now, these are republican counties as it currently stands. these are both counties that donald trump won back in 2016, however, we know donald trump won kenosha county by less than

a percentage point. right now donald trump is leading in kenosha by 21 points. >> let's get context from kristin holmes. how can you help us understand the situation? >> well, i think i have some answers for you on brown county. we have not gotten numbers in for several hours. we thought we were going to learn between 3 and 4 a.m. it is now 5 a.m. what we know is outstanding is at least 32,000 absentee mail-in ballots. there are also some in-person ballots mixed in there, but this goes to exactly what we have been waiting to hear. what kind of ballots. just like phil was saying, are these. if they are absentee ballots, will they swing the way we have seen the votes in wisconsin and across the country swing, which is for biden? that is the big question here. this does give us some clarity as to what is waiting to be counted or what is waiting to be revealed to us.

they were supposed to give us that. at least 32,000 absentee votes. as we know, this does not mean it's the case with these votes. we know overall biden supporters tend to favor mail-in voting whereas trump supporters tend to be the day off. there are some day of mixed in here. the big number 32,000 at least absentee ballots. >> thank you very much, kristin. appreciate it. if that's 32,000 and he gets 56% of them, that puts him at 17, 18,000 votes. that puts him over the margin except for the net to biden, you have one hell of a close race. >> extremely close. >> it could be a 22,000 vote win for the president but not necessarily depending. >> again, kristin made the key point. these are 32,000 vote by mail. absentee. so absentee, even in the most republican counties have skewed democratic. you cannot extrapolate off what

this 32,000 is beyond the fact we know that's the outstanding vote. when it comes in, we'll be able to say break down the 32,000, how did it come in, what did it do for the margins? beyond that, we're in wait and see mode. wait and see mode when there's only 9,000 ballots, that's pretty darn important wait and see. >> keep putting heads to it. you're at 9,000 votes, what's the number, phil? 9,673. harry, help us understand this. give us a little context. this state wasn't supposed to be anything like this. the president won by 22,000 votes. i'm not breaking your chops about it. >> please do. >> how did we get here? what changed? >> i mean, look. it just seems to me that the polling did not accurately reflect what was occurring in these midwestern battleground states, right? it was that ann selzer poll came

out. oh, that's strange. had donald trump up by 7 in the state of iowa. if that goes across the state line into wisconsin, we could be dealing with a much closer race. turns out that was right. but at the end of the day, joe biden is still ahead there right now. that may shift around a little bit, but he's ahead right now so it is what -- you know, it's -- >> don't say it is what it is. >> i stopped myself. >> i'll tell you why you can't say it. if it's 9,000 votes, and i totally understand what phil is saying and kristin accentuated about the preference with mail-in ballots to democrat registrati registration, how does he hold on to a lead if all of the remaining boxes are red? >> if that's green bay, they went for hillary clinton. then you add on top of that fact that it's mail voting, which is more democratic, i actually can make the argument that i think biden's lead is going to expand. i'm not saying that's

necessarily going to be the case, but that seems to me to be a very potential possibility. i know phil is not there right now. is that taking into account the kenosha vote that is still out? if it isn't -- >> no. >> if it isn't, i think biden's lead and our official count could grow on top of that. >> it does not include kenosha because that's a separate count. i'm talking about the statewide count in wisconsin. do we have all of kenosha in, fel? >> no. >> no. i would think that vote by mail, which we believe that's what's left out there, could expand his margin even more? >> do you agree? >> look it, he's the forecastor. he knows the numbers. we knew this was going to happen. we knew that was going to take some time to count these votes. we haven't seen anything nefarious at this point. if you do look at those numbers -- >> the county clerk said milwaukee went exactly as expected. the only ballots left are provisionals which everybody has as part of the bundle. i have been a provisional ballot before when i voted.

so the count we expected, okay? it takes time. the race being like this we did not expect, right? part of the bravado of biden was he was 5, 6, 7 points in wisconsin, no more. 9,600 votes is separating the two right now. >> you know what's going to happen? there's going to be a dissection of this presidential race 16 trillion times about how this was run. one of the big pieces will be did joe biden by not going on the campaign trail in the final week, by not doing a mad dash, we saw grump to georgia, right? just a couple of days ago. he went to rome, georgia. i was a newspaper reporter down there. that's extremely conservative. he went there and riled up his base. maybe that might help him carry georgia. we don't know yet. but we did see donald trump out there really trying to fight for every vote at the end. joe biden, they didn't put him out there and that's going to be looked at. >> there likely was maybe some closing near the end.

the polls suggested that biden would do much better in some of the sunbelt states. you had donald trump out there in those big rallies. we talked about them as a health risk, they certainly were, but they certainly probably moved to motivate those voters in those states in those regions where he worked, particularly those rural, white voters. it seems like just maybe the swelling voters that people were predicting, african-american turnout seems like it was about equal, at least according to the exit polls. doesn't seem like there was a big swell from 2016. we'll have to wait and see. a lot of the dynamics that we were talking about, biden's overwhelming strangle hold with college educated whites, biden's strength with seniors doesn't seem to have shown up. >> we had him plus 8 at cnn. "the new york times" had him plus 11. i don't know that trump was ever leading in a poll in wisconsin against biden. >> not any poll that cnn would

allow to be published on our website or put on air, that's for sure. i should point out again, given what we saw in milwaukee, that shows you about the people that we saw on election day and that vote by mail. that's something to keep in mind as this shifts to michigan, pennsylvania, even down in georgia where there's fulton county returns which is vote by mail. that's still out. the idea that joe biden can't make up the ground in michigan and pennsylvania seems to me to be an incorrect assumption. these races are very competitive at this point. you know what, chris, at the end of the day it's the scoreboard and right now joe biden still has more electoral votes given to him, at least projected by cnn than donald trump does. to me, his pathway to 270 is quite clear at this hour. of course, so is trump's. at this point, joe biden's bid for the presidency is very much still alive. >> feels like trump is in command of the probabilities here, does it not?

>> yeah. well, and he's in charge of the narrative in many ways. him going out and giving that speech was widely condemned across -- >> hurt himself because he put a shadow on the legitimacy of a count that may well wind up benefitting him. >> but forhim i think we all know he doesn't care. he doesn't care if he is contradicted down the road. what he did just a few hours ago was that he riled up his base. there is going to be concern. give it a few hours. let's see how all of this shakes out, but let's see really when people wake up, let's talk around the room tomorrow and see what the state of the nation is. i do think that it's going to be a little bit more fraught than it was tuesday. >> well, it all depends on what the numbers are up on the board. if the president loses wisconsin, that is a huge if, these numbers are so slim. good news, wisconsin should give us information in the next

couple of hours. as people are waking up across the country, it should be three states you're looking at. let's bring in kaitlyn collins obviously at the white house covering those comments. any backing off of them after he left the podium as is sometimes the case? are they saying, oh, yeah, yeah, fraud, that's what this is? >> reporter: no backing off. this is what they were waiting to do. president trump would look like he was ahead and then as the mail-in ballots came in it was going to potentially tip it in joe biden's favor. this is basically what the president's campaign aides had been planning on happening. i don't think they expected it happening as quickly as the president was prematurely claiming victory. that is primarily what the president denied a few days ago to reporters that he was going to do. he said he would not come out and declare victory before it was time. now he has done that with votes still being counted. the question, of course, is the criticism we're seeing from the president's own allies.

as mark preston was pointing out, people like chris christie is talking about how unwise what the president said in the wee hours of morning said. you saw it in stark contrast to what the vice president said, we're going to be vigilant and let the votes be counted. that's not what president trump said. he wants votes to be continued counted in places where he is down but he doesn't want them to be continued to be counted in places where he is ahead. he wants states like wisconsin, we're seeing the absentee ballots and numbers coming in with biden now taking the lead in wisconsin. it is so stunning to see what the president did, chris, even though it was really entirely predictable based on what he's been saying over the last few days. >> caitlyn, i appreciate it. thank you very much. let me know if anything changes in terms of when we're expecting to hear from the president next. that will be really important because he is going to try to mess with the state of play. that's what he does is to try to

play to advantage. i can't stress this enough. presidents, even if they're running for a second term, their challengers, they don't determine when an election is over. the process does. that's why it's very dangerous to mess with the legitimacy of a process. just know this. this is not about any state or county discovering they had votes that hadn't been counted. every single aspect of this dynamic of this election has been according to the process as normal. we're going to take a break right now. more information has just come in about wisconsin. there has been a change. joe biden is in the lead by the smallest amount of votes we've seen tonight. under 10,000. will it hold? we will see around we will see sooner than we expected. in an hour or so we should have an answer about wisconsin and that will have huge implications

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all right. cnn will bring you a key race alert here. we have wisconsin that has had a recent change. it just changed again. it's 10 electoral votes are up for grabs and it is the thinnest margin of a major state that we've seen tonight. 8,442 votes separate biden and trump. 49.3. 49.0. 89% of the estimated vote has come in. the key part of the story here is the big democratic stronghold of milwaukee has 100% reported except for provisional ballots, which are not relevant to the analysis. the rest of the vote is in red counties. then it's all for trump. no. maybe not. why? because it is predominantly mail-in ballots and those ballots broke unequally for

democrats. how unequally? we don't know. that's why we're watching. michigan, 16 electoral votes. 217,000 votes here. you know, a mountain compared to what's happening in wisconsin. however, 78% of that estimated vote, they're big chunks in big areas that democrats can make up a lot. now here is a state that you haven't heard about tonight but there have been a lot of whispers that it could matter here. nevada. all right? here's why. 6 electoral votes. biden had been up 25, 27,000 votes. now only 11,000 votes. 85% of the estimated vote has come in. we just got a big group of votes from clark county, which is the home of las vegas. let's go over to phil mattingly. that was expected to usually be a democratic strong hold. not now. brought the margin down. >> clark has to be the fire wall.

home of las vegas. 72% of the population lives in clark. if you're a democrat, you want to roll in clark and roll out leading by 10%, 11%. right now with 84% reporting, joe biden is no longer up by 10%. he was until the latest batch of clark came in. here's what we don't know about clark as it stands. with the latest batch, did it include mail? we still know there's 16% outstanding. however, if you look at this right now, joe biden 11,000 votes ahead in the state of nevada. a lot of people throughout the course of the night have been giving nevada to democrats assuming they have had a pretty good strangle hold over the last couple of cycles would figure out a way to do it. they always do in clark county. figure out a way to do it. this is close. this is close. i kind of want to go through, if you don't mind, i'll dig back into the map in a second, is go through where things stand.

everything you're looking at has been called. joe biden 224 electoral votes, donald trump 213 votes. we can expect donald trump will win the state of alaska. you can give him north carolina. give joe biden the state of maine. these aren't called yet but as we try to game this out. not going to give maine because it's not called. but, this is a key but, what happens if nevada flips red? talk about pathways here. what is donald trump's pathway if nevada flips red? well, he wins pennsylvania and he wins michigan, guess what? that's it. he can lose wisconsin. he can even lose georgia, which we won't have an answer to for a couple of hours. if he wins nevada, donald trump's pathway gets noticeably easier. wins pennsylvania where he's up.

not making any declarations, just saying michigan, pennsylvania, or biden wins michigan, biden wins wisconsin, donald trump wins georgia and all of a sudden georgia, pennsylvania, within reach, and nevada and donald trump is over 270 electoral votes. that's not where it's going, i'm just saying nevada could throw a huge wrench into the biden campaign's plans. that's where things stand. you see late vote come in in clark county. that has narrowed joe biden's lead. leading by a percentage point, 11,000 votes. we've been talking about wisconsin, michigan. waiting for pennsylvania. still waiting for georgia. nevada just threw us a little bit of a curveball. wait to see how that plays out in the next couple of hours. >> what are we waiting on in nevada? how much more outstanding are we looking at and what could it mean? >> about 85% reporting. this is traditionally a

democratic county. they want to have a big margin here. 72% of the vote coming out of clark county. 84% reporting right now. 16% outstanding. the big question right now is composition. the big question is composition. is it mail? is it in person? what are they waiting to count right now that's not in yet. will this margin start to grow yet? >> obviously we're asking these questions, but so are our reporters and in the control room, do we have any indication of what they're going to tell us? we're at their mercy in terms of when they put information out. i don't mean that cynically. that's where they are. it will come when it comes. that's why we're going to keep covering it for you. so we're waiting on 15% of the vote. a majority of it we think is in clark or no? >> well, yes, just because of the size of the state -- the size of the county. i want to tick through here to

give some context as to why clark and washau are so important. he wins he blows them out of the water. lincoln county, 87% of the reporting. >> 85%. >> 1200, 1300 votes. now, granted, it's gotten very tight. all of a sudden the roles matter much more. let's see what's outstanding in watchau. joe biden with an edge which is traditionally the tipover county. tick back to 2016, hillary clinton won it. joe biden has a bigger lead there. if there's 11% of washoe left to come in, does that go to joe biden? what kind of vote is coming in is just as important as where that vote is coming in. >> it's 5:27. 5:30 in the morning here on the east coast. 2 in the morning there. let's work the phones a little bit and see if we can get more information on what's happening in nevada because, look, all of

these states that are in play matter but we need to know this or the rest of the analysis falls by the way side. we've run out of information, which means we've run out of analysis. don, we're going to make some calls and see if we can get an official to give us guidance and when but they're getting thin and when? >> probably going to get hangups because they're working hard, chris. hope we don't get hangups but this is nuts. i'm going to get you to folks who can talk about it better than i can. andrew yang, s.e. cupp and john avlon. you look nervous. >> it was a tough night for math. it's a tough night for democrats. i spent the night talking to half a dozen congressional candidates. they were strong, inspired candidates and they lost. they lost in many cases by much wider margins than they could ever have foreseen.

you're seeing over performance very consistently in places like iowa, nebraska, houston, austin tharp supposed to be going purple. this is going to cast to me like a cloak over it. you expect congress to work with. it looks like republicans may expand their majority or at least keep a majority in the senate and maybe even gain a few seats in the house. >> this is what you do. why? >> well, i mean, look, first of all, let me say we've been talking about election week for a long while so i think everybody understands or should have understood that donald trump could look strongest right around this time of day. now to andrew's point, what the polling did not pick up is that trump is outperforming and that more voters came out, especially in a lot of these purple

districts. everyone has to keep their powder dry. this isn't over until everything is cast. in 2018 mid terms, democrats gains were a blue trickle. >> as the days came on it became a blue tsunami in the words of our own harry yen. i'm not saying that underlying denamm mick is true, but everyone needs to keep their powder dry as every vote is counted in the critical districts. i'll just point out, green bay which is in brown county, one of the things we're waiting for, the city announced they had 85% participation and their absentee ballots were 2-1 in person. that's the kind of thing we're waiting for. not saying it's not razor tight. it is. those are important facts as we wait for others to come in. >> i have a lot i want to ask you. listen. >> everywhere this race is close it is excruciatingly close and this was kind of always how it was going to be. those of us who felt chastened

by the 2016 polls and projections knew this was not going to be the landslide that team biden and other watchers predicted it could be. patience. you know, everyone in this room at this table was on an editorial call from cnn. cnn told us as we are reporting this to be patient. we've told viewers and voters to be patient. >> look different at different points of the night. >> this is going to be unpacked slowly. the fact that donald trump can't be patient, i mean, who expected that he could sit through this patiently, politely, obediently as the results came in? i mean, of course he wasn't going to. that doesn't mean that we should hyperventilate just yet. it's close. it was going to be. we have to let this play out. >> as this was playing out, what was the closest margin -- what's the narrow west margin you've seen? if you look at wisconsin, 8,000 -- let's just say around 8,000 votes that biden is in the

lead. nevada, 11,000 votes. >> uh-huh. >> even one vote ahead is a win. >> yeah. i said closest margin was 537. that magic number from the florida recount. and, man, was that, you know, a trauma regardless of how it -- you thought it ended up. that was a trauma to go through that. and that was over in november, by the way. that did not go on through january. this could take some time. we will not know the results today i don't believe. >> one second. i twoont ask -- >> because it is so close. >> i want to ask you one more thing. the president, he -- at the end he really went out and just -- he did four or five rallies in one day. go state to state to state. do you think that the -- obviously the pollsters, and this may be an obvious question, just that we haven't found a way, meaning all of us in the news business and polling, to quantify what the rallies, what those rallies do or did for this

president? >> there's been a lot of dissecting of polls over the past four years and there are a number of problems that we can't seem to get around. one is waiting. waiting -- weighting. weighting issues. the methodology calling people on land line phones. >> i don't have one. >> who answer their phones. i don't remember the last time i answered this phone. and so we're trying to figure it out and how the rallies are reflected in the polls is yet another thing. again, i want to caution against calling the death of polling just yet. this isn't over. it could end up looking a little bit more like the polls did. >> i don't disagree with you on that. i'm just saying what happened towards the end, him getting out there and rallying people to go to the polls day of. i don't know if the polls figured out or the pollsters know how to quantify. >> we talk about that, he's just speaking to his bubble.

he's just speaking to his people. so that might not really have an effect on the rest, but as we're seeing in some of these -- >> the pandemic cast a different -- >> absolutely. absolutely. that's why it's really hard to parse it out. >> there was polling suggesting that some of the rallies were actually alienating folks because they thought it was dangerous and disrespectful. >> exactly. >> s.e. made the point there's been a lot of sort of forensics into polling and what went wrong in 2016. clearly not enough because -- because all the polling we've heard is consistently outside the margin of error. a lot of swing states. there's always some noise, but what we see is clearly this is going to be tighter. again, in 2018 when all the votes were counted, it validated a lot of the polling. that's why everyone has to keep their powder dry. >> you saw turnout spike around the country even in places he didn't rally and so i think one of the things that surprised me was you thought higher turnout

would favor voters who were coming out because they were animated against trump. turns out he had much deeper reservoirs of support all over the country. when you talk about florida, 537 votes, the specter that's hanging over us is that al gore actually conceded because he felt like that was better for the country. it's hard to imagine donald trump conceding over 500, 1,000, 10,000 votes. this is a scenario that many democrats were trying to avoid by having a cleaner path to victory than something that's going to take place over a kwlum of days. i want to reiterate, that things would change. sometimes it's show more support for the president. sometimes it's show more support for the vice president. that's exactly how it's playing out. before democrats were saying, oh, my gosh, i'm really, really,

really concerned even though they still are. then wisconsin came back into play, nevada. still it's very slim. then you still have michigan out there. we're following these battleground states. wisconsin, michigan, and nevada. it is all very close at this point but guess what? it can still change. still no clear winner at this point and it's 5:00 in the morning, almost 6:00 the day after election day. don't go anywhere. we'll be right back. - [narrator] with the ninja foodi power pitcher, you can crush ice, make smoothies, and do even more. chop salsas, spoon thick smoothie bowls, even power through dough, and never stall. the ninja foodi power pitcher. rethink what a blender can do.

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all right. we have another key race alert for you. if you're just waking up on the east coast, things are in play this morning. most notably, most recently nevada. this had been somewhat of an assumption for biden for most of the evening into this morning. don't look at the 6 electoral votes and shrug your shoulders. we're down to every electoral vote making a key difference in the analysis. right now the margin is only 9200 votes, okay?

85% of the vote is estimated in. there is a chunk in the biggest county obviously clark county home to las vegas. it is believed to be big for democrats in general. supposed to be a 10-point margin they want there. they don't have one. 49.4. 48.6. we're watching it. the way the rest of the vote that is outstanding comes in, what kind of vote it is, can completely change the picture this morning for the presidential election. next key race alert for you, we've been watching wisconsin and michigan. obviously michigan is still a big question mark. we'll get to why in a secretary. wisconsin has been where the game is afoot this morning in the early morning hours. electoral votes, 10. 7300 votes it's come down again. it was at 90 something hundred. 9,000 something. 49.2, 49.0. 89% of the vote is estimated. milwaukee has come in. that is a democrat stronghold.

so what about the rest of the areas and the mail-in vote? what is the breakdown in percentage? we don't know. the answer will make all the difference. takes us to michigan. 16 electoral votes. 200,000 ahead. now here just dropped a little bit there, 207,000, 4,000 votes shift. 51.4. 46.8. 79% of the vote estimated in. different than wisconsin. why? the democratic strongholds are not in in michigan. the remaining vote there a big x factor. let's go to the wall with phil mattingly. nevada and pennsylvania, they will receive votes until the 9th and 10th. nevada will accept mail-in votes until the 9th and 10th. this is what they want their rule to be. it will matter. pennsylvania, not talking about them right now, but we will, and

they are going to count ballots that come in postmarked by election day to the 9th, friday. that will matter. okay. state of play. nevada or wisconsin, what do you want? >> i want to start at the top. the shift in nevada is important for a number of reasons and i want to explain why. keep an eye on the pathways. we'll keep dipping in. no question about it. i'll break all of that down for you. let's go to a pathway. you presume alaska goes to president trump. you presume maine ends up going to vice president biden. one electoral vote. we don't know where that's going to end up right now. you say north carolina. it's narrowed. >> trump. >> give it to trump to play the game here. arizona right now leaning towards biden based on where things stand. throughout the course of the night because joe biden has held a lead and a pretty decent lead in the state of nevada, we've

given him the state of nevada as we try to game out how things will go. if you have this set right now with georgia, pennsylvania, michigan, wisconsin, the four states that haven't been decided, joe biden's pathway, leading wisconsin, give him wisconsin. give him pennsylvania? >> no. give him michigan. give him michigan instead of pennsylvania. i'll tell you why in a second. >> yup. >> right at 270. here's why i say that. that's why that x factor of that electorate in maine will become interesting. pennsylvania is going to be the biggest test of the mail-in vote ratio disparity. >> right. >> that is a yawning lead that the president has in pennsylvania. >> that's big. >> not only do you have to have a huge outstanding vote in pennsylvania, but it has to break in phenomenal fashion for joe biden. >> yeah. >> we haven't really seen that in the other vote pickups that

we've been seeing with mail-in vote. we saw it in milwaukee, but not the way you'd need to see it in pennsylvania. >> let's go in there. we'll get back to that in a second. i'll explain the importance of nevada. the expectation is it's clark, it's mail. that's supposed to break. here's the corollary to pennsylvania as it currently stands right now, and it would be milwaukee county, right? it would be milwaukee county. >> made a big difference. >> we saw it come in. it's the reason this state is currently blue. narrowly blue. 7,331 votes. 89% reporting. it was when milwaukee county came in that this shifted. in fact, i can pull that up right now. you go back to -- it said 95% reporting there but the clerk told us on the phone not too long ago, they are all in. >> yeah. >> the margin grew tremendously. the top line for biden grew tremendously and i want to give you the corollary here in pennsylvania. i'm not saying this is going to make up 677,000 votes.

that's a huge vote total. however, take a look at where there's big democratic vote outstanding. allegheny county, only 76% reporting. likely to get bigger. >> 510,000 or so votes there. 30% would be like 150,000 votes? >> right. expect the margin to crow. this was hillary clinton's margin. might not match but expect it to grow. if it's heavily mail, it grow more. the broader county, the big counties are democratic counties. this went to hillary clinton by 21 points. joe biden with a big lead right now. this currently red is a democratic county. it will likely when mail comes in flip over to joe biden. the point here that i'm trying to make is the corollary in pennsylvania, what democrats are saying, why they have hope, why they believe there's a pathway even though they believe it's 667,000 votes.

it's more milwaukee county where they have to hope it's all vote by mail. so there's a lot of democratic vote outstanding. that does not necessarily mean pennsylvania is on the path to flipping. one place where it does seem like there is a better, quicker, easier pathway to democrats is the state of michigan. look, we've talked about wayne county a ton. huge county. still 52% outstanding. 18% of the population lives here, votes here. that will be big when it comes in. there's a lot that's still outstanding here. what i want to point out is the other big democratic stronghold. we talk about wisconsin. milwaukee county was the only blue county still out here. you can go into ingham county. breaks big. only 79%. kalamazoo, this breaks towards democrats. only 87%. 200,000 votes which donald trump leads by now is not small. is not small. when you have wayne, when you have ingham, kalamazoo.

these are democratic counties. the vote will come in democratic, likely come in mail. that will skew even more democratic, based on what we've seen over the course of the night. michigan, now donald trump up by 200,000 votes. michigan democrats feel more comfortable because they have pathways that appear to be more clear. that said, you saw it throughout the course of the night there are variables we don't know or understand and that 200,000 votes when donald trump won the state by just over 10,000 in 2016, you'd much rather be the guy with 200,000 than not but what i'm saying is the outstanding vote, there are more democratic strongholds that are outstanding. that will drop. >> right. >> the question is does it drop enough? does he flip it? as that vote comes in. >> the answer was never to cheat the count, okay? of course that's tempting. of course the president is about hyperbole and every other mild word you want to put on it because it's election day.

if you are left, right, reasonable, you want the win to be solid, okay? that's what we need in this country. no question. somebody's got to win and that's it. you suck it up and we have to find a way forward. let's do this. let's take a quick break and then this analysis is making the state of play in the senate all the more important now. so we will give you an update on where that stands right after this. - [announcer] meet the ninja foodi air fry oven. make family-sized meals fast. and because it's a ninja foodi, it can do things no other oven can, like flip away. the ninja foodi air fry oven, the oven that crisps and flips away.

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welcome and thank you for staying with our continued coverage of election day here in america. it is so close, and that's why the counting must be respected and continued. in fact, the race for president is so close, so open. the race for senate actually comes into much sharper focus here. let's go to boris sanchez with the state of play on what's happening on the senate side. what do we know, my friend? >> reporter: hey, chris. the big question going into this election is whether democrats would be able to capitalize on

one of the most advantageous maps they've ever had for taking control of the senate. right now things do not appear to be trending in their direction. let's take a look at the balance of power. with one pickup, republicans holding 47 senate seats, democrats with one pickup and two inld pdependents that caucu with them. we'll get to the races in just a second. let's talk about the pickups. for democrats, the one they have so far, former two-term governor john hickenlooper defeats cory gardner. i also want to look at alabama. this bolsters republican's chances of holding onto the senate because the former auburn football coach tommy tuberville won over jeff sessions. let's take a look at where republicans held on to seats where they kept in montana.

steve daines overcoming an onslaught of fundraising by democrats. he defeats former governor of montana, steve bullock. not being competitive at all, joni ernst in iowa very closely tied her re-election efforts to president trump and winds up paying off. she defeats theresa greenfield who vast ly outfunded her. jamie harrison, a record-breaking fundraiser. tonight lindsey graham literally said you wasted your money. he wins re-election in the state of south carolina and it wasn't very close. let's look at where things stand for the races that are still being fought over. firstarizona. mark kelly, he's leading incumbent martha mcsally by

176,000 votes with 82% of the vote in. democrats have to be happy about that, but i'll show you why the math still doesn't add up favorably for them just a second. here is the most expensive race in senate history. more than $240 million spent in north carolina. it's not paying off for democrats. tom tillis, the incumbent, leading. he leads by a comfortable 96,000 plus vote margin. let's take a look at georgia. this race also was supposed to be really competitive according to polling. doesn't look that way. david perdue, he skipped the last debate to rally with president trump. looks like it's working out in his favor. 91% of the vote in. the key in this race is he is .8 over that 50% threshold so he could potentially avoid a runoff not like what we saw in that other special race, special

senate election in georgia. that one going to a runoff on january 5th. let's pivot to maine, a state that could potentially be in play for democrats even though susan collins has the about 6 point advantage over the speaker of the maine house of representatives sara gideon, there's a special rule in maine. they get to rank their choice of candidate. if nobody crosses the 50% threshold in maine, it becomes a ranked choice. the math could change and gideon has a shot. the numbers overall are not trending in democrats' favor. let's take a look at michigan real quick. this is a state, aside from alabama, this is the only other state that republicans felt they could nab a blue seat. right now john james, a favorite of president trump's, darling of conservative media, he's leading incumbent gary peters by about 247,000 votes. 78% of the vote in. of course, we know that a lot of

that early voting that tends to favor democrats at least in this election has yet to be counted in michigan. so we're waiting to see if that may tip the results of this race. i know i just gave you a ton of numbers, chris, but these are the most important numbers when it comes to control of the senate. right now only one democrat is leading in races where republicans hold senate seats. the magic number they would need to take control of the senate is 4. so if you're mitch mcconnell tonight, you're probably having breakfast soon enough, maybe pouring a little bit of that champaign into the orange juice, chris. >> maybe. maybe. maybe he is or maybe he's seeing what the rest of us is, which is this country is divided. we have big problems and the only solution is going to be found in one another. we've got to get back to what we all share and what we all want solutions to because we've never been more vulnerable than we've made ourselves right now.

boris, thank you very much for that. thank you for staying on the numbers. when you get something that we need to get out there, let me know. i'll come right to you. of course we didn't see this. the polls, the whatever. we're learning things about this country once again. we always do in every election. the idea that they've never had as good a map on the left to take the senate in recent history. fair point? >> i don't know. i wouldn't necessarily characterize it that way. certainly we thought they were going to do very well in the senate, right? they were favored to take control. it was closer than the presidential rate. how much does that seem to be reflecting the presidential races? in michigan you see gary peters, the democrat, trailing the same as joe biden. we'll have to see what happens when the vote by mail comes in. at in which pretty much all the senate races went the way the

presidential races went. >> all right. so, let's keep working on it. let's keep grinding out what the numbers are here. that's what the system demands. and that's what democracy demands. now, as we continue to wait, i want to welcome you to 6:00 in the morning here on the east. a lot of you are waking up right now and a lot has happened overnight. a lot has changed, but we are still in the thick of a very heated contest. so good morning to you. hello again on the west coast. i am chris cuomo. you see don lemon with me on this wednesday morning. 6:00 a.m., 3:00 a.m. out west. we do not have a winner yet in this presidential race. but it's a damned good thing we didn't stop counting, because things have changed that benefit this president and that will not benefit this president. despite trump claiming premature victory, which he promised he wouldn't do, we have continued to count, because