presidential votes are being counted into the night in some kilo cases as this cliffhanger election keeps getting closer and closer. i'm wolf blitzer, we're waiting to see if former vice president joe biden takes the lead in georgia after moving into a virtual tie with the president in the state trump must win. and just moments ago biden cut deeper into trump's lead in pennsylvania, another battleground state the president needs to stay in the game. we're also watching those contests along with the races in arizona and nevada. as biden aims for wins that would simply lock in a white house victory. get this, he's only 17 electoral votes shy of the 270 needed to become president-elect. trump trailing the 213, is launching desperate and very dangerous new attacks on the vote-counting process at the heart of our democracy.

let's get a key race alert. all right. let's start in georgia right now. look at this. the president's lead over biden has collapsed. it's only 1,775 votes. 1,775 votes separate trump and biden. 49.4%-49.4%. 16 electoral votes at play, at stake right now in georgia. oh, so close. in pennsylvania where there's 20 electoral votes and 95% of the estimated vote is in, 49.6% for trump, 49.2% for biden. trump is ahead by only 26,000-plus votes right now. that vote, john king, has collapsed over and over again. it's gone from a few hundred thousand now down to just 26,000 or so. let's start in georgia right now. update our viewers. >> it's simply remarkable, and, again, this has been a methodical march for joe biden

to cut into donald trump's lead if georgia, once over 300,000 votes. again, as we wait, we know, we know for a fact that there are still votes out right nehere in clayton county and may get them in the next hour or so. the executive there says they're trying hard to get the remaining votes done as soon as possible in clayton county. >> actually, john, let me interrupt for a moment. pamela brown has new information on where the vote is. >> absolutely, we're getting an update from the secretary of state in georgia. here's where we are. 14,098 votes are still out. we're talking about clayton. look at this number. 4,355 votes is what they still have to get through and look at gwinnett, 4,800. the context of this is these are heavily democratic areas. you spoke to the clerk in clayton. they're continuing to update throughout tonight. we could be finding out more very soon. >> very interesting, john, 14,097 outstanding votes. and look at how close it is. >> right. 4,800 of them right here in

gwinnett county. joe biden getting 58%. joe biden needs, i believe, 57% is the threshold for joe biden to catch up and pass. as we've been counting votes throughout the evening today, he's consistently getting more than 70% of these mail-in ballots in these counties. even in the republican counties. he's getting higher numbers in the democratic county. so, you see 48 votes here in gwinnett county. going to move over here, cobb county, pull this one out here, look at the list. 700 votes in cobb county where the former vice president is getting 57% of the vote, but, again, in the mail-in ballots he's exceeding even that. pam just mentioned, we talked to the executive earlier, this is clayton county. down here. the number in clayton county, 4 4,355 ballots. again, they've been coming in disproportionately democratic. i want to pull out and show down here, not all the counties are voting democrat. this is taylor county down here. look at the number, 456 ballots to be counted here. it tells you if you watch this, the president is going to come out on top here.

that's simply not what we've been seeing. we'll count those votes. if they're for the president, they'll get counted, obviously. in the republican counties, the ma mail-in ballots are coming from republicans who live there. we're waiting for those in taylor county there. another county here in central georgia. lawrence county has almost 1,800. at first glance you think that will help the president's math. maybe it will. we'll count them when they come in. consistently, again, because election day ballots are counted, how most republicans voted. democrats opted to use the mail-in, right? the election day counting is already done. they're counting mail-in ballots. we've seen consistently even in ruby red republican counties what we're getting today are democratic votes. joe biden even though he's getting 35%, you take the whole county, the mail-in ballots consistently getting high 60s, 70s, some even republican counties, higher than that. so when you look at that overall number, more than 14,000 votes to be counted. a 1,775-vote lead right now for

the president of the united states. joe biden has consistently been getting 60%, 70%, or more as we go county throughvotes. he needs 57% to catch up and pass the president. again, unless something dramatic changes from what's been happening hour after hour after hour today, joe biden is on a trajectory to pass the president as soon as more votes come in. doesn't mean it's over. really close. there are recount rules, provisional ballots, military ballots still to be counted. when we were here tuesday night election day into wednesday morning, the president of the united states had a 343,000-vote lead. somewhere in that ballpark. over 300,000. he thought this was inevitable, that he would carry georgia again. but, again, they're counting votes. on tuesday they counted the election-day vote. we go wednesday into thursday, they're counting the mail-in ballots. it's perfectly fair, perfectly logical and perfect math is what's happening today. and, again, to the point you made earlier, the republican governor, republican secretary of state, just counting votes. they're doing their jobs.

they're setting their partisan hats aside and counting votes. >> totally understandable during this coronavirus pandemic, a lot of people didn't want to have to wait in long lines on election day. they wanted to mail in their ballots or drop them off in a drop box. because that was simply safer. especially older americans. people with underlying health conditions. look what's going on with the coronavirus pandemic. and as a result, so many people decided to use the mail-in system. >> right. a combination of the more access to voting through the mail-in voting and intensity in the election. look, both parties, voters in both parties wanted to participate. 73 million. 73.7 million votes for joe biden. 69.6 million votes for president trump. voters in both parties wanted to participate in this election. more democrats, you're right, took advantage of early voting and mail-in voting. republicans turned out disproportionately on election day. high againintensity in this ele which is why as we go through the counts we should be celebrating increased turnout. we should be patient and let

people count votes. we should not be as happened in the white house briefing room today attacking people with who are doing the building blocks, you know, the nuts and bomlts o the -- >> the president, a blunder, don't trust the mail-in ballots, go show up and vote. a lot of the democrats didn't trust what the president was saying. >> i pulled this up to see, at this point in the night we're waiting. sol of t the west coast states, nevada and arizona, tend to be doing it on a schedule. pennsylvania, georgia, votes are coming in as you get them. again, in the commonwealth of pennsylvania, 3.2 million votes for each of these gentlemen as we count the votes right now and, again, georgia the lead was at one point above 300,000. it's now down below 2,000. that lead was about 600,000 tuesday into wednesday. it has been a steady decline throughout the night. exact same dynamic as we see in georgia. votes to come in, mail-in votes

counted today, disproprgs natalie democrtha disproportionately democratic. the vice presideagain ballots a counted here. we started the day at 80% in philadelphia. they're up to 91%. 521,000 votes for joe biden, turnout is up in this election. hillary clinton got 4,085 votes -- will joe biden match hillary clinton's vote in philadelphia? would be 584. if it's close to that, that means maybe there's 50 or 60,000 votes there. maybe even more. to be counted in the city of philadelphia. i had a note earlier telling me how many they thought were left there. let me see if i can find. we still think in philadelphia, the votes we had -- just in philadelphia, there are more than enough votes to overcome the 26,000 lead. doesn't mean they all come in for joe biden but they have

consistently throughout the day 80% or higher. >> remind our viewers, pennsylvania, georgia, potentially both are about to flip in biden's favor right now, but remind our viewers why they're both so important for trump. >> well, we can do that two ways. number one, if joe biden wins that, he's the next president of the united states. he's at 253 electoral votes, pennsylvania has 20. do the simple math at home. 253 plus 20 gets you to 273. that would be a game over. if joe biden can do that, number one, he would put together the blue wall again. pennsylvania, michigan, wisconsin, and he would show that the democratic party is beginning to change the map in the sunbelt states. georgia, hillary clinton tried, came up short, about 3 1/2-point race 4 years ago. the democrats have long wanted to do that. that would be a victory for the democratic party. again, more sunbelt in the southwest, in arizona and nevada, the former vice president is leading right now. he could get in excess of 300 electoral votes. that's why it matters to him. if you look at the president's math right now, he needs, if he wants to get to 270, he needs

both of those. if he loses georgia, wins that, he can get to 269. which would be a tie. 269-269. get a tie. this is the dream scenario for political reporters you hear every four years. it might happen some day. we'll see. it's possible. but if you think about joe biden leading out there, leading out there, it's most unlikely. i'm not raising it to cause any great drama. if the president of the united states loses that, the best he could do is 269. and so these are -- to get 270, the president needs both of these and as we speak, his lead is shrinking. >> 269-269 goes to the new house of representatives. one vote for each state delegation. that would be dramatic, indeed. anderson, over to you. >> wolf, john, thanks very much. as we're watching the votes continue to be counted, and vice president biden's deficit, well, getting closer and closer to overtaking president trump in pennsylvania, as well as in georgia, we're starting to hear

more from other republican leaders. we've been wondering after the president's remarks what some would be saying. lindsey graham was on sean hannity's program on fox. he said that there's the process of -- process of observing an election has been violated, he said philadelphia elections are as crooked as a snake, you're talking about a lot of dead people voting, he said nevada people are not legal residents who are voting. he claims arizona's been run well because he likes the governor and trusts the governor. that is, of course, a state where president trump's deficit is actually narrowing and he's getting a little closer to vice president biden. biden's in the lead right now. says i don't trust philadelphia, i don't trust nevada, i stand with president trump, he stood with us. >> well, there are two different kinds of republicans we're hearing from on this. one is the lindsey graham, i'm all in, i'm totally all in. so is ted cruz tonight on "hannity." he said, we've seen the last few days is partisan political

lawless, we're seeing this pattern in philadelphia, they're not allowing election observers in, et cetera, et cetera. >> interesting, they're not talking about nevada. lindsey graham isn't talking about nevada because there's a republican governor -- excuse me, not nevada, georgia, because there's a republican governor there. >> right, they're all kind of in on the philadelphia thing, and these guys i would say that there's more comments like that from josh hawley. desantis. these are people who might want to be president. desantis runs sometime, you want to keep donald trump on your team. but then there are the preponderance of elected republicans who are saying this kind of stuff like count every legal vote cast. i would include the vice president in that camp, by the way, because that's what he's saying. and that's what a lot of congressional republicans are saying, trying to kind of walk both sides of this, take trump out of it. and just say, okay, count every legal vote. without getting specific about i support what the president is

saying and you need to pursue these particular legal actions without, again, like lindsey graham, giving any evidence -- >> also. >> -- whatsoever. >> steve bannon has now been permanently suspended from twitter because steve bannon on his own program said that -- he suggested thursday morning that dr. fauci and fbi director christopher wray, their heads should be put on spikes on the gates of the white house in a second trump administration. >> well, there you are. >> as you can imagine, i've been hearing a little bit from friends in the republican world, and, you know, they're sending me lots of videos and other testimonials suggesting that there are -- there's, quote, widespread fraud and particularly point to michigan, wisconsin, and pennsylvania. and as i said when, right after the president's speech, if there are things to be investigated, the president has every right

and in my mind should investigate those things. that's why he's deploying lawyers. you know, that's why lindsey graham's giving him $500,000 so they can go out and track these things down. with social media, there is an endless stream of rumors as well as potentially legitimate accusations of improper activity and they should be pursued. but as you said, anderson, you have to provide the evidence and my concern with what the president said was he didn't provide the evidence and said the things he said. now, he may have, again, being a trump whisperer here, he may have known those things in his own mind. i think it's important before you make that accusation, you track them down, find out if they're valid and pursue them. so i think what i'm hearing from the trump folks is, you know, give us some time, we don't -- we can't dump it all out there now because we haven't had time to investigate, give us some time to investigate it, you know, let this thing play out a

little bit. you know, if we're right, we'll prove it, if we're not right, we'll move on. >> they don't want to dump it all out. president of the united states stood at a podium and he made -- >> i agree. >> and he said that there were examples of widespread fraud. and you're saying they need more time to investigate it. so he makes the allegations and then they go and investigate whether the allegations are true? >> i think -- >> that's the wrong order. >> backwards. >> i want to talk about this from a different perspective. there's a lot of fear, there's been fear, on the part of democrats that if things got to a certain point that the republicans would just start doing extraordinary things, taking extraordinary measures. one of the things that lindsey graham seemed to wind kabe indi is the pennsylvania legislature should just set aside the vote and appoint their own electors and send their own electors to congress. that is shocking. i actually did a ted talk about

this very scenario. there's a group called hold the line that's been talking about this. choo choosedemocracy.us. this is a dangerous moment tonight in america. when you have elected leaders, the senator, lindsey graham, one of the best-known senators in america, suggesting that without evidence the votes of the people of pennsylvania should be set aside. the legislators should send their own electors to congress. that starts to sound like a coup against democracy, starts to sound like a coup against the will of the voters. choosedemocracy.us has been warning about this. hold the line has become a guidebook that people have been passing around about this. we're getting into very scary territory. there is no evidence of significant fraud happening in philadelphia or any place else, and by the way, i just want to point out, republicans, you don't have to do this. i just -- can we just talk about politics for a second, you already are going to have the

senate. mcconnell is going to stop biden from doing almost anything. you got the supreme court. you got your tax cuts. you got most of the governorships and state -- don't burn down the house to give donald trump a better feeling about himself. this doesn't make any sense. you're going to have people in the streets this weekend on the left and the right, if the elected leaders in the republican party keep going down this dangerous path. i hope choosedemocracy.us people are wrong. >> i'll make the case, van, that it's more dangerous if they don't pursue these claims. >> oh, i don't mind this going to court. court is fine. >> i think it's important. >> court is fine. >> i think it's really important. >> senator, let -- i want you to respond to what i'm actually saying. >> okay. >> i am saying that if you want to go to court with real evidence, please do. >> okay. >> that is appropriate. that's what happens with -- >> i know. i've heard -- >> that's not the only solution -- >> some people are saying that it's dangerous for the trump -- >> no, no, no. al gore did that. >> some people have said that. some are saying it's dangerous

to go to court. it's not dangerous. it's the right thing to do. >> we agree on that. do we agree on this? it would be dangerous for the state legislature, chommonwealt legislature to set aside the vote voof the american people a go to congress over their heads? >> i'm not watching fox. i suspect lindsey graham said -- >> said everything should be on the table. >> i'm sure he didn't say that unless there was proof that it was a fraudulent election to the scale they can't redo the election. i'm sure he's saying there's an alternative to, quote, redoing the election. >> he was asked, should they invalidate this if that i don't allow observers in, which as you know they are allowing observers in. >> yes. >> so they're not talking about not allowing observers in when they are. okay. and then graham, as anderson said, said everything should be on the table then went on and on about philadelphia elections being crooked. this is the chairman of the judiciary committee. >> he can't do that. >> in the senate.

he's a constitutional -- he's a lawyer, he's an attorney. why is he doing this? i mean, we've asked that question about lindsey graham a lot. >> emotions are running very, very high right now. >> but don junior was complaining about lindsey graham a bunch of hours ago. where was he? suddenly lindsey graham is out there. >> cost $500,000 for the president and calling for stuff that's scaring people. all of them, about philadelphia, by the way, i believe biden is doing pretty well, didn't he just win scranton? nobody's talking about scranton. didn't he flip erie? nobody's talking about erie. it's all about philadelphia, philadelphia. this stuff is dangerous. it's beneath the dignity of lindsey graham. lindsey graham knows better than to do this. i'm going to tell you, i want to be very, very clear. the left is on tender hooks right now. labor unions are getting ready for a general strike. i'm telling you, people are getting freaked out by the republican leadership saying stuff like this. it's a dangerous moment in america. back it up. let's go to court. you got something, bring it. stop making these kind of

threats. >> let me just say, first off, there's a democratic governor of pennsylvania, so not -- >> they don't trust any democrats. >> you can send two competing groups of electors to congress. if this happens in nevada, this is just not the way to do an election. let's just do the election and go to court. >> nancy pelosi sitting in congress -- this is not, first, it's not a credible threat, number one. number two, i don't think -- look, vi have a lot of friends n the pennsylvania legislateturur. i don't think they have -- >> a time like this, everybo everybody -- we all should think about this, is just, seems at times, tamp down rhetoric as opposed to throw gasoline on it on the left and the right. it would seem like -- >> again, i -- >> if you trust -- has good. >> i don't know what lindsey said. i'm not going to categorize. >> i put you in the tamping down rhetoric category, by the way. >> has nthat's not tamping down the rhetoric. if the campaign believes there's

fraud out there, all this evidence which i'm being thrown, they have every right to say it needs to be investigated and the trump folks have every right to go out there and from my perspective should be feeding it out there as much as they can to make sure that people understand that this is not just, you know, a witch trial. >> but it's, you know, lindsey graham clearly is -- this is i'm going to back donald trump because he backed me and sea hed i don't trust arizona as anderson was saying, don't trust philadelphia, don't trust what's going on in nevada. >> he said he trusts arizona. >> he does, sorry. >> even though he -- >> right, i trust arizona. it's late. so everything should be on the table. let's stand with president trump. >> yeah. >> he stood with us. >> how about standing up for the constitution -- >> exactly. >> how about standing up for america. how about standing down at this moment and allowing the process to work. >> yeah. >> yeah. agree. and georgia, for example, there's potentially 9,000 military ballots that could be sent in.

>> right. >> that can be a game changer. >> sure. according to the president, those votes should not be accepted. >> yeah, i hope not. >> and the president is saying don't accept the votes of service members -- >> no, this is -- >> -- overseas. >> he's okay with late ballots. he's okay in arizona. >> no, these are late ballots that are just going to pop up. they're just going to -- >> arizona -- >> people can still vote in the military. watching this. they can still send their ballots in for ten days i think in pennsylvania, no? >> i think axelrod is pointing us in the right direction. i think it's correct. let's stand with the constitution, let's stand with the american people. most people are not saying extreme things on either side. most people are waiting to see how this works out. most americans, again, we said over and over again, tonight the most beautiful thing, you have republicans and democrats, regular people, in gymnasiums standing shoulder to shoulder counting and watching together. >> yes. >> so that's -- everybody needs to support those american, let's

get together behind those americans. there are cameras in these places, there's people in these places, and trust this process. if somebody's got something real, don't throw it out there as a bomb. go into court. let's stay together as a cub dri. >> i agree with you. that's why i've been for three days complaining about what the secretary of state in pennsylvania did. not because i necessarily think it's going to be a huge impact on the election, although it might. given the size. because it creates the perception of -- not the perception, the reality -- that they're changing the rules of the game to help them. and the fact is that philadelphia didn't allow them in for two days. and so -- >> they did now. >> they let them hundreds of feet away. can't observe if you need binoculars. >> what you're saying is different from what the president is saying. the president is saying they're changing their votes and -- >> and, again -- >> almost as if he didn't -- >> we should also point out in that incident in philadelphia, and anything that was done improperly should -- that's idiotic and wrong and whoever

should be punished but they did go to court and that was reversed is my understanding. >> right, they had two days where they were counting ballots so that's -- >> there is a process for it and the process did rectify it. >> it did. it did. that's why lindsey said, hey, they counted all these ballots in the dark. >> by the way, this is is not exactly right. there was an extra set of observers that were held too far back. not like there were people who space aliens or only from one party behind a door someplace. there's a process there and there's extra stuff. i just want to point out -- >> no, i think when they're counting the ballots, that's the case when they're validating, canvassing. i think, again, i could be wrong on this, when they're counting ballots, just city employees in there counting. there's nobody counting. no republican and democrat watching them count. >> my point about it is this is the normal process. >> it is a normal process. >> it's a normal process and they wanted more observation and got more observation. >> they want legitimate observation. let's be honest. philadelphia was not being transparent.

with you didn't see them complain about any other county in the state. why? because the other counties said, yeah, come in, you can watch. philadelphia didn't. and what does that do? >> got to take a break. >> it raises suspicion. >> can i tell you why? in philadelphia, don't forget, you had these threats. don't forget, there's a liar level of concern about people coming in with guns. all these poll watchers. so there was -- yes, listen -- >> you live in your world, i live in my world. >> people aren't walking in with guns. >> you live in your world, i live in my world. the idea you'd have a bunch of people coming in there was very scary in philadelphia. that's part of it. again, you say -- >> work for the city of philadelphia, that's scary, too. >> this is not about the integrity of the system. okay? president has been saying for months before there was any voting or any evidence of anything that this was going to be a fraudulent process. he's been teeing this up. he stands up tonight, he makes charges. you know, then everybody says, well, now we're going to get the evidence. this is -- this is -- what's

happened is the american people are speaking and looks like they're saying that they are ready for change and the president doesn't want to accept that and lindsey graham apparently feels like he has a higher obligation -- >> yes. >> -- to the president of the united states. >> so we see -- >> one final point i'd -- >> wait a minute. we see the narrative now is being spun out on fox by -- by graham and cruz. and you see what it's going to turn into. this is the narrative, which is the election is being stolen. here's what happened. they didn't follow the rules. and donald trump would have won otherwise. when we know very well that we all expected the vote count to go this way because of republican legislatures and democratic legislatures who s d sasaid count the mail-in ballots later. >> razor-thin margin in georgia, a shrinking lead in pennsylvania. votes keep coming in and continue to be counted. we have a lot more as "election

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all right. we're watching what's going on in georgia. john king is at the magic wall. georgia, a lead for donald trump right now, it's shrunk. it went up a tiny little bit. >> it was 1,775. the president gained 30 points in the lead. we told you joe biden has been consistently cutting into. this is the first time in some time where the president gained votes. that's a very modest 30 votes and know most the other counties still to come in are expected to be democratic. we told you, we would tell you if the president stopped what had been a march. this may a pause. i want to show you what happened in forsythe county, the votes came in a short time ago. again, pretty modest. the president in a new install the, counting mail-in ballots. it's a net gain of 30 votes for the president. this is 49%, if you round up. 49% if you round up. this is 47%.

if you round up, 48.9% and 46.8%. again, we're going through this county by county. getting installment of votes they're counting. mail mail-in ballots sometimes come in small chunks. i it's 30 votes. people are counting votoe out there. in forforsythe, net gain of 30 the president. the trajectvy not good for the president. that's been very polite. >> take a look at pennsylvania right now, john, because the numbers keep shrinking for the president. look at this. trump is now leading by only 24,484. 95% of the vote is in. we're told this happened, the vote just shrunk for trump in delaware county. >> so in delaware county you're going to come down here, outside of philadelphia, and there you go, delaware county, we're up to 91%. so it's important, you just said we got new votes in delaware county. it's shrinking the president's lead and still have more votes to count from delaware county. >> let me give you the numbers.

>> sure. i want to bring this up. >> just came in from delaware county. >> wait one second. let me bring this up to you and fire away. >> biden got, take a look at this, 2,819. trump in delaware county got 0 984. 72.9% for biden. >> right. so this, again, consistently we've said throughout the day joe biden needed -- it started out earlier close to 70% then 67% of the votes. joe bided needed to catch up. he's consistently coming in above the metric he needs to continue the march toward erasing the president's lead. this is, again, consistently what we've seen. and it's just important, they're counting mail-in ballots now so in the overall vote in delaware county, democratic-leaning suburb of philadelphia, joe biden is getting 63% when you round up. the president, 37%. the mail-in ballots are d disproportionately democratic so you see he's outpacing his margin countywide in these ballots they're counting today which are mail-in ballots.

overall totals include the election-day total. we're just seeing this consistently which is why you get these margins and they're higher. biden has been consistently overperforming his full vote. the total vote. in the mail-in ballots that they're counting today. there's yet another example, and, again, we've seen this consistently, and you pull out, now it's 24,000. we know, we know that there are well in excess of that still to be counted just in philadelphia. >> yeah. >> just in philadelphia. we also know that there are, i believe, 36,000 was the number, to be counted starting tomorrow morning at 9:00 a.m. in the east here in allegheny county, pittsburgh, in the areas around there. so there are more than enough votes outstanding. some 165,000 or so. maybe a little higher than that. the state website says 175,000 as of a while ago. we just reported a few more votes. somewhere in the ballpark of 165,000, 175,000 votes. the president has a 24,000-vote lead. 24,484 to be exact. consistently throughout the day, joe biden has been cutting into this in chunks, sizable chunks to tell you exactly where the

trajectory -- >> there are still tens of thousands of votes outstanding in pennsylvania right now. 95% of the vote is in. 5% is still out. let's check in with jake, dana and abby. >> thanks, wolf. boy, what a nail biter as i said before, and now votes are coming in that are allowing a net positive gain of votes for donald trump in georgia. and this really just gets to the bottom line of what we're witnessing here which is democracy. the american people voted. tens of millions of them. and their votes are being counted. and dana bash, it s i mean, it's just astounding to watch people on the trump team try to claim as if the counting of votes, the normal democratic function, that there's some malfeasance when there is no evidence of malfeasance and, in fact, the counting inle some cases, certainly in arizona, also in georgia as we're seeing is helping donald trump. we just saw the donald trump extend his lead in georgia because of the count. >> that's right. i mean, now you're even despite the fact that because donald

trump jr. shamed some of the president's allies into going on fox and saying things that really don't have any evidence to back them up, others like kellyanne conway and chris christie have gone on tv and said, if the trump campaign believes that there really is malfeasan malfeasance, show us the evidence, and we haven't seen any. what we have seen is people in each of these four states counting votes and election officials in each of the four states saying that they see no evidence of fraud. >> democrats and republicans -- >> correct. >> -- observers in all of those rooms. >> this is all just so incredibly shortsighted on the part of the president and of his allies on capitol hill and elsewhere. the president is in a situation where the best thing that he can do is just wait for the votes to be counted because anything other than that is a complete hail mary pass that is highly unlikely to work. he has a lot of problems on this map right now, jake.

it's not just pennsylvania. it's not just georgia. yes, he's closing the gap in arizona, but he is trailing in nevada still. and he absolutely has to win in both pennsylvania and in georgia in order to have a chance at getting to 270 electoral votes. so it's not going to work to simply claim there is widespread fraud coast to coast and hope that the supreme court steps in in five states. that is not going to work. >> and -- >> and so i -- at the end of the day, yes, we need to wait for the votes to be counted, but the strategy makes no sense. it -- it is a strategic blunder on their part because this is not -- there's no argument to be made that in pennsylvania, georgia, arizona, and in nevada, there was so much fraud that the supreme court has to step in and hand this back to donald trump should he lose it fair and square. if that's what the votes -- >> right, there's no evidence of

that. and we are yet -- we are seeing some of the president's most obedient servants, lindsey graham, ted cruz, the house minority leader kevin mccarthy from california, go on tv and say things that are not true. say things that there's no evidence for. talk about electoral fraud. this is not accurate. this is not what is actually going on. the american people are having their votes counted. the last thing that needs to happen is for the republican party, which has enabled the very worst impulses of this president, so as to benefit from the policies they like, the last thing that needs to happen is for them to do this at the expense of the american people and our right to vote. our right to vote. my mom lives in philadelphia. she is in her late 70s. she does not want to get coronavirus. and she voted by mail. her ballot is among them. she's an american citizen. she gets to have it counted.

and the idea that republicans are helping to disenfranchise millions of americans is disgraceful. you know, in august 1974, 3 republican leaders went to the white house and told president nixon that the republican party was not going to stand by and they were not going to support him. nixon resigned the next day. those three republican leaders, two of them were from arizona and one of them was from pennsylvania. two of the four states that were wa waiting to hear from today. let the people, let the american people have they sar. president trump's leads are shrinking. everyone is on the edge of their seat. we're bringing it all to you as it happens. "election night in america" continues next. you're cawith fs and you get the biggest spot, and you swam in the river all day in the warm afternoon sun... that's pure gold.

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we continue to watch the votes being counted in a number of states throughout the country. it's been a fascinating night to say the least. david axelrod, for joe biden watching all this, i mean, tomorrow, what does he do? >> i think maybe he'll appear as he did again today in some form of fashion. first of all, let's -- i think that they know, both sides kind of know where this thing is and where it's going, and i think he's signaled very much that he's content to wait for the

process to play out. >> both teams -- i mean, lawyers are being assembled. >> oh, my gosh. i think lawyers have been -- this is not unexpected. what is happening right now is not unexpected because the president's been signaling the play for months. so i know bob bower, former white house counselor, senior adviser to the campaign, and their lawyers, they've been assembling reing legal resource months in anticipation of this kind of a tactic. i expect, they're in good shape there, but for biden, himself, i think he is carrying himself right now as a guy who is going to be president and he's trying to play that role. and reassure people and reassure people about the integrity of the process. >> so if georgia is called, you know, late tonight, tomorrow, pennsylvania is called tomorrow at some point and it's clear that joe biden will be the next

president, he then, what, begins assembling a team, assembling a transition team? >> he has a -- >> he has already has a transition -- >> i think all of these things have been in formulation. he's had people think about the transition for months. and as, you know, as we said earlier, this is no ordinary transition because of the, you know, you mentioned we're record covid cases. we don't know where that -- >> more than 120,000 today. >> yeah. i mean, there's plenty to think about and, you know, i think he's going to signal, i'm focused on what you guys are hiring me to do. and that's the right thing to do. >> and, you know, these people who have been with biden, in many cases for decades, have also been in the white house. they've -- you know, they've been in bogovernment. they worked with him when he was vice president. so they understand how government works. they understand their job that they need to do and they've been working on a transition for quite some time. biden is supersuperstitious.

he doesn't like to talk about that too much right now. even internally. but it's clear, that's what they're going to do. if he wins, if he says, okay, i have 270 votes, i do expect that he will come out and say that we've, you know, we've won. i don't expect him to start litigating ballot watchers in philadelphia, et cetera, et cetera, but i do think he will say that it was a fair election. and then, you know, you'll see what donald trump says. i do not expect donald trump to concede. that's the real question. >> well, i think we have some good news tonight. first of all, a lot of republicans did come out and we talked about the ones that take out, i think, in the negative way and threw some gasoline on the fire but a lot of republicans came out and said what the president said is not appropriate. i think that's very important. i also think the people trust

our institutions. you don't stand in line for five hours if you don't believe in something. you don't work as hard as people work in the middle of the pandemic to -- so the people trust our institutions. the politicians need to trust them, too. that's all. if the people -- if the politicians would just be as good in both parties as the american people, we're going to be okay. so, i just think we got to hang together, this thing is going to get worked out in the next 24, 48 hours, i hope, but i -- >> you think it will be -- you mean worked out in terms of votes? >> in terms of votes. there will be court and all that stuff. we should take encouragement from the american people, the people are on the whole good. we don't have unrest. we have some yahoos. in the politicians can trust the system as much as the people, we'll be all right. >> i just want to allay van's fears here a little bit. i just was communicating with the senate majority leader in pennsylvania, pennsylvania. >> oh. >> the state senate majority leader who says, "the p.a. election code says electors go to the popular vote winner.

the legislature has no ability to appoint electors." >> good. >> so according to majority leader from the state senate -- >> good. >> -- that's not an option that lindsey can pursue. so, look, i think what we're seeing on -- is people, again, passionate. they put everything into this thing and, you know, what i'm hearing from a lot of folks are, well, you guys didn't get over the last election, you know, then came the russia investigation, all this stuff. you never considered it legitimate. and i said, well, you know, we complained about it because we thought it was a horrible thing that democrats were doing to try to invalidate donald trump. and they continued to go after him, you know, because they didn't think he was a legitimate president. do we want to keep this up? do we want to keep up every time we elect a president we're going to just -- >> right. >> by the way, i'm not saying they shouldn't. let me just repeat. they should follow the evidence and if they have legitimate claims, go to court. >> sure. >> roprosecute them. get them out there. >> i'll be with -- >> i'll be with you.

>> i'll be with you if they got real stuff. >> if they got real stuff, let's do it. but we can't -- i mean, at some point, and i think, if it's not next week, they don't need to find it tomorrow, all right, that's the other thing, let's give folks time to get their case together. to get the evidence. to do the work. and make their case. and then either make your case, and if you can't make the case, then at some point move on. and that's something i've said for a long time. and lots of republicans said the democrats never did in 2016. we can't -- we can't just repeat that again unless we have a reason not to. >> anderson, i just want to -- i mean, if i misunderstood your question, let me make clear, if -- if pennsylvania is called, certainly i think georgia is not going to be called for a while just because it's going to be very close. >> yeah. >> clear it's going to be very close and there are all kinds of other ballots that the are probably -- they're including

military ballots. >> right. >> provisional ballots. counted. but if pennsylvania -- >> the projected winner. >> -- has significant margin, that puts biden over the top. and he -- >> yeah. >> he -- he should, and i expect that he will declare himself the winner. and move on. and whatever the president does. that would be appropriate. and, you know, if it comes tomorrow, the next day, i expect we will see that. >> yeah. i thick nk he would thank the american people, go out there, thank your supporters and tell everyone you're a president for all of america which is what he has been doing. doesn't matter what donald trump says, really, he won't concede. we know that. if i were biden, i would just go on and proceed. >> there is one thing tomorrow that if you're a georgia voter, check your absentee ballot, if it was rejected for any reason, you can cure it as late as tomorrow, i understand. so, again, just normal stuff. >> now you're just pushing it,

van. >> in pennsylvania -- >> now you're just stirring the pot. >> pennsylvania says you cannot cure your ballot in pennsylvania, but calling you and telling you to cure, you're not allowed to do that. >> in georgia, you can. in other words, by the way, in every state, it's not just georgia, every state they're still counting votes. they're still doing this stuff. this is normal. i just think people, oh my god, this is so crazy. >> look at north carolina. i mean, north carolina -- >> north carolina still doing stuff. >> two days. >> the president hasn't mentioned that. >> exactly. the stakes that we're talking about are not the only states where people are still curing ballots. people are still counting. there's still legal stuff. this is just the normal process. and as long as we stay in the bounds of the normal process, including going to court when somebody does something bad, if they do, then that's fine p . it's when we go outside of it, you're whipping up people, might spro tester er protesters, armed people, go after the voters, we're in real trouble. let's stay away from that. let's trust the system. >> one thing on pennsylvania, i think, correct me if i'm wrong,

maim-in vo mail-in voting has not been used. we had over ten times more mail-in votes than we've ever had in the history of ours. >> right. that's another reason why this is different than normal procedures. same people -- many of the same people voted but voted in a different way. >> one of the things i said on cnn many, in times was i was very concerned about particularly the courts stepping in, changing the game, about how votes -- whether mail-in votes or change it because there's already a suspicion that the president has put forward and others that said, you know, there's going to be massive fraud. you combine that with late changes to the election system where there's going be more mistakes because they've never done it this way. >> in fairness, the reason it happened in the first place is because we're in the middle of -- >> so vicovid. i get that. just so you understand, that's not why pennsylvania did this. pennsylvania changed their election law in october of last year. so this mail-in provision, the

absentee ballot provision, was not because of covid. october of last year. and they changed it because they made a deal. they made a deal with the governor that we would allow more -- what they call non-excuse obscenity voting. >> absentee voting. anybody can apply for one in exchange for getting rid of the straight-line ballot. they had a little "r," could vote straight republican, straight democrat. you can't do that anymore. again, everybody thinks everybody cares about the president. if you're a state legislator, you care about yourself and your chamber. >> right. >> what they were doing, no offense to my good friends, i have a lot of good friends in the pennsylvania legislature, they were saying we don't want to be swept away by whatever the top of the ticket is, we want people to vote for us and have to vote for us individually because we want them to look at our name, say, oh, yeah, i know that guy. they were willing to trade what they thought was a good trade for them. not necessarily a good trade for the top of the ticket but a

great trade for them. >> here's my question. with why are the trump folks only finding fraud? or saying they found fraud in places where donald trump -- >> why would you look anywhere else? why would you spend resources? >> wait a minute. >> there's only so many resources. >> okay. let me finish. i'm sure that the democrats have seen things that they find questionable in states that they did not win, but you're not hearing a lot about that. >> because they're going to spend their resources defending what trump's doing. >> because they think they're winning with votes. that's why. >> or else they just -- there's just not a lot of fraud which has been the history of voting. >> that's true, too. >> cnn's election coverage continues right after this break. the new smart base from tempur-pedic responds to snoring automatically. so no hiding under your pillow. or opting for the couch. because it's our first system that detects snoring and automatically adjusts to help reduce it. your best sleep. all night. every night.

welcome back to cnn's breaking news coverage. "election night in america" continues. i'm chris cuomo along with don lemon. and this is it. >> yeah, this is it. >> this is the time that matters most. the margins have gotten very small. votes are coming in in what have developed to be the two key states, right, georgia and pennsylvania. we are watching them literally by the minute. >> yeah, i'm surprised you didn't say we are back because here we are for another long stretch. we're going to be here with you throughout the evening and

throughout the morning until this gets done. what a nail biter, chris. i mean, this really is a nail biter. you mentioned georgia, you mentioned pennsylvania. georgia's really on the brink. pennsylvania is on the brink. we have to keep watching the numbers. the final votes, tens of thousands of mail-in ballots, are being counted in both states right now. and you know what, it's not a done deal yet, but joe biden is closing in on the presidency. >> and, look, president trump tried today to turn what really has been a hall of fame performance by the electorate into a hall of shame. >> right. >> we'll deal with him later. again, we have to ignore the noise right now. if you have proof of allegations, go to court. anyo anything else is bs. what is the truth in action are the counts as they are taken in real time. so let's do that together. we'll be doing it as don said as long as they'll let us. so here's our first key race alert. all right. these are the two big ones. pennsylvania and georgia. again, let's start at the bottom this time.

all right? 99% of the estimated vote in georg georgia. 95% in pennsylvania. those two numbers are the most deceptive because in this particular race, for various reasons, small margins can make big differences, especially when we're as close as we are in both. pennsylvania, 22,000 votes separate the men right now. you see that, they're basically within the recount territory in both races. certainly in georgia. it's a dead tie. so, we expect votes in both of them, specifically, pennsylvania, around that philadelphia area, there's still a lot of votes that haven't been counted or at least announced. that's what joe biden is banking on. remember, pennsylvania because if biden wins pennsylvania, he becomes the next president of the united states. period. now, in georgia that is not true, but it really starts closing doors. so joe biden very close there. 1,805 votes separate the two men. donald trump needs it.

that has not been trending well for him. each dump that comes, that margin closes. however, that's not the end of the state of play. so, let's get over to the magic wall and bill mattingly. good to see you once again. pennsylvania, georgia, why in the context of how you get to 270? >> because for president trump, pennsylvania and georgia are everything. let's look at the map right now. as it currently stands. as you noted, 253 electoral votes for joe biden. 213 for president trump. this is what's in and what's outstanding. if it's colored in red, that means it's being called for president trump. if it's blue, that is now in joe biden's column. what we're waiting for right w now, a couple states that just for the sake of gaming this out, we'll go ahead and give to president trump. as it currently stands. north carolina, fairly static over the course of the last 48 hours. president trump about a 79,000-vote lead. we'll say for the sake of doing this that north carolina goes in his column. we'll do the same for alaska. usually takes a couple weeks to count. expect it to go republican. where does that leave things as it currently stands?noted, payi

attention to philadelphia and paying attention to georgia. out west in a second. why does this matter? well, if vice president biden wins pennsylvania, it's pretty simple. it's the ball game. it's all over. it's all over. as we watch it tighten and watched it tighten over the course of the last day or so, that's why everybody's so keen on that. >> and the quick reminder, because sometimes we forget what we learned in the beginning. 538 electoral votes. that's what there is. so there is no scenario, what if he gets over 270? so does he. can't happen. you can have 269-269. if we're anywhere close to that, we'll start discussing the intricacies of it, the constitution lays out a plan. so that's what we're looking for, who gets to 270 then it's done. continue, my friend. >> 269-269, people curl in the fetal position first then we start talking -- >> not you, though, you'll go long and strong to the end. >> that's the absolute truth. it's not just pennsylvania. president trump has to win pennsylvania. let's put pennsylvania in president trump's column. now say president trump goes out weft and wins arizona. right now joe biden is leading

in arizona. closed over the course of the last 24 hours. should see more returns come in later tonight or this morning. but say donald trump overtakes joe biden, that gets him to 262. take a look at nevada. right now vice president biden with a lead in what if president trump wins the state of nevada? that gets him to 268. what's left outstanding? maine 2. it is a single electoral vote. basically it's georgia. if joe biden wins georgia or pennsylvania, there is no path to 270 electoral votes for president trump. period, end of story. when we focus on these, this is why president trump cannot afford to lose pennsylvania or georgia. he loses one, there's no path to 270. >> another reason to focus on them. we are expecting change of play in both of those states on our watch so it's not that nevada and arizona don't matter.

it is that we have not been alerted to any significant dumps of ballots there. if there's a change we'll be on it. we look internally. thank you. you're right. what do we know? already joe biden has received more votes than anybody else ever. for president of the united states. why? because this is a national change moment that is going on. on both sides. we have not seen passions like this, a sense of purpose like this, money like this, organization like this, structure like this. so you got the most out of it. the biggest reason is you, your friends, family, people in the communities. you came out in a way that certainly defied my expectations and many experts. you blew away turnout models. huge rejection for donald trump. nobody has gotten the spanking he is getting in the general right now. so let's now getting interior into the race. pennsylvania and georgia. let's do the story to each of

how we got here. >> we'll start with pennsylvania because it's been so dramatic. pull this up. go into here. hit pennsylvania. what this tool is, our team put this together and it is brilliant. take a look at the clock right here. wednesday at midnight, this is where things stood. look at the lead. president trump 15 percentage point lead. >> and why? >> why? well, we have been talking about this. you need to keep this in mind as we go through this. on election night you saw certain states counted in person election day vote first. that trended heavily towards republicans. why? president trump won, his turnout operation is outstanding. right now it's joe biden who's gotten the most and then donald trump. still joe biden with a 4-million vote lead. mail-in ballots went heavily to

democrats. pennsylvania and michigan, wi wisconsin, they have similar rules therefore president trump ran up huge leads early in the night, did it in all of the midwest states and pennsylvania and you saw over the course of the next couple of days joe biden stats reeling it in, starts to catch up. >> it is what people explained early on as a red or blue mirage where because of the waves of votes, we have had absentee mail-in ballots but not at this level. i like to look at it as waves but he had the first run in this game and now it's about joe biden's run. >> this was not a surprise. we knew this was coming. it is because of how each state's rules lay out how they count ballots. lead for president trump. start moving along.

all of a sudden wednesday 10:00 a.m., 5 889,000 votes. wednesday 3:00 p.m., joe biden starts to catch up. 435,000 votes. wednesday 11:00 p.m., 138,000 votes. thursday 3:00 p.m., 108,000 votes. now under 100,000. 609 vote lead for president trump. thursday 8:00 p.m., 63,725 votes. where is it right now? tight. 22,576 votes. that is the kurpcurrent lead. here's the reality on the ground as votes are continuing to be counted and reported pretty regularly. why has joe biden cut into a 500,000-plus vote lead and brought it to this level? is it going to continue? the answer to the latter is, yes. right now it looks like it will

continue. why? where the vote is outstanding. philadelphia. 91% reporting. 9% outstanding. tens of thousands of ballots counted. look at the margin. the expectation based on what we have seen over the course of the night is the outstanding ballots will come in at a higher mar jn for joe biden. we have seen this over the course of the night in philadelphia but not just philadelphia. move over into delaware county. joe biden strong performance. you push out into the suburbs of philadelphia. they have a stronghold the last several years. this vote will come in heavy for joe biden. you can move up and down the collar counties. still 29,000 votes out in allegheny county likely to go heavy biden. here's the reality.

we don't know how the vote is exactly going to come in. we don't know, perhaps -- >> i can help with that. >> do it. >> we have a guest right now to understand the flow perfectly right now, allegheny county. we have a councilwoman in allegheny county where there's a pause on counting ballots until 5:00 p.m. thank you very much for joining us. >> i'm glad to be here. thank you for having me. >> let's start at the againing. why is the counting on hold right now? >> so little over a month ago there were a third party mailing company we used to send out the mail-in ballots in this election cycle and sent out 29,000 incorrect ballots to voters so because of that we agreed to wait until 5:00 p.m. on friday which is the deadline for the receipt of mail-in ballots in

pennsylvania to make sure we receive the corrected ballots for the incorrect ballots and only one vote counted for each person. tomorrow is -- tomorrow morning is the day for the return board process, that's where the additional votes around 6,000 to 7,000 on top of the 29,000 will start to be processed, those are the ones not able to be scanned, a variety of issues with to make sure that every single eligible vote is counted in this election. >> so i'm assuming by your answer that this didn't catch you by surprise, planning for this stoppage all along. is that a yes? >> yes. we knew all along that all eyes were going to be on pennsylvania. we were fortunate by wednesday night we had all of the non-issue mail-in ballots counted. today was used for administrative work and then tomorrow the process will start again. >> this is irregularity, this is

intrigue. i want to dispel that if it's not factual. >> correct. >> can you help us with numbers? how many votes about do you believe are still yet to be counted? and what have you seen in terms of the most recent sense of percentage breakdown between mr. biden and mr. trump? >> we have a little over 35,000 mail-in votes yet to be counted with the 29,000 fixed ballots on top of the ballots that had any issues and were not scanned and we have somewhere in the area of 10,000 to 15,000 provincial ballots, won't know a final number on that until tomorrow and pushing close to 50,000 votes in allegheny outstanding. >> deal with the 35,000 or so. what have you seen in terms of breakdown of how biden and trump are doing by percentage?

>> biden is putting in around 78% of mail-in votes. >> does that square with what you were figuring? i'm here with phil mattingly and he is running the magic wall. is that a percentage? >> how we have been breaking this down is see -- i'll give you a sense of things. if joe biden is trailing by 22,000 votes and given the vote pool we believe is outstanding, what is the margin to hit to surpass president trump when it all comes in and we have been looking between 60% and 62% and just can you repeat again? you said 76%? >> 78%. >> 78%. >> on average. >> is there anything else that you want the audience to know, councilwoman? anything else that's material information or the status in pennsylvania? >> just that it's so important that folks are patient. we knew we weren't going to have a result on election night. we knew that in-person votes which were going to be reported

first would heavily favor the republican candidates and the mail-in votes to come in the days after heavily favor the democratic candidates and something we were preparing for, all what we were trying to make sure everybody was patient with the results because it's important no races are called until every single eligible vote is counted. there are down ballot races that are often decided by a couple dozen or a hundred votes and not just the presidency but the down ballot races we are following closely. >> absolutely. any suggestion has to when you will be reporting the count? >> the final count? i think your guess is as good as mine. we are asking everybody to be patient because it is so much more important to have accurate, secure election results that are beyond reproach than quick. >> agreed. >> let's see how it's tallied. >> are you talking about the overall county or the state in

do you think the county is unknown or a deliverable date of tomorrow, the next day? >> i would love to be able to give you that date but your guess is as good as mine. again, it depends on how the return board process goes and coming down to the provincial ballots. there's so much in the air at this point and just diligently working to make sure every eligible vote is counted. >> thank you for the time especially in this crunch time. i appreciate it. good luck to you. i wish you much accuracy. >> thank you. >> okay. interesting. lets's bring in harry here. analyst par excellence. what you were told, they don't know when they're going to deliver it. doesn't help with the anxiety level in the country. what did you make of those finds? >> look. there's different counts in there but if you just use that 35,000 and you were essentially going to have a little bit more of a 50-point margin, you get probably trump's margin

statewide cut down by less than 20,000 votes and obviously he leads by more than that so far in the state but it would significantly cut down the margin. just yuusing that 35k number yo get down to a very, very close race. >> your take? >> doing the math in my head, if joe biden were to sit at the 75% level at 36,000, that would essentially net out to about 28,000 votes for joe biden. and i think the point that when you do the math, sorry for the bad hand writing. >> didn't go to catholic school? >> i did but i used pencils and pens and not a magic wall. >> unacceptable. continue. >> allegheny is not the biggest batch of votes outstanding. and if allegheny county, home of pittsburgh, comes in with 36,000

votes, 75% what the councilwoman was saying, that nets roughly 28,000 votes. that alone, that alone makes up the margin right now that president trump currently holds so i think what this -- >> don't forget to add in trump's percentage of the vote, right? that would essentially get trump -- if just 28,000 for biden -- >> essentially almost even. >> that's right. maybe biden down by a few thousand. >> you have 7,000 to make up the 36,000 and very close and it's not a big dump to wait for. >> exactly. >> very helpful and appreciate it. let's do the same thing with georgia. how did we get here? what are we waiting on? the counting stopped there. stay with cnn.

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iced chai. pad thai. baked pie. pork chop. soda pop. scallop. kebobs. soursop. hot pot. dumpling. chicken wing. peking. onion ring. we are america's kitchen. doordash. every flavor welcome. a key race alert. the margin in georgia razor thin. so let's take a look. here it is. 16 electoral votes. the president must win georgia. the spacing there between the two candidates stands at 1,805 votes. we'll take you through it in a few moments. it's a dead heat. 49.4% each. when you look at the big

population centers that tend to break blue there's more than enough vote to change this state and for good. will it happen? we'll see. over to you, don lemon, on the senate side. >> we have to talk about georgia. razor thin. these are really close. thank you, chris. the democrats hope for taking the senate slim but there's a narrow pathway and it runs right through georgia of course. let's get to boris sanchez. >> good morning, don. lets's take a look at the balance of power to illustrate the needle that democrats have to thread to take control of the u.s. senate. effectively a stalemate. 47 seats for democrats. a pickup in colorado. 47 seats for republicans. a pickup in alabama. six races to be decided. overall a disappointing election for democrats in terms of senate races. they didn't really win in as many races as they felt they

could compete in. one that may go their direction, arizona. mark kelly with a comfortable lead over martha mcsally, the republican incumbent. about 103,000-vote advantage with 89% of the vote in. she has yet to concede. cnn is inching closer to calling the race. still a lot of votes to be counted as you know in arizona, don. this is where georgia comes in. if democrats pick up that seat, take a look, david perdue right now 101,000 votes ahead of jon ossoff with an advantage and here's the deal. unless you get a majority of votes it goes to a runoff and he is .1% shy of that majority. so this race could potentially lead to a runoff if the 10,000 or so votes that are still outstanding in georgia hold this position. i know you will talk to the

former journalist in a moment and important conversation to have with him and the other special snathd election in georgia, as well. there the reverend is about 329,000 votes ahead of leff ler but again nobody's close to 50%. it will get to a runoff january 5th. right now with arizona there is one democrat leading in a race held by an incumbent republican, the magic number for democrats to take control of the u.s. senate at this point is four. again, the needle that democrats have to thread, if joe biden is elected president that means that kamala harris as vice president would hold the tiebreaking vote in the nat so that number four would be three. you have arizona and the two special elections in georgia that could very much change the dynamic and allow democrats to hold control of the u.s. senate.

don? >> boris, of course, because 2020 this is where we are. everything is hanging in the balance. thank you so much. as he mentioned let's bring in jon ossoff. hello to you. there's a twist, a turn, i don't know how you have the stomach for this. you run for office but listen more power to you, brother. good morning. before we get to this race, your race, give me a reaction to the presidential race in georgia. what do you think? >> last i checked it is within a couple thousand votes and i think the outstanding ballots yet to be reported have a prospect of putting vice president biden over the edge. regardless, it is clear that georgia is the most competitive state in the country. and now will host two u.s. senate runoffs. it is not just me, it is also reverend warnock and will

determine the balance of power in the u.s. senate so georgia is the top battleground state in the country and what we have seen here in georgia is just an absolutely unprecedented turnout from voters, all races and backgrounds and age groups fed up with the management of the pandemic, fed up with politicians trying to take away their health care. >> the numbers are 49.4. you are at 49.9. i hate to keep saying a razor's edge. if the numbers hold you are going to a runoff. how do you plan to get it done this time if this happens? >> i feel a little bit low on sleep but full of hope and optimism for what's possible in georgia this year.

really one of the most inspiring things i have ever seen, the determination and tenacity with which georgians with stood long lines to get out and cast the ballots and demand better and what i humbly offer the people of this state is leadership in a pandemic, informed by medical science and representation guided by the needs of working families and small businesses and not just corporate lobbyists in washington. we are building a multiracial coalition in this state building on the work that stacey abrams and others have done and i believe that history right now is unfolding in georgia with two senate races, two senate runoffs in a single state and as you pulled up on screen the presidential hanging in the balance here. >> do you think that not having -- if it indeed goes that

way, not having an incumbent president on the ticket, do you think that that would be helpful in a runoff situation on a runoff ballot? >> well, i think that what georgia voters have demonstrated in again unprecedented numbers is that the failure of our present leadership to deliver timely economic relief to working families and small businesses, to deliver a response to this pandemic that's rooted in science and which is honest with the american people about threats to our health is totally unacceptable and my opponent senator david perdue opposed a round of stimulus checks to workers in georgia. he led the fight to limit unemployment. he told us covid-19 was no deadlier than the ordinary flu

all the while -- >> but, jon -- >> buying vaccine stocks. he is on the ballot. >> before we run out of time, he is at 49.9%. ahead of you. my point is, is that many times probably most of the time when people go in and if they're republican or democrat, they vote the top of the ticket and all the way across. do you think it will be helpful to you in a runoff if the incumbent is not on the ticket? because then people may not feel only ga obligated to vote party but maybe for principle or what you stand for rather than just party? >> i don't think georgia voters ever just rote the party line but will judge us as individuals and senator perdue's totally failed leadership and his corrupt representation is why it appears a majority of georgia voters have rejected his request for a second term and will turn

the voters out again and even greater numbers in january 5th to send ethical and decent representation to washington. >> all right. jon ossoff joining us from georgia. it is a tough time for everyone but you are in this fight. stay strong. >> appreciate it, don. thank you. >> much more of our coverage straight ahead. we are counting, watching especially georgia, arizona, pennsylvania. we may get some numbers in a short while here and there you go. 253 electoral votes for the former vice president. current president 213. don't go anywhere. we'll be right back.

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we expected changes on our watch and they are occurring. votes changing in realtime so time for a key race alert. pennsylvania 20 electoral votes. this is a story about a dwindling lead down. trump over biden, 5% of the vote still out and there are more than enough votes to make a difference in this race. georgia, 16 electoral votes. a dead heat there. recount could be likely. 1,800 votes separate the two men and as we were discussing earlier there are a lot of votes yet to come. arizona 11 electoral votes.

47,000-vote spread for joe biden in the lead but it's been dropping steadily. still a lot of votes to come in arizona. 10% of the vote is still outstanding and the president just picked up some votes. we'll go to the magic wall. i'm sorry. the vice president, former vice president joe biden picked up a few votes. we'll show you what happened in the state of play but first nevada, six electoral votes. a lot of vote coming in there. not expected to get new information. joe biden actually got a few more votes to pad a very slim lead. the electoral map. 253 to 213. the states that are not colored in are everything, especially nevada, arizona and really georgia and of course pennsylvania. so let's go to phil at the magic wall and talk to him about arizona. biden got a couple of votes here, something just changed. >> i think big pick your first

and you made a key point here. in pennsylvania and georgia, the vice president has just slowly caught up to president trump in both of those states of the course of the last 24 hours, the inverse in arizona and i think the reason why is it's more of how the vote comes in, what the composition of that vote is and arizona is different because mail-in ballots in arizona depending on when they were sent in, dropped off have a different composition than pennsylvania and the midwest leaning so heavily democratic. that's not the case in arizona. joe biden now up by 47,000 votes and dropped in the last 24 hours. what our eyes are mostly on is maricopa county. 60% of the voting population, the be all, end all to pay attention to. 100,000 votes still outstanding in pima county and the last 24

hours president trump in every batch of votes that dropped gained a couple thousand and more than that on vice president biden in pima county. why is this important? flash back to 2016. president trump won pima county. the largest part in the state. doesn't guarantee it but pretty good shape. >> maricopa county. >> i keep saying pima. >> i don't know. >> that's in a second. >> we have to now. >> but the point being here is expecting more vote to come in here and how it comes through is very interesting. the expectation from the biden campaign is that president trump who's going to have decent margins in the first couple of batches that have come through it would be even and then joe biden hangs on to the lead and that so far we haven't seen. the other county to keep an eye on, could be problematic, pima

is more of a democratic stronghold. typically goes democratic. joe biden with a comfortable margin and we have seen drops from pima and president trump picked up vote and not unlike other states where say in pennsylvania in a red county that president trump is winning very handily, if a certain kind of vote comes in and that's leaning heavily democratic doesn't mean that joe biden can't pick up votes there. same with pima. just because it looks like it's a democratic county doesn't mean there aren't republicans voetin there. donald trump has picked up tens of thousands of votes. the big question remains for the state of arizona is what's coming in? what's the composition of what's coming in? right now there's a pathway for

president trump depending on the composition of what's coming in. the biden campaign says they think they'll be fine. >> what just happened here? >> we saw i believe we had a drop in pima. say it again. oh, flagstaff came in. more of a democratic county. not as big but democratic county. joe biden 61%. donald trump 35%. we talk about maricopa because it's the largest population center but there's still some vote outstanding. various parts of this state right now. >> what did the vote in flagstaff do to the overall? >> i believe it took it up for joe. no, down for joe biden by 1,000 votes. >> so remains consistent that the last few dumps in arizona have helped president trump. >> even beyond just maricopa. even in democratic strongholdses which underscores the point that

the composition of what's coming in is far more important than the composition and we talked about this this early this morning. the campaigns have a sense of the universe and matching them up with the registration and they have a sense of what's out there. the trump campaign maintain they have a pathway. the biden campaign believe they will be okay in the state of arizona. >> it was actually yesterday that we were talking about it because today was really tomorrow. you know? that's how it works in the reality right now. in nevada, one of the frequently asked questions is, how come we haven't heard more about this state. the secretary of state promised, one of the only state officials saying this is when you would learn more. >> clark county reported this morning and gave joe biden good news. >> wasn't a full -- >> wasn't a full batch and take

it up with the secretary of state. we have seen in georgia fulton county went all the way through and others are counting. the secretary of state in georgia said they won't report until tomorrow morning but various counties are still working. in nevada they have made clear to report on a schedule. maricopa on a schedule. >> who wins this state is a coefficient of what? >> clark county. >> they will decide the state? >> home of las vegas, biggest county in the state. 72% of the voters are here. democratic stronghold and this is where democrats try to set up a firewall. look at all this red. they know when the rural counties come in they come in heavily republican. they try to build an accusation to withstand a rush from up here and want it to be 10%. right now it is not there.

however, the top line down to 7,000 yesterday looking through this. the new batch of votes got joe biden up to act 11,000. that's where the vast majority of the outstanding vote is, vote by bail. >> all right. thank you very much. let's go to the panel. nia, do you believe that what we're seeing up here is highly suggestive that joe biden is going to find his way to 270 first? >> yeah. i think that has been where this thing is headed. if you look at what's happening in georgia, the ability to shrink the vote to what is it now? 1,000 votes or so. and more to come in -- >> georgia? >> yes. >> while you were answering the question joe biden picked up 96 in georgia. that's how small the increments are getting but every bit

matters. that is under 1,000 votes. >> this is the dream that democrats have had for decades now, turning a state like georgia blue. in 2018 something like 30% african-american electorate and we know that those are the votes that are coming in, the mail-in ballots from atlanta and so it does look like biden is doing what he was hired to do which is keep part of the obama coalition with african-americans, latinos, some fraying there, expands the coalition more to white voters in some rural counties. you see him doing better in states like pennsylvania and then get the suburban voters, as well. i think we are probably looking at a scenario where he is the next president. >> this has become a profound study in contrast, the election, look at the coalition he putt together. 73 million votes. the most votes ever for a president in an american election. yeah. second place is donald trump in

this election right now who really blossomed his own coalition, 69 million plus votes at this count. going to go up. how do you explain it? >> donald trump is a very polarizing figure. either love him or hate him and drove the turnout in this election and just so happens a few million people don't like donald trump than like him but you asked the question to nia whether or not -- what direction is this heading in? i think it's clear. we need to count the votes but joe biden gained in every single batch from pennsylvania. we know he is doing well in that mail vote even in the red counties and still mail vote to go in philadelphia and a lot in delaware county right to the west of it and so to me it is a matter of counting the votes and i think it is clear where this is going, chris. >> what is the net effect of the president's slander of our democracy today? do you think it slowed states down? do you think it had his friend in georgia have -- to slow the

count down there? it is not over even once we get a presumptive vote of 270 votes for the opponent? >> i think it had two effects. one effect was i think that the courts saw what he did and the judges seeing what he did in the recklessness and the courts, he is losing right now in these cases that he has across the country. they've won some concessions where they get a little bit closer but it is really losing -- >> with observers and monitors. >> 100%. >> it is not hard to -- i don't know why they had to get a court. the inside is that they would have gotten settlements with more -- >> they wanted the court. >> to make it seem more nefarious. people who don't know donald trump as a man before being president he sees litigation as a tactic. the percentage of winning lawsuits is very, very small. the percentage of getting sued

is higher than successful lawsuit. you can look that up. be you t the effect he had today, he set the table that he will not accept anything other than victory. >> but this is the problem. this is something that i have grown accustomed to with donald trump. i no longer become -- it is putting you in a foul mood. what is upsetting is when you see others who know better who are agreeing with him and just fanning the flames and we saw the likes of ted cruz, even nikki haley came out. this is a 2024 play on their part. this is what's percebest for th >> you think that graham and haley saying anything supportive of that slander from the president today is going to help them once he's out? >> i think they think somebody

is going to inherit donald trump's coalition of voters. i think they will be surprised to find that donald trump isn't going to cede that to anyone else except named trump and there's vying for donald trump's coalition whether it's the folks like nikki haley, a pompeo, tom kotd on the, they have a vision for 2024 but i think they're going to find out that donald trump himself at least will flirt with the idea of running and he wants to keep his arms around that coalition. i will say to his rhetoric today immoral, incredibly anti-democratic and incredibly dangerous. he is inciting violence possibly among his followers who look to him for what they should say and do. this idea that they should converge on the cities which again he is pointing to black cities, sort of racially inflammatory, too.

dangerous. i hope laumw enforcement is looking at the possibility of violence in some cities because that is what he is cueing up. >> absolutely. because of what we discuss right now let's bring in rick hason. in terms of what you are seeing the types of lawsuits coming out and what the president even nakedly suggested ordinarily here, he did the opposite. now, we have politicians looking around for a crime to fit, you know, what he said he wanted to see, in this election. but what we've seen so far, and what we believe he could support his allegations with. where does that leave us? >> well, most of what he's asking for, as you said, is trying to get more observers. is trying to make small changes to the process. there are a couple of suits where there's allegations of fraud. there was one in georgia, where the judge threw it out, and said you've given me no proof. there's now a new lawsuit in

nevada, where the claim is that there were 3,000 people that illegally voted but, again, no proof. so everything seems to be just an effort to kind of throw it against the wall and see what sticks. there is not a single suit i have seen that has the potential to change the outcome of the election which is what i think most people care about, right now. >> it seems, his goal is to, somehow, invalidate mail-in ballots, unless they're for him, which is preposterous. but he keeps mentioning scotus. what kind of issue would it have to be for them to grant immediate review, right now? >> well, there's one case that's been up to the supreme court twice. it involves ballots arriving in pennsylvania between november 3rd and november 6th. the u.s. supreme court hinted that, maybe, they shouldn't be. it sounds like it's not very large number of ballots.

so even if he went to the supreme court and he won on that issue, it wouldn't likely be enough to make a difference in pennsylvania. and if he is behind in count when all the ballots are counted, which is certainly possible the way things are going, he may want those ballots counted. everything else that he is trying would have to go through the normal process in starting in a federal or state court and work its way up. very, very unlikely that something like that is going to happen because he's presented no significant issues of fraud or anything else that would of the election. we want the voters, not the courts, to be deciding who our leaders are. >> you know, the cnn audience is unusually savvy when it comes to following litigation. it is not too much in the weeds for them to take a step down the road to what's happening in pennsylvania. so, the basic issue, to set the table for you, rick, is that the republicans are saying the legislature in pennsylvania didn't make up this rule for the three extra days. a court did.

so, it's not really fair. if it's not coming through the legislature, then this is judicial activism and it makes it different than all the other states that have extended periods for different types of mail-in allocation. so, what could be the different variables that could change the state of play in pennsylvania? >> well, i don't think that one would change the state of play because there's not enough ballots at stake and there really is nothing else. all of the other lawsuits were about, you know, small issues about can you get more observers in? which seemed to be more about delaying the count. trying to delay announcement that biden has potentially won the state. i really don't see anything that could potentially change the outcome in pennsylvania. at least from what's been filed in court, so far. >> but, what would be the supreme court finding? they invalidated minnesota from having an extended period. wisconsin from having an extended period. what would be the rationale in pennsylvania? >> well, when the cases were coming up, out of federal court, those cases were where the

supreme court was saying federal courts don't have the power to change state rules, even in the midst of a pandemic. it's really up to the states to decide how to balance the risks of -- to health and voting and all of that. the one coming out of pennsylvania and the one coming out of north carolina, which came right after pennsylvania, got less attention, it's the idea that the state legislature gets to set the rules for conducting federal elections. and when the state supreme court or state agency steps in and makes changes to those rules, it's usurping the power of the legislature. it's the theory the justices in bush versus gore embraced. so, it's not the kind of thing that's going to be easy, even at the supreme correlaurt because these people already voted. after the supreme court had two opportunities to overturn this, you really would be disenfranchising whichever voters relied on what the supreme court did earlier. >> rick, thank you very much. stand by in case something comes

up. harry. >> i was going to say i completely agree with rick. if you listen to secretary of state there, some of the counties are receiving zero ballots in pennsylvania. even some of the large ones are only receiving about 500 per day. based on the math that i'm looking at and, obviously, there's still ballots to be counted, right? but joe biden, in my opinion, is probably going to be up tens of thousands of votes at the end of all this. >> right. the sad truth is this whole issue was unnecessary. if these legislatures had worked and thought about what they were doing, they would have equipped their states and their systems to count the votes early. and they would have never had to worry about this. they didn't prepare and now we got a problem. however, we have good news as well. pennsylvania, georgia, arizona, things are changing, on our watch. let's get after it. stay with cnn.

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welcome back to election night in america, continued. i'm chris cuomo, along with don lemon. and things are changing on our watch. >> it's so serious, he has to use my entire name, tonight. it's not just d lemon, it's don lemon. >> i'll mix it up.

>> but, listen. sometimes, as we just saw, as you just showed us in the last hour, sometimes, the votes come in, in big numbers. sometimes, they come in, in small numbers. but they all, all, matter right now. joe biden breaking the electoral map. president trump's lead over joe biden shrinking as final votes are tabulated and -- and -- they're even neck and neck, in georgia. so, trump's former, big lead, chris, is completely evaporating, now. >> true. and this is a new standard. in 2016, we saw tight races. now, we just had a move in georgia. joe biden gained 92 votes. so now, the spread is under a thousand votes between the two men. that's how small the increments are. but that little increment could make the difference, between which of these two candidates makes it to 270 electoral votes. i'll check back with you in a second, d. let's take a look at the latest

results with a key, race alert. pennsylvania, 49.5 to 49.2. 22,000 votes separate the two capp candidates. that 95% vote in estimate is desen deceptive. there are more than enough votes to make a difference in this race. we'll see. georgia. 49.4 to 49.4. now, with those votes that came in, is it still 1,709? all right. i misspoke earlier. we're still over a thousand votes but it's going down each time. in a dead heat. arizona. we just saw a little bit of a change here in the last hour. 47,000 votes separate the two men. donald trump has been over-performing in the later batches of votes and is catching up to joe biden. nevada, six electoral votes. 89% of the vote in, there. they have been counting slowly,

deliberately. we are not getting as much information. there was a little that came out of arizona this morning that gabe gave biden a little lead but still vulnerable. it's all about how and who gets to 270, though, and that's what the white spaces on the map, the uncolored boxes, represent. nevada and arizona. that's one story. but it's really about pennsylvania and georgia. so let's go to phil mattingly at the magic wall. nobody will explain it better to us. to get to 270, last night, we were all about these two. nevada and arizona. what's going to happen? now, the focus has shifted to georgia and pennsylvania. georgia is obviously up for grabs. wasn't, last night. pennsylvania, now, very much the story. >> shifting, very much, towards joe biden. not are therthere, yet. but these are two kind of live balls. you got pennsylvania. you got georgia. you just noted georgia had a little vote come in. i think about 118 total votes.

but why are we so focused on besides the fact we're getting votes? because donald trump has to win both. he has to win pennsylvania and georgia. but he has to win pennsylvania and georgia. let me show you why. let's say, for sake of argument. north carolina, where donald trump has held a pretty solid lead. that stays in donald trump's column. we can give him alaska as well. expect that to go republican. it traditionally does. we'll -- we'll -- so you mention he's been closing in arizona. perhaps, he goes over the top. wait and see. we'll go ahead and give him nevada as well. that's stayed very tight. biden campaign thinks they're in a pretty good spot there with what's coming in. we' we'll give maine, too. looks like trump will be able to win that. where does that leave things? 253-249. if joe biden wins pennsylvania, it's over. >> it's over. >> donald trump can win everything else open on the map,

if biden wins pennsylvania, it's over. what if donald trump wins pennsylvania? well, joe biden's catching up in georgia right now. 269-269. >> so, before we all grab our collective throats and say, oh, no, let's go down a constitutional, you know, death tunnel. maine could wind up -- did we give it to him, already? >> we have not called maine, too. >> right. but i am saying for a hypothetical right now, did we give it to him? >> i already gave it to him. >> so, if that happens, 269-269 is not as crazy. usually, it's a purely academic exercise when we talk about how the race could end up there. statistically, it's not a crazy notion. i mean, it's one of, like, five permutations of what could happen. >> it's not impossibility. the biggest thing would have to line up for president trump is pennsylvania. i don't think there is any question about that. a lot of things would have to line up. >> a lot of rules there and they benefit the president, also. but just in terms of the crazy zone.

not crazy, north carolina. not crazy, arizona. a little against the odds, right now, but could happen there. i don't know anything about the maine second so you tell me about that. but then, him winning pennsylvania. i know, we are talking who wins pennsylvania, who wins georgia, there's tossup in both right now. >> look. you're making a key point in that there's still vote, they're still counting. none of those states have been called and so it's a fair game. here is another distinct possibility as well. joe biden takes pennsylvania. joe biden seems to be on the verge of taking georgia. joe biden leads in arizona. joe biden leads in nevada. just as likely is joe biden ending up with 306 electoral votes. all of these things are on the table right now. the biggest takeaway, at this moment in time, this morning, the one state, and the one state that's moving pretty quickly right now, pennsylvania ends this race if it goes to joe biden. >> it's the only one and done. the closest thing to it, after that, is if biden holds onto

arizona and nevada. >> right. he's at 270 electoral votes. but let's dig into pennsylvania, just real quick. then, we'll go down to georgia. the big question. let's take a look over the course of the last 24 hours. how things have gone. because it has been dramatic. take a look, wednesday, midnight. 548,000-vote lead. you're asking, how is that possible, over the course of a 24-hour period? we've been through this a lot and i think it's just crucial to understand. pennsylvania counts election-day vote, first. president trump and his campaign blew out turnout expectations for them on election-day vote. that is why they took a very large lead on election-day vote. that lead has been whittled away. why? because democrats voted heavily vote by mail. heavily, vote by mail. we have seen president trump's margins, even in his stronghold counties, drop throughout the course of the last 24 hours. it's gone just like this.

548,000 at midnight. 10:00 a.m., up a little bit. move to 3:00 p.m. on wednesday, all of a sudden, you see it start to drop. that's when the mail-in votes started to be counted. it was already in on time. it started to be counted. then, down to 146,000. then, down to 108,000. you can just watch this play out, over the course of the last 24 hours and it leads us right here. and why it's important that we are at this point right now is because it's outstanding. you go into the biggest county in the state. go into the city of philadelphia, look at that margin. 521,000 votes. there are tens of thousands of votes to come in here. these votes are breaking heavily towards vice president biden. it's not just philadelphia. you can move down here. delaware county. look at the margin. still, about 9% outstanding. the bottom line is southeast pennsylvania which, if you just look at it, democratic stronghold. it's all blue.

there's still vote to come in. >> and the councilwoman came on, one, she said they had about 35,000 ballots and a couple other categories they are dealing with as well. but then, the key piece of information, she said that in allegheny county which is, obviously, you know, you have pittsburgh in there. that joe biden is getting about 78% of the batches as they've been coming in. now, that's much higher. i checked with phil in real time because the numbers that you guys have been using that he needed to win was in the 60s, wasn't it? >> 62, 63%. >> she said we have to wait. you know, we' are going to take our time on this. we're not going to rush it so you have something to report but if he does anywhere near that, he's in good shape. >> and that underscores the margins for mail-in votes. look at the margin, overall, right now. what the councilwoman was saying it's coming in at 78% with the mail-in vote.

we have seen that consistently. it's going even bigger. >> right. the reason is because mail-in vote, there's a much bigger democrat preference. why? because the way the republicans pushed to get out the vote on election day, the democrats pushed on early voting. and remember, we don't talk about it, these days. but talk about popping numbers, we're popping cases. we're over 100,000 cases, now, in the pandemic and the pandemic, what's going to keep people home. this was the best option for them. that's why you see this disproportionate level of mail-in voting that exceeds the overall strength in a county. so, a big change of play today for how phil gets to recognize what's happening here and the rest of us just experienced this election, was what the president tried to do. the president hit us with his worst and lowest shot. the collective insult to all of us, that all of this, this is all fake. everything that happens that's not in his favor is fake, is cheated, is wrong. and he's heard stories but he didn't have a piece of proof about anything. it was a bomb but it was the bomb, seemed like, not too many

people noticed in his party. ryan owens is following the trump campaign. ryan nobles. sorry. ryan nobles is following the trump campaign. he's in washington, d.c. ryan, i've only talked to you a hundred times. of course, i'm not going to get your name right. that is called mental exhaustion. but tell me this, my friend. how is the president's perfidy, his faith about dmemocracy, playing in house? is anybody happy about it? >> yeah, chris, you act like you haven't been up for 75 hours, and going. no worries about that. you make the point about what the president's posture is with all of this, and he seems prepared to go through a lengthy, long-term battle, regardless of how this vote ends up ending when -- when all the counting is settled. and that means lengthy court battles. he is, also, talking about challenging and -- and offering up recounts, in certain states, like wisconsin, among others. and the question is, is he going to be able to sustain something like that, without the support

of republicans across the board? we've seen, to a certain extent, a consolidation of support behind the president within the campaign infrastructure, itself. the campaign aides, the president's children, for instance. they seem to be ready and -- and geared up for a long-term fight. but, what i'm learning is that republicans, outside of that campaign bubble, aren't necessarily enthused with a long-term struggle here. one senior, republican aide that i talked to that works on capitol hill in the senate office told me many capitol hill republicans have cracked. that they're just ready for this to be over. and one of the things that they are not looking forward to is finding ways to support the president, when he continues to push out these baseless accusations of potential fraud. and even some of these republicans, chris, i should point out, are open to the idea that there might be some level of fraud, in some cases in certain states. and they would like to see that looked into and explored and examined, on a certain level. but very few of them believe

that it could alter the ultimate outcome in this race. i talked to a longtime-gop operative who said fraud exists, it happens. it usually only ever has an impact in local races, and it's never at the scale where it can overturn a presidential election. and there are many republicans who believe that's the case here, too. that, this fraud the president continues to throw out there without any kind of evidence just doesn't exist. and this is important, chris, on a broad scale because not only is the president going to need this support. going to need these republicans behind him just for the optics of it. but these recounts aren't cheap. wisconsin being an example of this. it requires the campaign, itself, to fund the recount. i will make the point, chris, a lot of these republicans are frustrated that they are not given any specific message as to how they should be responding to

the count slowly trickling away from the president. they're not getting any communication from the campaign. there is no specific messaging and a senate gop aide told me it's very difficult for these republican leaders to support the president, when they don't even know what they should be saying. so right now, there is just a lot of disarray here in republican circles. they're still holding out hope that there are enough votes out there for the president to win. but they're not looking for a long-term, lengthy battle, after the fact, once all the votes have been counted. chris. >> ryan nobles, thank you very much. i tell you, it is a sad day when republican or democrat has to think about what the right thing is to say when the president tries to undercut the entire democracy. what a weird place we are in. it can only get better or so we think. let's bring in alexander field right now. police are investigating an attack plot in philadelphia. why there? that's where votes are being

counted in a big way. cnn's alexander field is in pittsburgh with this story. thanks for jumping on this for us. >> absolutely, chris. look, this is alarming on a lot of levels but here's what we know, at this point. it does come from our affiliate wpvi. police were acting on an alleged tip. so many people hard at work, through the day, through the night, counting votes for all of us. the tip apparently concerned a group of people arriving in a hummer. we know that authorities have taken at least one person into custody, possibly in connection with that investigation. a weapon has been recovered. they've, also, recovered the hummer, it seems, that they were looking for when they were tipped off that this group was coming possibly from out of state with nefarious plans to unleash at the convention center. there are no reports of any injuries, at this time. we have reached out to a number of law enforcement authorities to see what we can learn.

there are no details as to what they might have been planning, at this point. but this is the kind of thing police are going to jump on. can't jump on it fast enough, chris. but we got to put this into context. again, this is the convention center where people are working so hard to count the votes for us in what is a nail-bitingly-close election. tensions are high across the country right now. there have been some protests and counter protests outside the convention center as people really feel that tension. as people remain divided about what could happen next in this country. again, we don't know any details of this possible, alleged attack. we don't know what could have motivated it but it certainly underscores the idea that it is so incredibly dangerous to foment this idea that we could discredit, in any way, what's being done in those buildings that could give rise to anger among people right now. we're going to try and find out a little bit more about who this group might have been.

what they might have been planning to do. we'll get back to you as soon as we have it. chris. >> thank you very much. correlation is not always causation, right? but is is t a coincidence that this came, after the president lied as badly as he ever has about the state of our election process? no proof. tons of charged allegations. saying it was being stolen from him and it was fraud and that he knew it. what timing that, right after that, people act on obvious and pointless animus. we'll keep taking you through the facts, and the bottom line is, together, we will figure out who the next leader of this country is. and that is the only way it will happen. many of the races are close. they've changed on our watch. stay with cnn. >>it's shiori. what? >>shi - or - i adam, emily and then... s-uh um... >>it's shiori. sh-ori. thank you, that's great.

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welcome back, everyone, to cnn's continuing election coverage. joe biden has a clear path to 270 electoral votes, and he is

getting closer on our watch. it is time, now, for a key-race alert. all right. so let's look at it now, as you see up on the board. i mean, georgia, it is narrow. it couldn't get much narrower than that. the former vice president -- or trump, i should say, up by only 1,700 votes. nevada, 11,000 votes separates trump from the former vice president. waiting for returns to come in pennsylvania, 22,000 votes separates the two men. and then, arizona. 47,000 votes. all of these, at this moment, too close to call. but look at that georgia number, will you? look at that georgia number. 1,700 votes, really. can you imagine, in a race that is this big? let's talk to someone who knows about that. the chair of georgia's democratic party. has been elected to represent, as well, georgia's 5th congressional district. that is a seat formerly held by

the late civil rights icon, congressman john lewis. congresswoman-elect, i should say, thank you so much. >> thank you for having me. happy to talk about battleground georgia. >> yeah. yeah. it is a battleground, right now. it's all playing out. georgia. all eyes on georgia. just, this is an incredibly close race, right, if you look at the numbers. how are you feeling about the overall race? >> i'm feeling good. we've been telling people, all along, georgia was a battleground state. we needed the investments. we've been organizing. the infrastructure was here and georgia voters turned out and we are showing the country what we've already known. that we're a battleground state and the path to the white house is paved right through georgia. >> right? but you guys, you took the 2018 playbook there. in georgia for the governor's race. and stacey abrams. and you used that and capitalized on it and made it better, i would imagine.

it is incredibly close. a lot of focus is on the votes in clayton county, which is part of the district that you won. do you think clayton could put joe biden over the top? >> clayton still has ballots to be counted. we know that we're winning those votes for joe biden at, like, an 80% rate. and those ballots are still coming in. they have stopped counting for the night, and will continue in the morning. this is a long process, and i'm not looking for expediency. i'm looking for efficiency. so, i am giving them all the time to take to count the votes. i'm wearing my voters decide sweatshirt because the voters have made their voices heard, and their votes deserve to be counted, no matter how long it takes. so, clayton county will be back at it in the morning, and we'll have more updates. >> if anything, if any election shows us that every single vote counts, it is this one, congresswoman-elect. >> every vote. i was literally arrested in the state capital in 2018 after the

gubernatorial election, as my constituents protested that every vote should be counted. so this is poetic justice that the district that i represent, that congressman john lewis once represented, is now going to decide the presidency of the united states and actually kick donald trump out of the white house. >> yeah, that was my next question. i'm glad you answered it. i didn't even have to ask it. listen. so, he may get the last word here, right? >> absolutely. i am sure that our ancestors are smiling down on this one. congressman lewis would be proud of voters turning out, in force. he was a fierce advocate for our right to vote, and he told us that our right to vote was the most powerful, nonviolent tool that we have in a democratic society. and we have used it, we have shown up, and we're going to flip the state. >> even with all of this, everything that you have said. you representing now john lewis's former district. saying the election apparatus,

that it's false and it's -- the election is being stolen from him. as chair of the democratic party, what do you see to the president and to the people around him, who are repeating his claims? >> don, i ignore donald trump just like i ignore his cronies because i know that there is so much at stake. there are people that are counting on us to step up and make sure these votes are counted and counted accurately. donald trump is a liar. he's shown us that, time and time again. and we need to focus on what we know is at hand and make sure that voters understand that they have the power in this election, not donald trump and not his people following behind him and his lies. >> someone is really trying to get in touch with you there. they're excited. >> i thought it was on airplane mode. >> we're in this new pandemic, zoom world. so i think everybody's used to it. don't even worry about it. but let's -- listen. i just spoke with jon ossoff

moments ago before you came in. it's looking like georgia could have senate runoffs, come january. how big are the stakes for democrats, do you think, here? >> stakes are huge, don. we -- i mean, i've been telling people all along we're playing for all the marbles here in georgia. we're the only state in the count country that had two u.s. senate seats on the ballot. and now, with them of them going into a runoff, it is increasingly clear how important georgia's been, all along, in all of this. we're looking forward to organizing, getting back out there, talking to voters about the importance of them turning out to vote. >> when you think about what's happening around the country, we see what happened in your district, what's happening in georgia, what's happening in philadelphia. and many of the areas who actually have the most votes in picking the president of the united states, it is people of color. i forget who it was that said it but one of my friends reminded

me today that black people started off by picking cotton. and look, now, we are picking the president of the united states. it's really been -- it's a moment for people of color, in this country, i think. especially, black folks. >> it absolutely is. congressman lewis used to have a statue in his office that said the hands that pick cotton can pick elected officials. and it was a black hand reaching down to put their ballot in the ballot box. and that has always stood out to me. so now, to see this happening in this district, it just means so oh mu so much to me. and bring this home in his legacy, in his honor. >> so, listen. the votes are still being counted but if biden does win, he's going to have the first black woman as vice president. what does that mean? what will that mean for you and for all women of color? even for the country? >> i mean, i'm -- don, our next

vice president is my sorority sister and i am thrilled. hbcu graduate and i'm an hbcu grad and just thinking what that means for so many people. representation matters, absolutely. but she is, also, smart, qualified, and ready to step into this job. and i cannot wait to see what that means for so many other people coming behind her. she is shattering, i mean, a glass ceiling like no other because it's not just for women, but for women of color across this country who have been looking for this glass ceiling to be shattered. so i'm excited and i cannot wait to bring this home for her, right here, in georgia so that we can claim victory and get to work. >> congresswoman elect in georgia's 5th congressional district. john lewis's old district. what an honor that must be and what an honor it is to have you on. thank you so much. best of luck to you. >> thank you, don. >> thank you. >> let's put up the numbers we showed you at the top. beginning of this segment.

we gave you the key race alert. there it is. georgia, 1,700 votes. nevada, 11,000. pennsylvania, 22,000. 47,000 in arizona. that is what separates the two men who are vying to be the next president of the united states. these numbers could change and we're getting new numbers in. you never know. we're expected to get more overnight, as we continue on through. so we'll be right back, don't go anywhere. vesting, managing risk, and all the ways schwab can help me invest. this is andy reminding me how i can keep my investing costs low and that there's no fee to work with him. here's me learning about schwab's satisfaction guarantee. accountability, i like it. so, yeah. andy and i made a good plan. find your own andy at schwab. a modern approach to wealth management.

okay. during the commercial break, joe biden picked up thousands of votes in pennsylvania. hence, a key race alert. all right. here's what we see. 49.5 to 49.2. the lead for donald trump, now under 20,000 votes. 18,229. why? joe biden just gained 4,347

votes in the last few minutes. what does it mean? let's go to the magic wall. phil mattingly, where do they come from? and why is this consistent with what could be cobbled together to beat trump? >> where it came in underscores why that occurred but let's top line, first. donald trump up by 18,229 votes and what came in, roughly 5 -- 5,800 votes came in, in philadelphia. heavily, democrat. joe biden, as you noted, picking up north of 4,000 votes. adding to that total, dropping donald trump's lead but i think, more important here, it continues on a pathway we have seen consistently pushing outward the margin in the vote that just came in. 84%. 84% for joe biden. we've been talking what does joe biden need to hit with the outstanding ballots in pennsylvania in order to overtake president trump?

needs to hit somewhere between 60% right now, that's probably dropping as the vote continues to come. >> wait, explain that. the rate he needs to win will drop and what and why? >> where the vote is outstanding, it's now starting to even up. >> so he doesn't need to overperform the same way. >> exactly. >> so contextualize. councilwoman from allegheny county said there are still ballots to count. but joe biden is receiving somewhere around 78% of the vote there. so, that was a key piece of information. we thank her for that. so he is over performing and you're saying he won't have to, as it gets closer. >> right. we've been talking pretty consistently over the last day or so, if he sits somewhere between 60 and 62% of the outstanding vote, that he will surpass where president trump is. we are at the point, now, when you look at the margins joe biden has continued to run up with each batch of vote that has dropped in the state of

pennsylvania. and it's dependent, right? if allegheny's hitting at 78 and philadelphia's hitting at 86, 87. it depends on where you are. what it means is, as we have described over the course of the last 24 hours, the mail-in vote is heavily democratic. the mail-in vote is more democratic than even the margins in the most democratic counties. there's still 8% outstanding in philadelphia. there's still 9% outstanding in delaware county. that's little smaller margin but still a pretty big democratic margin. joe biden doesn't just have a pathway. joe biden may overtake by tens of thousands of votes, if he stays on the pathway that he is currently on. so we have to keep watching and waiting and seeing as they release votes after they count them. but right now, if you are the biden campaign, not just now, they've been looking at this this way for 24 hours. they feel very good about where

pennsylvania is. >> the usual problem you will find someone on the surge is that you are running out of votes. you may not have enough. you'll have to win so much of what is left, it's just not going to make sense. that happens a lot, in terms of projecting races. that's not the issue here. there are over 150,000 votes, still, to count. in areas where joe biden has been over performing. so, he can. the question is can he keep up the rate? that goes to not just enthusiasm for biden but to how much of that vote is mail-in vote that was spurred by democrat call. we'll see. we'll see. now, some context on what wasn't a surprise but was completely shocking and totally devastating for where we are right now in a moment of national celebration in the kind of turnout we have never seen in a presidential election before, is this current president who wants you to give him a second term. and his pitch to you today was everything that happened in this election, so far, that isn't good for me, is a fraud. what does that mean in the state

of the race? and how do we contextualize it in terms of our political history? let's bring in carl bernstein right now. let's bring in carl bernstein. i'll tell you why. i don't want to toss to sound. we played it for you, the first time it happened. it is without basis. it is completely fallacious. it is filled with lies and they are intentional. i am not going to play it for you, again. but trust me. that's what it was. that's what everybody is saying that it was, if they are being honest. and that's our problem, carl. there are actually -- this is my surprise. not that donald trump lied about the integrity of the election. he's done it before, in 2016. he lied. put a commission together. they lied. they found nothing. they had to disband it. he said he was going to lie about this one. he lied. what i'm shocked by, carl, and i want your take. so many republicans who i thought would take this as a clarion call to consciousness

stood up and said, no, i'm with him. there's some tricky stuff. >> well, they have been craven, throughout his presidency. they have enabled him to do his authoritarian, illegal, unconstitutional business, through his whole presidency. and at the same time, and i have spent a lot of time talking to people on the hill, republicans, chiefs of staff, some of the senators. there are easily 15 to 20 members, republican members, of the senate, who absolutely despise donald trump and the way he has treated them. they're not loyal to him, in any personal sense. and a good number of them were very pleased to see that he is going to lose this election. and as long as republicans hold the senate, it's okay with them to see him go. and now, the question is whether a group of them, there are six, eight, ten of them, that are talking among themselves about going down to the white house, at a certain point.

or going to the country, if this president tries to continue to undermine and demean the democratic processes of our basic, electoral system, there is talk about stopping him and not allowing him to undermine this system. but, remember, he has said, all through the campaign, that he was going to do exactly what we are seeing. to undermine the very electoral process, the most basic aspect of our democracy, so he could hold onto office. down to, illegally, using the postal service to try and not deliver ballots, as it were, through his postmaster general of the united states. >> do you believe that there is anywhere near the kind of resolve it would take to stand up to the president? because you look at graham. pretty outspoken. he came out and basically, even though he is a practitioner of the law, himself. came out and based this idea from the president. mcconnell, nothing. cruz, nothing.

the 2024 hopefuls basically came out and kind of snuggled up against trump. i haven't heard anybody come out and say, full-throated, this is wrong. even romney, you're supposed to count the votes and trust the process. but not nailing trump for something that is demonstrably ugly. >> they're not going to be very, very loud about this until the president continues to -- to -- to use this terrible, terrible language, and intent to undermine the system. but i think we can absolutely be certain that they know the future of the republican party is at stake, if they go along for too long you understand mini undermining the very system. they know that trump is not going to prevail. except, they are also aware of a strategy that trump has to actually try and throw this election into the house of

representatives. by tying up the electoral college. by challenging electoral college electors and throwing the monkey wrench into that process. perhaps, keeping the electoral college from meeting. and if, by some chance, trump were successful in eluding the electoral college and throwing it into the house, that would be a 26 -- each state has one vote if it comes to that, it would be a 26-23 majority by the republicans. >> yep. >> so, there is a lot at play here and, at the same time, about what this president is saying among some of the republican senators. so, let's be clear. they've been craven, throughout. >> right. it's not just about his lying, anymore. it's about them motivating a malignant purpose because he's not going to do that all by himself. we have something else, carl. stand by. we have a new development in georgia. >> now, down to 1,267.

one of the biggest, outstanding-vote counties we have been paying attention to that is most important to joe biden. one over here. clayton county. sixth-largest county in the state. about 3% of the population. just got another batch in. couple hundred more votes for joe biden. i think you are going to see this progressively, throughout the night. some counties have stopped counting for the time being. we will see how they report throughout the night but clayton was the biggest batch of democratic-leaning votes. clayton county, as don was just talking about with the last guest, clayton county. former home to john lewis. is the county democrats are looking to right now to take joe biden over the top, in this state, at least for the time being. >> so, that was not all their ballots? >> they've been reporting in spurts. couple hundred votes about 30 minutes ago. couple hundred votes now. now, there's still some republican counties outstanding as well. but democrats feel right now very good about where this is headed, in large part because of

what's happening in clayton county. you will also see gwinnett county. there is a lot of outstanding vote that should lean democratic as well. every time they report, joe biden picks up a couple hundred more votes. >> going to the state overall, it says 99% of the vote estimated in. estimate. 159 counties in georgia and each one of them creates an advantage. that's why this can go from a plus to a neutral to a negative. i'm going to lemon right now. very apropos to the conversation you were having, this is a process that could change the state of the race. >> i mean, right after we had spoken to the congresswoman elect for john lewis's district, excuse me, for john lewis's district. >> you get into a fight over there? what happened to your tie?

>> listen. it's a rough night. >> get yourself together, brother. we got a long way to go here. >> no. but we were just talking to the congresswoman-elect representing john lewis's old district and she said john lewis had a picture on his wall that he kept in his office that said black people used to pick cotton. now, they're picking our elected representatives. bakari sellers is here. alice stewart. also, ryan lizza. hello, to all of you. but, bakari, every time we go to georgia and now that we are looking at clayton county. this is john lewis saying, you know what, we got to fix this. and, you know, he is -- he and the people in his -- his former district are working to make sure they get the person in office they want. >> yeah. but this has been a long time coming. and it's -- it's john lewis and -- and his legacy and people remember that. but it's, also, stacey abrams. you know, down south, we always say you have to give people

their flowers while they're living. and i think -- i think the people around the country, democrats and republicans alike, are having to look at the organization that stacey abrams put together on the ground. how she registered voters, how she activated voters. and now, that's really showing up in a southern state. look, i hear these claims made by some people on the right and -- and -- and the president, himself. about this election being a fraudulent election. it's not. and they point to cities like atlanta, or point to cities like philadelphia. these majority-black, democratic cities. it's not. but what you are seeing is the activation of black voters, once again, particularly black women, showing up to the polls and carrying the democratic party across the finish line. that's what we are seeing again, in 2020. >> bakari, as i was watching earlier, listening to the president of the united states talk about these cities that are -- that have big black populations. calling them fraudulent in the process and that they're trying to steal it from them. i thought it was an insult to

the people whose ancestors, even many of them died for the right to vote. just because they're showing up to the polls does not make it fraudulent. that was an insult to me. >> first of all, let me also say that, democrats, if we're going to rig an election, we really must suck because we just rigged an election where we lost house seats and we didn't flip the senate. >> or three days later, it's a tie. >> i need -- i need to talk to a manager because we really are bad at this thing. i just think that -- i just think that -- >> if you're going to rig, don't suck at it. >> quickly, bakari. >> that's right. i just firmly believe, though -- my only point is i firmly believe, when this is done, black lives matter, latasha brown, cliff albright.

it's penetrating these voting bases but also ad messages like take your booty to the polls. you know, all of these things, together, across the country are leading to what we are seeing today. >> alice, i want to bring you in because you are from dekalb county as we have been talking throughout the evenings here and the mornings here about the election. the margin in georgia, razor thin. how do you see the state of this race, right now? i mean, you don't get any closer to a tie than we are right now in georgia. >> yeah. yeah. when the numbers are virtually mirror images, that's pretty much a tie. and i told you last night, don, gop officials in georgia concerned and this is exactly why. this is what they were worried about. this is what they had expected to happen. and it's happening. and this just goes to show, as bakari said, when you get a group of people that feel as though they haven't been represented. and they're frustrated with the

current administration, they get together. and i am so glad that bakari gave a shoutout to my friend, latasha brown. she's been working tirelessly wiin this country to get people out. and a quote i often use that i think is so important that he said talks about voting and he said your vote counts. if it didn't, why would so many people be trying to take it away? and so many people fought for the right to vote. and i think what is going on right now with a president of the united states, who is questioning the integrity of our election, it's disturbing and is quite dangerous. >> so, alice, having said that, i appreciate you saying that, let me ask you because you're republican. you supporter of the president. we have you on because you support his policies. you don't always support his actions and what he said, but you support his policies. i get it, from talking to you, why you support him. but here's the thing. mitt romney, lukewarm talking about the process. basically, giving a definition

this is what should happen in our country. not saying the president of the united states is wrong. he should not be doing something like this. where are the republicans coming out with strong stance, going in front of cameras, saying what the president of the united states is doing is wrong and should not happen in our country? this is not the way a democratic process should work. >> we've had a few. will hurd has come out and talked about the dangerous precedent of doing this. we've had some. we've heard lindsey graham come out and others. what they do -- lindsey graham's supporting what the prez's dosi doing but they are doing it in a way making sure every vote is legitimate and legal. and making sure we have a proper number of observers overseeing the counting process. making sure that republicans and democrats have equal access to overseeing the process. those are the people supporting the president, want to make sure the process is done legally and

fairly. but, just as important is, to continue to reinforce what we're hearing from secretaries of states across the country. specifically, the one in georgia. they are making sure that every legal and legitimate ballot is cast. >> okay. >> that it is not only brought in, it is secured, counted, and will be certified at the date certain. and most important point we can reassure people, be patient and let the process work. >> ryan, alice having said what she just said about lindsey graham and others. there is absolutely no evidence of this. by someone correcting something or trying to fix something about poll workers and how close poll workers get. that's how the process works. you have a complaint about something. if someone says it's not working properly, then you rectify it. but there is no evidence of any widespread fraud or anything untoward going on with the ballots or the counting or any of it.

so why are republicans going on this crazy, rabbit-hole conspiracy theory with the president of the united states? >> i think what we're seeing is the first war within the republican party in the post-donald-trump era. everyone sees what the trend lines are in pennsylvania and these other states. >> do they really want to go down with the ship like that? and, listen, i'm not saying he's going down but that's what you're saying. but do they really want to go down with the ship like that? >> everyone knows where it's headed. it started with trumpian rhetoric before the election. that the only way democrats could win was if it was rigged. then, they moved into the courts. most of those cases appear to be junk and unlikely to succeed. i think you are seeing a little bit of escalation, each day. to the point, now, where, as carl bernstein was talking about, there is serious republicans talking about

getting state legislatures to challenge who -- who -- who the electors are that go and -- and certify -- to washington and certify and actually do the voting. you know, that has just not happened. and that's going to be the test. do you agree with him on these court challenge -- challenges? when those fail, they are moving into this electoral-college strategy. and the people, like mitt romney who had a pre-milk-toast statement tonight and nikki haley who was kind of wishy-washy. >> ryan, let me ask you in the short time left. as i watched the president tonight, he always likes to project strength, right, that he is a strong man. what he did made him look so weak. it was embarrassing for him to sit there, play the victim, and

whine the way he did. i don't think it really helped him, maybe it did, with his supporters. am i missing something? >> well, i've been -- frankly, i think it's helped him with quite a few supporters. i mean, someone like lindsey graham has just gone over the edge talking the way he talks. if you've seen newt gingrich. attack on legitimacy of our democracy, you know, they are following trump off that cliff. and it's going to take a much larger universe of republicans than will hurd and mitt romney to stabilize the ship. >> i got to tell you, i'm not surprised by lindsey graham. i mean, obviously, we should not be surprised by rudy giuliani. i mean, come on. this is twilight-zone territory. >> these are people who are some of the most respected people in the republican party, not that

long ago. and they're now spouting complete misinformation and attacking the legitimacy of our election. >> well, those days are gone. those draays are gone. we will see how they try to make a comeback or whatever or gain some credibility if this does, indeed, end the way we think. so, things are changing every hour, here. as you saw, we just had a number of votes come in. really changed what's happening in georgia. changing what's happening in pennsylvania. we're going to keep an eye on nevada and arizona as well. there is your tally board and we're in a marathon situation. we're going to continue to cover it. don't go anywhere. we got a key race alert, coming up. oh shoes! i thought y'all got lost or something. did you put some ah, kale in the greens? oh thank you! we didn't forget about you! welcome to the family.

thank you. wooooow. i love it! (laughter) thank you dad!

welcome back to "election night in america," continued. i'm chris cuomo with d lemon.

congratulations to you. turnout like we could have never imagined. despite president trump's blizzard of lies falsely claiming everything that's happened in this election, that isn't good for him, is fraud. no basis and no reason to do it right now when he needs the count as much as anybody, don. >> no basis, at all. and you're right about -- about what we're witnessing this is history that we're witnessing. and you and i have the honor, really, of reporting this history to folks. record numbers of people getting out and voting. that is the history here. and all of this is happening, at this hour. each hour ticks by, right, joe biden is getting closer and closer to victory in this 2020 race. chris, as you know, he is gaining in pennsylvania, as the final mail-in ballots are being tallied there. and you can't get any closer to a tie, than what's happening in georgia right now.

>> it is very close. it's changing on our watch. so, let's check the numbers. time for a key race alert. pennsylvania. 20 electoral votes. still, 5% of the estimated vote to come in. that number is deceptive. there is more than enough votes needed for joe biden to meet and beat the spre beat the spread right now 18,229 votes. nope. more than enough votes for joe biden to catch and beat the president. look at that. 1,267 votes separate the two men in what was believed to be ruby-red georgia just a couple of cycles, ago. next. arizona. 11 electoral votes. 47,000-vote spread. now, here, it's the opposite narrative. joe biden has been in the lead and it has been eroding. this is why team trump believed

they have a shot, they have a path in arizona to win this state. will it happen? we've been watching. 10% of the vote to come in. it's all about maricopa county. it's one to watch and it's changed, on our watch. nevada, six electoral votes. still, a ton of vote to come in. they've been quiet. it's been seeping out a little bit, today, as promised by the secretary of state. not as much as expected. that's okay. get it right. it doesn't have to be fast. 11 votes. joe biden gained a few there. a vulnerable lead. very important state for donald trump. we will keep an eye on it. now, all this talk about how it looks like biden's going to get there. looks like he's -- let's put that back on the biden campaign, and see how they see where we are in the race right now. let's go to jason carroll. he has news for us from the biden camp in wilmington. how you doing, jason? >> good morning to you, chris. you a you're up. i'm up. don's up. and members of the biden camp are up as well, even at this

late hour, watching some of those results come in from pennsylvania. the biden camp feeling that friday could be the day that he finally reaches 270. they are still feeling bullish about pennsylvania. and not just pennsylvania but, also, georgia and arizona. but, pennsylvania, their data showing them that they could have what they're calling a decisive win there. when you look at this campaign, though, chris, this is a campaign that feels as though they've been on the offense. they feel the trump campaign, in some ways, has been on the defense, filing these meritless lawsuits. biden team, looking ahead. biden meeting with his economic advisers about the economy earlier thursday. also, meeting with his health care advisers about the pandemic. so, this is someone clearly positioning himself to move ahead. also, in terms of messaging, the messaging has been clear. let every vote count, and be patient. but also, a message of unity going forward. this is a -- biden has been

saying, clearly, all along, that he is going to be the president for someone who voted for him, in addition to those who did not vote for him. but right now, this is a campaign, just like the rest of the country, that's at the mercy of those who are counting votes. but once again, the message very clear, let every vote be counted. chris. >> that is the definition of democracy. jason carol jason carroll, thank you very much. let us know if you learn more. appreciate you on this historic day. so, pennsylvania. why? let's go to kristen holmes at the voting desk. what do we see as potential in that state for joe biden? >> well, chris, there is a reason the biden campaign is feeling bullish like you just hear jason say in pennsylvania. and much of it is about absentee ballots. we have seen absentee ballots come in huge margins for former vice president joe biden. as you know, they are counted after the in-person, day-of vote. so, they're still coming in and they are coming in, in big numbers.

so, here's what's left. 163,501 absentee ballots to be counted. now, remember, you just talked about this margin of 18,000. so, this is huge. and when we are seeing these absentee ballots come in, they are coming in at more than 70% in the favor of joe biden. so that looks good for him. nowers let now, let's talk about key, democratic counties. of course, one of them, philadelphia. we have been watching this painstakingly, every single night, from 2:00 a.m. however long we're on air. they are almost done and they have counted 300,000 plus ballots. they have less than 60,000 left. again, 60,000, much bigger than that 18,000 margin, vote margin, that we are seeing between these two candidates. and huge margins of mail-in ballots are coming in for vice president biden. okay. now, what else is left? we have provisional ballots. it doesn't mean anything about the kind of ballot. what it means is that someone

came in. they couldn't quite confirm them. they didn't have their i.d. they have to check everything. those are probably going to come into play, in some way, just because of the tight margin that we are seeing. damaged ballots. that means, basically, these have to be gone through, by hand. team of people have to look through them, figure out exactly what's going on, and if they can be scanned. okay. allegheny. we've been talking a lot about this. 36,000 ballots left to count. and that includes 29,000, that because of a court order, can't be counted until 5:00 p.m. on friday. but, at this point, what the biden campaign, what officials are telling me there, what democratic officials are telling me in the state. they don't think they're going to need this before they call pennsylvania. they think they're going to actually get past donald trump's number, before these even come into play. and then, we have the provisional ballots here, too. so that's another 10 to 15,000 ballots. and then, they have 7,000 damaged ballots. and again, a big team goes through all of these to see what counts, what matches, what

doesn't, et cetera. so, this is why you are seeing biden-campaign officials feeling very bullish about pennsylvania. this margin and these huge numbers of outstanding ballots, absentee ballots that have been coming in even higher in percentage for biden than they thought, chris. >> right. and we had council womwoman bet halam. she gave us a key piece of information biden's been winning 78% in most of their batches, which is much higher than the metric we were using which i think, phil, was 62%. so he is over-performing the over-perform status. thank you very much. appreciate it. we will be back to you at the voting desk in a minute. okay. following all the numbers, obviously, there are more than enough votes for biden to meet or beat trump. but let's go -- but trump's winning votes, too. trump will over perform in some areas even though he has, on

average, underperforming with absentee ballots. he's going to have to keep winning a percentage, each time. >> exactly. there are republican votes in these counties. even in philadelphia, there were republican votes that came in. i think the problem the trump campaign faces right now. look. if you had to be in one of their war rooms right now, you would like to be in biden's war room given how pennsylvania is sitting. there is about 160,000 plus ballots that are still outstanding. 18,229. philadelphia county. remember, the last batch that dropped in about 15-20 minutes ago, netted out 86% for joe biden. 86%. that's philadelphia. this is the strongest democratic county they have. that was the expectation going in. but as you noted, he's over performing everywhere in margins. and if you go through southeastern pennsylvania, delaware county as well, he is going to be hitting above the

metric that he needs to hit. lehigh county has about 9,000 ballots outstanding we just reported. so that's kind of, other than philadelphia and allegheny, this is kind of the biggest chunk. and this is a little bit of a tighter margin. this is a tighter margin that donald trump, for a period of time, was actually leading. he was leading. but this makes a key point. he was leading in this county. and then, they started counting their vote by mail. and this is something we have seen. i've made this point a couple times. i think it's really important to understand. even in the red counties margins have been dropping steadily in the course of the last 24 hours because even in the strongest-red counties, democrats are mailing in, democrats are winning the mail-in vote in those counties even if they are losing the county on net. so lehigh county, about 9,000 votes outstanding right now. not a huge margin but joe biden will over perform. >> context and then a question for you about potential eventuality for the president. the context is that, well, this suspicion about the early ballots. you know?

well, why? why? why? why, this time? pandemic. the only thing that's over-performing more than biden in pennsylvania is covid. we're over 100,000 cases right now. people were worried. they were looking for another way. the presidents -- the democrats were pushing very hard for the presidential race to be done with democrats by mail-in ballots. here's what the problem was. pennsylvania and a lot of other states didn't give the money or the staffing or the consideration to how to count those ballots, before the election. florida did. some other states had their game together. but most didn't. so, they had to count them after. if they -- if you need a fix for what you see is a problem right now, which i don't. i see it more situational. do it right. count them before so we don't even have this problem, going into it. that's the fix. we'll see if anything happens. now, the question. why is there no chance that, in pennsylvania, trump can go arizona, which is where he starts to over perform because maricopa county is the big ticket there in arizona.

it's blue, right now. but he is over performing there. why is there no chance that he over performs in any of the blue places and disrupts the progress? >> so, it's trend lines and it's the type of vote that's coming in. and the difference that i think it's really important to understand. arizona vote by mail, particularly late and drop-off ballots in arizona were actually trending more republican. right? arizona had a little bit different of the makeup. not every state matches with one another. and pennsylvania's doesn't match how arizona's was. and so, maricopa is, also, formerly republican stronghold. so, you match the fact maricopa, right now, i think joe biden's about 52-47, somewhere around there. and the outstanding vote here, with joe biden hitting between 84 and 88% of thresholds. you look where it's located. you look batch after batch after batch, how it comes in. we're not operating blind anymore. we know where it's outstanding, and we know the outstanding vote

that's come in prior to it has consistently hit the same margins. the idea that there is going to be some anomaly, possible. possible. but, at this point in time, given the amount of absentee we have seen, given the fact we've seen the same margins hit almost every single time. underscored as you laid out quite well, republicans voted in very large margins in pennsylvania. it is just the reality of this moment, composition of the ballots, composition of the votes that, as they're being counted and being reported, there is not a lot of space for anomalies because the consistency. it's -- we've seen it -- we've been doing this now for three days. we've been doing this for three days and we were at the wall with wisconsin and michigan as you saw it hit. and you could look and, all of a sudden, started counting vote by mail and trump started going like this and biden started going like that. same type of construct here and the same exact endgame is starting to play out. right now, 18,229 is not enough for president trump, given

what's outstanding in democratic strongholds. the big question is, you know, in lehigh county or someplace he's got a little more strength. can he try and stop the bleeding? and when you are dealing with philadelphia or delaware county, down in southeast pennsylvania, strongholds. and then, as you were talking with the councilwoman. you know, joe biden sitting 78% in allegheny. you've got problems if you are the trump campaign. >> land doesn't vote and the populations in all these places are very small. if you look on the basis of population and not land, it goes from red in all these states to little, red dots and big, blue, metro areas. okay. so, pennsylvania, state of play. what does the president have to win? georgia. has to. and on that point, we have got a great guest, right now, to discuss. let's bring in shawna dosier. thank you so much for joining us at such a hectic time.

>> thank you for having me. >> i am going to hold off the question that nobody in your position likes, which is about timing, for last. although, i just gave it away. what can you tell us about the state of play of how much more you have to do, how it's going? and what are you seeing in breakdown of trump to biden? >> well, i am happy to announce that we're down to 3,500 absentee ballots to count out of 30,000 absentee ballots that we had accepted. >> okay. how many of the amount, except the 3,500, have already been reported? is it all out there, already? >> well, we just did a update around 1:27 a.m. to show our updated count. and so, that's the most recent count that we've -- we've updated. >> all right. thank you. and when do you expect -- and again, we know it's a hard job. you have to get it right. we appreciate what you're doing, so much. you guys are the angels among us, and such a cause for celebration for us and our democracy. you're doing the job right.

big turnout. nobody expected it like this. all that said, when do you think the 3,500 get done? >> well, we are going to stay here until every single absentee ballot is counted. >> oh, you're going to work straight through? >> we're going to continue to move forward. >> and what do you think? does that take it in the overnight hours, now? do you think late in the morning? you think afternoon? >> i anticipate early morning. >> that's where we are now. >> yeah. >> so, a little bit -- a little bit later in the morning than right now. but not too long from now? >> yeah, we're doing our best to just make sure that we get every vote counted. and whatever it takes to get that done, we're going to do it. we're committed. >> but you're thinking hours, not big blocks of time from now. >> yes. >> all right. i appreciate it. i don't mean to push but, you know, we want -- we want you to do it right but every little bit of information helps. is there anything that you want the audience to know about

what's going on? any problems that you've had with the job? any challenges that were unforeseen? >> we just ask for the community just to be patient, as we undergo this process. we're excited about the amount of absentee ballots we've received. in 2016, last election, we received -- ballots and this time we're hitting 30,000. and so, we just ask for patience. >> just a quick question and thank you so much, director. what are you seeing coming out in the latest batches of returns in terms of percentage that biden is getting on those votes? >> well, as of 1:27, which is the last time we provided the update, it was at 84%. >> 84%. all right. thank you very, very much. good luck, going forward. >> thank you. >> so, 3,500 more votes.

they were seeing 84% in the last batch. how does that size up with what he needs and how -- is that an anomaly? you know, 84%? >> no, that's pretty consistent with what he's been hitting. you look at the margins. i think there was a batch actually above that. >> math. so if he wins 80% of 3,500, that is like 2,000 some. waiting for somebody to get in my ear. so, let me wait, please. >> the former vice president's essentially going to net a little less than 2,500. and if you look statewide, it's a little less than 1,300. >> all right. hold on. harry. we hear your booming voice. the microphone's not picking it up well enough. harry is saying that he believes based on 80% we just heard from

director dozier that the president -- that former vp biden has been winning about 84% of the batches in her county. so let's just discount it to 80%. she has 3,500 ballots remaining. that means he would net about -- right, harry? >> right. he would net a little less than 2,500 votes and that would essentially overcome the deficit the former vice president has statewide currently. >> and the question, then, becomes, well, can it switch back? is that enough? what does he have to make as a threshold here? .5%? no, it's recount, by request. but you have to have a margin in georgia i think of .5 or less. >> i think it's a pretty safe assumption, both campaigns would tell you, this is going to a recount. they're pretty certain about that. but you talk about what will

be -- who will be ahead when they go into that recount, based on what's outstanding, if you are republican right now, you are looking in forsyth county. again, the big question is vote by mail. the woman we just spoke to made an excellent point. in 2016, they had 3,000 absentee ballots. this year, they had 30,000. those are coming in 80 to 84% biden. that's a democratic county but the point is what we have seen in state, after state after state, after state, went huge. forsyth county, decent margin for president trump right now. depo decent margin. not as good as 2016. flip back to 2016, did better. but is this going to give him an opportunity to pick up whatever joe biden picks up from clayton? or is it going to be more made up of democrats who decided to

mail in? so there is -- there are -- there are republican counties with vote outstanding. i think lawrence county as well. but clayton was pretty much the biggest outstanding. and gwinnett will report tomorrow as well which is democratic as well. right now, biden has more outstanding than republicans have but we will have to see how it adds up. >> this is about managing expectations. you have a horse race. who's going to win? but then, it's not over. and not because of the ugly suggestions by the president today and i'm not trying to be insulting. the insult was to you. i was insulted. the process was insulted because he has no proof of suggestions. now, that said, if biden meets and beats the president but doesn't clear the .5 percentage threshold, then a candidate can request a recount in georgia. the recount request comes two days after certification. certification is november 21st.

so, plenty of time between then and when inauguration would be in january. so, it's not until november 21st. then, you ask for a recount. then, my question, to the control room and to you and to harry, do you get an automatic recount of every county? or do you have to request specific counties? so there's no automatic recount. keep going. you can request one. we have. after certification. if the margin is less than .5. but recount of what? is there a vetting of what you want recounted? or we don't know? we don't know. we do have our cnn legal analyst. maybe, he knows. ask rich hasen. >> can i add one more thing? >> please. >> factor in provisionals and military ballots as well. so, there's two things. one, harry, i want to know what you think about provisionals and

what's outstanding right now. >> awfully quiet, harry. >> how do you think those break is my big question? >> i would think the provisionals would probably break for the vice president. the military ballots, traditionally speaking, have leaned more republican. but in terms of the question of whether or not this would get outside of the recount area, i don't think it would. obviously, we have to wait and see on that but i think this is heading towards recount territory. obviously, though, if pennsylvania goes the way that it's looking like it's going now, this would be more of an academic argument than anything else. >> however, two things. one, pennsylvania has a recount as well, i think also a .5 margin. so you could be in a similar situation there, right? i mean, we don't have any reason to believe that even if biden were to meet and exceed -- that he can beat .5? >> yeah, he can. >> good to know. >> if the vote comes in, at the levels it is coming in, it's

possible. >> provisional ballots, please, and then make your point. why do you assume provisional ballots would go a certain way when they are just a function of unknowns? you know, i don't see your name in the book. doesn't match the address or whatever the reason is. and they give you a provisional, which is a maybe, maybe, this will count. >> traditionally, they have gone more democratic. it's folks who might be moving around. younger folks. groups that tend to lean more democratic. just because you can request one and count all the ballots again, that doesn't necessarily mean it would change the result. oftentimes, only when you are within say a few hundred or few thousand ballots. so in georgia, it could if we get down to a few thousand ballots. but in pennsylvania, given the way the vote has trended in that state. >> appreciate it. excellent. thanks are moving on our watch. stay with cnn. new vicks immunity zzzs gummies are fortified with

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and, man, things are getting tighter. 1,200 votes separating the two men. arizona, 47,000. here is the thing. georgia, nevada, and pennsylvania, every time the votes come in, pretty much every time, they put joe biden ahead. arizona, the president is closing in on joe biden there. the perfect person to do that cnn political commentator charlie dent. he is the former congressman from pennsylvania and that's why we have him here. good morning to you, sir. how you doing? >> morning, don, great to be with you. >> so let's talk about this. you see the president's lead. it keeps shrinking in pennsylvania as the votes come in. you -- you have some idea of what is going on in the commonwealth. and you said you could have predicted this a couple days ago? >> yeah, i knew wednesday morning that joe biden was going

to win pennsylvania. here's why. i am sitting here in north hampton county. donald trump won north hampton county in 2016 by 5,500 votes and joe biden won it by just under a thousand votes so that's a swing right there. same thing in the county where hillary clinton won by 3,000 votes in '16 and joe biden won by 10,000. what that means is that joe biden is performing much better than hillary clinton did upstate, cutting down donald trump's margins. it was clear, very clear, to me that's what biden needed to do to win. now, he also has to come out of philadelphia and the suburbs, the collar counties with the numbers, which he will. so that's when it was very clear to me he was going to win this race. i said whoever wins north hampton c hampton county, whoever wins erie county, is going to win the presidency. and that's what we see happening right now. >> as you were watching and the president came out and said look, we won, we won pennsylvania. and all of a sudden, we -- we

won there. and declared victory. what were you thinking? like, this guy has no idea what he is talking about? what were you thinking? >> i said i don't know what they put in his diet coke but it must be some heavy substance because it's clear what happened. we all knew this. look. pennsylvania, for the first time, has really done no-excuse absentee voting. there were 3 million requests for absentee ballots and about 2.6 million were returned. 1.6 million of them were from democrats and about 550,000 from republicans. so, on a 3-1 basis, democrats were voting by mail. we knew that. they were the last ones to be counted and guess what? they're breaking about 3-1 for the democrats or for joe biden. this is not surprising. we knew this. and we knew that -- we knew that donald trump would do well in person, at the polls. we knew this. that he was going to come out with, probably, an advantage. but that lead would evaporate, over time, as the mail-in votes

were being counted. and that's precisely what happened. completely predictable. everybody knew it. the trump campaign knew it. everybody knew it. so, i'm surprised that they're surprised by this. >> so then, why are they -- because i mean, this is really, really disturbing. it's dangerous. making these baseless claims about voter fraud. and then, you have republicans signing on, like ted cruz. you have got lindsey graham backing him. graham even donating to trump's legal fund. how do you explain this, congressman? what is going on here? >> i can't explain it. look. are there going to be isolated incidents of fraud around the country? of course. is it going to change the outcome of the election? no. have there been problems in philadelphia with voter fraud in the past? yes. i can point to an election where a judge threw the guy out of the state legislature but we moved beyond that and i think everyone is behaving very well. all these election officials around the state do not want an issue. they are trying to be

transparent. and when i hear what they said about philadelphia. look. al schmidt is the republican commissioner in philadelphia. >> al schmidt is going to be on in just a -- in a short time here, and he is going to explain all that to us. but what were -- what were you a republican by the way? >> yeah. he put out a tweet this morning saying things are pretty much in order. they're going to count every vote and they're going to keep counting until they get an outcome. there's nothing nefarious going on, as far as i can tell, in the state. the issue is we are all concerned about voter-system failure because pennsylvania has never done absentee balloting, on this scale. they passed the law to do this prior to the pandemic, don. they did that and then, of course, the pandemic. the volumes increased and we were really worried they might not be able to handle it, at

this scale. but they seem to be doing it. it's taking longer than we'd like. >> charlie -- congressman. i really don't understand why republicans are doing this. and i think you have some idea that you explained to me, just a short time ago during the break, about why the senate didn't go the way democrats thought. even some of the -- the congressional races didn't go the way that democrats thought. but you have a theory about that. >> i do have a theory. i think that a lot of these voters, swing-voting republicans, who are not crazy about donald trump and many independents, voted for joe biden and against donald trump and then they voted state republican. not one house republican incumbent has lost his or her election, not one. while donald trump is losing. this is a repudiation of the president by many republicans who voted for joe biden because

they want to have a check in the republican senate to make sure the left wing of the democratic party doesn't go too far. at some point, we're going to do an after-action analysis and i think that's going to bear out. >> repudiation on trump, you think, but not the representatives? >> yes, i do. yeah. i mean, how does one explain, susan collins, who i admire very much, won re-election. she outperformed donald trump significantly in maine. by a big margin and donald trump is getting beaten in bucks county. i can point all around the country. they are outperforming donald trump, enormously and -- and -- and you see this everywhere. i mean, that is really what the issue is. i think people have tired of the president but they don't want to give a mandate to the democrats. right now, there is really no policy mandate, for either side. but i do believe there is a governing mandate and that is

for -- for joe biden to steady the ship of state and republicans to assist him in that endeavor. >> yeah. we appreciate having you. thanks for staying up late, or early. whichever it is. and we will see you soon. get some rest. and again, i want to remind our viewers, we're going to have al schmidt, republican from philadelphia, who is going to join us in a short time to explain what's going on with the process and some of these things that are being said out there about voter fraud. and about people trying to steal the election and people counting the ballots. you will be interested to hear what he is saying. but, chris, i have to say, charlie dent just said, that, folks, this is a repudiation of donald trump. voters wanted a check -- they were sick of donald trump's antics but they wanted a check on joe biden in office so they voted for joe biden but they didn't change their representatives. so, that could turn out to be a good thing for the country. we will have to wait and see, even if joe biden goes into the white house. we still have a long ways to go

here. >> i mean, look, it's an argument. you couldn't blame people if that's what they were doing. you got to hedge your bets, these days. the political culture is one of opposition, more than it is one of compromise and progress. one side's going to railroad them all through. >> i got to tell you something, i'm really jealous of you because you get to talk to -- you get to talk to nia malika henderson. >> well, i'll tell you what. they call her the gift on this set here. even though, she was just gratuitously savaging me for no reason. but that's neither here, nor there. >> carry on, nia. >> and harry enten and mark preston. all right. so, let's chew on this idea a little bit. that, what we're seeing is a repudiation of trump. well, the 73-million-plus people that voted for biden. i call it a whooping because nobody's ever had that many

people come out to vote against them. fair. but his 69-plus-million is the second-most votes we've ever had. and what does that tell us, then? how much of a repudiation of trump is this, if he got that many votes? >> i think it's not as big a repudiation as democrats wanted. in the senate and also in the house, a repudiation of trump and trumpism and older, republicans who have supported and cheerleaded for him over these last years. but it does seem like the -- the -- the sort of embrace of biden. these millions of voters who showed up. is about sort of a return to normalcy. a return to calm. and i think harry made this point before, which is that a lot of people hated donald trump. they hated the way he made them feel with these tweets and, you know, criticizing people and sort of the race-baiting and just all the chaos that we've seen over these last five years. and so, you have, in joe biden, somebody who is kind of a

standard-issue politician. the kind of person we grew up with who is just a normal sort of middle manager kind of person. and the people who voted for donald trump weren't really that anti-biden, they were really pro-trump. and so, maybe, that will be a good thing that there isn't a lot of animus among trump supporters for joe biden. >> that's -- they're all interesting points. now, harry, scratching at that a little bit more. you brought up that this president, though an incumbent, is running behind the congressional candidates when he should be even or ahead, and they should be in his wake. >> that's right. >> how do you explain it? >> i -- i would just have to say that there was a sliver of the electorate. granted, seems to be running a little behind the presidential vote. a two-point swing, you might say to yourself, oh, that's small. that's not very much of anything. but look at the margins in these

important states right now if you had a two-point swing towards donald trump, we would be talking a very different game in a state like arizona, in a state like georgia. but wasn't fine with the donald trump plan -- donald trump, say, personality, you might say. and, therefore, might have made the difference in this election. >> your take? >> i was going to say, you know, these margins are really going to have great influence on what happens, in a couple months. like, we're going to go into a new year with a new president, with a new congress, and with republicans having incredible amount of power, assuming that they, you anywknow, control andd onto the senate. looks like they will. we will see what happens in georgia. but we're going to see a divided government and we're not going to see very much done. it will be interesting to see who gets the fault for that because the midterms are coming up quickly after that. >> oh, my god, please. >> we could also -- we could

also talk about 2024. frankly, that day began today when we saw donald trump jr. go after all the potential 2024s because they weren't defending his father. so, look, it is on right now. but i do think that folks who think, after this election that we're going to get back to normal. i think we are -- we are headed for a lot of mess. i think our political system, as we know it, the political parties, as we know it, are going to be totally disassembled. i think, in some ways, they're going to be burned down. and if donald trump doesn't leave the republican party, then that party is going to take on his image and is going to grow that way. you grew up in politics, you understand how this is. a political party is about ideology and ideas, not about a person. and when it becomes about a person, what's going to occur is the republican party's not going to be able to grow and expand. it's going to be very linear. >> the whole thing is so messed up. my father, for example.

my father was mario cuomo. he was governor of new york. my brother, andrew, is now governor of new york. but my father's democratic party is not the democratic party of today. but the working class, they were his constituency. more important. key race alert. what do we have? all right. in georgia, the spread is now 665 votes. how much of the vote outstanding? you see 99% there but, again, i really shouldn't even say that, anymore. it's really about where there is remaining vote, who that breaks for. not just red or blue but in the context of what kind of vote is coming in. i'm going to wait for phil mattingly to get up and we can understand where these votes came from and what it tells us about our future. phil, you over there? >> trying to track down which

county came in. it's clayton. basically, chris, this is what we have been talking about over the course of the last couple hours. clayton county was the biggest outstanding vote going into the night for us. going into the night, they had about 4,000 votes. we spoke to an official there who said they were down to 3,500. they have been reporting in batches over the course of the last 24 hours. this is a county that is leaning heavily democratic and when the batches were coming in, they were coming in 84, 85, 86% biden. we expect a little more out of clayton county but as you see, the drop, took a little more than 600 votes off on net. >> do we know how many votes came in that netted us to where we are now? >> still trying to tabulate that in my head right now. >> yeah. in the control room, let us know. >> 2,000 right now. >> so, about 2,000 votes so they could still have a thousand, 1,500 left, based on the calculation that ms. dozier gave us. another -- another tabulator,

another chairperson who gamed me and won because dozier made it sound like we don't know when the votes are going to come. and then, right after, another batch of votes came in. so it was like a gift from ms. dozier. now, we have this new batch of votes that came in. there's still 1,500. >> roughly. >> which means that could make even more of a difference for biden. >> again, we are talking about what the margins are. and i have to break down the margins from what just skam in b came in. but repeatedly, joe biden's been hitting percent of what -- >> it was 1,267. now, it's 665. >> right. so, couple things to keep in mind here. one, we estimate right now, there's probably about 1,500 left in clayton. joe biden's going to net, probably, about a thousand. maybe, a little bit more than that. >> because we're going with what

percentage/ratio? >> 80, 81. i'm being conservative when i say 1,500. >> because, ms. dozier told us 84. >> there is a real possibility, if clayton continues to report -- >> i would be -- >> can we hear harry? >> look. it's going to be close when the rest of it comes in. but based upon the current trend lines, it would seem when the rest of clayton comes in that biden would jump into 200, 300, 400, 500-vote lead. >> from this county? >> from this county. >> so lauren, our excellent producer, tells me 1,300 just came in from clayton. harry says. what do you think? >> it will end up somewhere in the hundreds to low thousands, probably. depending on exactly how many votes are left but it would be biden ahead probably at this point, based upon the current trend line. >> you also have to factor in that we know, tomorrow morning, we will expect to also get gwinnett. gwinnett county. you look at the margin but it

has been coming in heavily democratic. has about 4,500 votes outstanding as well. the point being, even as the vote total goes down, we started the night, georgia had about 14,000 outstanding voting and clayton's been reporting pretty consistently. so take that down, 11,000ish should be left right now. there are still two major republican counties with a decent amount. but the reality is and this is what we have been talking about the last 24 hours. when you were looking at the outstanding vote, you were looking where it was coming from and the rate at which it was coming in, joe biden was on the pathway to overtake donald trump and on the path to finish before they get to military ballots, before they get to provisionals and that might happen in the next hour or two. >> can we go back to forsyth? fumbler's math here.

if there's 5%, he wins 65% of that. so he wins like, you know, 3,000 and change. that could make a difference. >> so, forsyth's got 1,545 ballots outstanding. >> outstanding. >> right. and i think the big question right now and we talked about this in a couple states is that these ratios, these margins on the top line for the counties aren't holding because of the type of ballots that are coming in. so, just because it's coming from a county where donald trump's 6532. because it's mail in, is still leaning more democratic so we don't know the exact composition of what is going to be coming in from forsyth. if you are republican, you are looking at forsyth and -- >> forsyth. they keep yelling in my ear.

harry, do you have any insight what the counties could mean in georgia? >> essentially, if you are vote big mail, your chance of being democratic is much higher even given that this is a red county. i would not be surprised if trump netted no votes out of this county. i wouldn't even be surprised if joe biden netted a few votes out of this county because vote by mail is basically a stand in for party registration, even though georgia doesn't have it. these votes, despite being in a red county, may, in fact, be much more democratic than you might, otherwise, assume. >> question/concern, nia malika? >> no. i just think everybody's looking to see when this thing -- >> i don't -- i don't even want to leave the wall. let's do this. let's take a quick break and see. because, look. we just had director dozier here and obviously, i'm playing about any kind of deception. she is doing her job. she said we don't know when we're going to get votes, and then we got them, minutes later. so as they come in, we will tabulate what they mean, now and going forward.

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a quick key race alert here. georgia another shift. you know, this time yesterday, 23,000 votes was the margin. now just 665 votes. it keeps changing in realtime, and we'll keep following. public enemy said it's not what you think, it's what you follow. and let me tell you, if you follow this election, overnight, everybody is working to get it done the right way. this is a cause for celebration. we'll see what happens next. to sustain a healthy immune system plus melatonin for restorative sleep because being run down, is not an option. recharge your nights to take on your days with new vicks immunity zzzs.

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welcome back to our breaking news coverage. election night in america continued. i'm chris cuomo with the one and only don lemon. let me tell you, with nothing else, for all the drama, americans, you should be proud that your democracy is working 24/7. even on this late shift, new votes are coming in. we know people are working. we're talking to the directors there. volunteers across this country are literally burning the midnight oil so that we can get more information about who our next leader will be. >> we got to be honest, chris. i mean, this thing is really on the verge of being decided in these hours that you and i are covering. very, very shortly. if the trend lines as the prognosticators say, the trend lines continue in this direction, boy, we could have an announcement very soon. the final ballots, as you know, being tabulated to states that will determine the outcome. that's pennsylvania and georgia. we've been getting information from them all evening, all

morning here. a live look now. this is philadelphia. you can see the votes are being tabulated even at this late, or early hour, however you want to describe it. you can see dozens of election workers on the right side of the screen there. this is what we call democracy in action, mr. cuomo. >> absolutely. and they're doing the democracy and god's work. really showing what this country can do in a moment that matters. now why so much emphasis on pennsylvania and georgia? the president has to win georgia to win reelection. and if vice president biden wins pennsylvania, the race is over. so with that, how about a key race alert? georgia, 16 electoral votes. this is the one we've been seeing movement on tonight. look at the lead now for donald trump, 665 votes ahead. a dead heat.

and enough votes outstanding for joe biden to make it significant. pennsylvania, 20 electoral votes. that lead moving down. 18,229 separate the two candidates. 49.5 to 49.2. again, philadelphia, still has enough votes to make a difference, which is why you heard the president and his people attack philadelphia, because that's what they're worried about. now arizona. 11 electoral votes. 47,000 vote lead. this is the state of play in reverse. joe biden has been watching his lead slip away. donald trump overperforming in all important maricopa county there. will that continue? we'll see. nevada, six electoral votes. 11,000 vote lead for joe biden. we have seen that get a few more votes added to it, but we're in a vacuum of information there. we're waiting until some time later today for a big set of votes still being counted in

nevada. so state of play, roots to 270 electoral votes. the roads for the president have to go through georgia. for biden, if it goes through pennsylvania, everything is over. phil mattingly at the pennsylvania wall. >> that's right. that's why joe biden has narrowed in georgia. he has narrowed in pennsylvania there is a possibility he goes over the top in both of them soon. what does that actually mean? what you're looking at is the current state of play. if you're looking at red, you're looking at a state that was called for president trump. if you're looking at blue, that's a state called for vice president biden. we'll go ahead. everything gray is waiting to call. showing how this is going work. we'll say donald trump wins north carolina. not decided yet, but he's had a decisive lead for the better part of the last couple of days. also say he is probably going to win alaska. republicans tend to do that. we'll go ahead and put that in his column. why do pennsylvania and georgia matter so much? simple as this. if pennsylvania goes to joe biden, joe biden is over 273 --

over 270 electoral votes. here is the other key reason. say donald trump ends up holding on to his lead and expanding at some point and ends up winning pennsylvania. if, if joe biden wins, arizona, wins nevada, he is at 270 electoral votes you. talk about georgia. why is georgia is a must-win? joe biden wins georgia and donald trump comes back and wins arizona, plausible at this point in time. comes back and wins nevada. we'll see when clark county reports if joe biden wins georgia, there is no pathway for the president. >> this is basically as statistically likely as anything else would you say? >> i don't know about that. >> this is a little less likely? >> less likely. >> because right now he is losing in both of these. >> and pennsylvania is going in a specific direction. >> if we were here, 269, 268, that means that the election would be decided by one

district? >> and cnn has not called maine. maine allocates its electoral votes based on congressional district. >> who is winning in there? president trump. president trump is currently winning. and president trump is likely based on where things are going. he is sitting with el there. so where does that leaf things? if joe biden wins georgia, and president trump wins everything else on the map right now, that's where you get. >> and the constitution provides for that. there is a whole extent waited set of circumstances we don't have to get into. but a little bit of context here. one, we quickly keep giving north carolina to the president, and we should. if we go to north carolina for a second, just to show how small the margin is in north carolina. and it totally makes sense if you're going the play it out hypothetically, he should get it. 76,000 votes. we've had more votes in this election, congratulations to you, than we've seen in our lifetimes. and yet look at the margins we're dealing with. this is like a gimme. 76,000 votes. it might as well be a million.

we saw this in 2016, trump eeked by with some small margins, but not like we're dealing with now. the smallest margins we've ever dealt with on a multiple state scale. 600 in georgia right now. a few thousand across the board. 42,000 in arizona. that's the biggest one that we're dealing with that's in contention. very interesting. so that's where we are here in terms of -- that's north carolina. >> cnn has not called north carolina. >> no, no one has called it. >> we're doing it to game things out. it's still on the board right now. >> absolutely. >> there is an outstanding vote. we'll wait until the vote comes in. >> absolutely. >> we're just not gaming it out the same way internally because it doesn't have the pockets of potential gain for biden that these other states do. specifically, you want to go to pennsylvania. >> pennsylvania first. we'll do pennsylvania first. >> so we'll go to pennsylvania. why? because this could be a dispositive move. if biden wins pennsylvania, the election is over. it's one and done. now 18,229 votes. again, in this context, that's

not bad. but we're watching it go down over time. and why? >> let's show that to you. we'll go in here. great tool that our team made up. take you become to wednesday. wednesday at midnight. look at donald trump's lead. 548,000. and you can tick through. it grew 589. and it started to drop. why did it start to drop and so precipito precipitously? vote by mail started to be counted by the state of pennsylvania. we saw it happen in wisconsin. we saw it happen in michigan. happening in pennsylvania as well. election day vote counted first. vote by mail counted last. vote by mail because of a pandemic, because of how democrats have been voting throughout the course of this election is leaning heavily democratic. that's what put joe biden over the top in wisconsin. put joe biden over the top in michigan. and right now, take this off, has put joe biden within striking distance of about 160,000 ballots outstanding and those ballots are outstanding very heavily in democratic strongholds where joe biden has even been overperforming what

are already impressive margins up to this point. >> that's why president trump was bringing the hate parade to philadelphia specifically. and look, here is one of the reasons you don't do that. one, it's untrue. two, it's unfair. third, it crushes something that should be a big sense of morale boost for this country, including your own supporters. but also, it invites animus. we had a report earlier tonight. they're still trying to track down a group of people who came in a humvee with a weapon looking to bust in to the polling center. and obviously not do good things. blaming the president? no, not exactly. but correlation may not be causation. but right after he gives that lie diatribe today, is it really a coincidence that then these guys show up in a humvee, want to bust in to the voting center? that's why he is we should be careful about how we criticize something that should be emphasized and complimented. we believe it's going to come in. it's taken a long time. that's not that unusual. in fact we had one of the people running it there.

i think it was last night, say this is going pretty fast for us in terms of the volume that we're dealing with. >> and we've seen vote come in. you talk about philadelphia. loyfk it's the biggest county. 12% of the population in philadelphia. still waiting for about 8% to report. but over the course of this night up to this point, we've seen batches of up to a couple thousand votes come in. the votes have gone heavily joe biden. impressive for the biden campaign. that's expect. democrats are expected to do very well here. but joe biden has been overperforming in the batches we've seen up to this point. 86, 87%. not just 80%. and it's not just philadelphia. it's also the counties when you push out, you can look at the blue. this is southeastern pennsylvania. this is democratic stronghold. this is philadelphia. and then it pushes out into the counties. the suburb has gone heavily democratic over the course of the last couple of cycles. allegheny county, 36,000 votes, outstanding right now. expect to get them some time tomorrow. and she said that those votes, all vote by mail, have been

coming in at about 78% for joe biden. so when you look at the entirety of pennsylvania right now, when you look at the outstanding vote, you look at where it comes from, you look at how it was cast, almost entirely vote by mail, it underscores that you would rather be this and this. that might seem counterintuitive, because donald trump is ahead right now, but the reality of the math in pennsylvania is of the 160,000 ballots that are outstanding, there are a lot more ballots that look and based on precedent over what we've been looking at over the course of the last 24 hours, line up with helping joe biden and likely helping him to a significant degree. >> within the reality that although there is much more red than blue, land doesn't vote, it's about population, how do we know that there isn't a significant pocket of untapped vote trickling in for trump? >> well, two reasons. first reason is you look at the outstanding vote right now. and the vast majority of it, you can come down you. lock at montgomery county. still 5% outstanding. you look at the margin there's.

joe biden holding pretty steady. move over here, chester county, 5% outstanding. you're talking 5, 6, 7,000 votes in these counties right now. and mail-in ballots have risen, or have driven up the margins in all of these counties as they've come in. the other reason is you can even go to a president trump stronghold, and you can watch this. let me pull this up. and show -- watch the margins here. this is westmoreland county back in 2016. this is where president trump basically put his entire margin in this county. blowout turnout in this county. watch the margin from wednesday at midnight. 69% to 29%. only 4% reporting, and start moving through. stays at 69. stays at 69. and then starts to drop. why does it drop? because they start counting the vote by mail. there are democrats in these counties. democrats are voting by mail. they are done counting the election day vote. even in red counties, even in president trump's biggest counties where he gets the biggest margin, and it starts to

drop, as you go through. so it's sticking 63-34. but it was up at 69%. and i think the bottom line, harry made this point about georgia when we were talking about earlier. just because it's a republican county, if there is vote by mail outstanding, there is no guarantee it's going to come in republican because that has been democratic vote for the most part the ability for the president to net, to net outstanding vote, given we're only counting vote by mail right now, it's limited. he may win in total, but in terms of netting and pulling out not just a couple hundred votes, he is going to need thousands of votes based on what's left in democratic counties. there are very, very few pathways if any right now to net significant vote for president trump in pennsylvania. >> i was going to say you can look at the two swing counties i've been talking a lot about in erie and northampton. those were counties that went for barack obama in 2012. then went for donald trump in 2016. look at erie right now going for joe biden in 2020. and that county early on in the county was going for president trump. but as those vote by mail, right there, right there on the screen

right now with phil over there is going for president trump earlier in the count. but now has flipped to former vice president joe biden as the vote by mail has come in. >> if we want to take on the four-letter word of math here, harry, help us along with it. so they have 130,000 votes basically. so that's 6500 votes that could come in. but they'd split it 50-50. >> we don't know that. >> i'm sorry, phil, i was just going to say i'd doubt they'd split that remaining vote 50-50. i would think joe biden would get more than his lion share in that vote. that's something we should point out. even though we've been concentrating on philadelphia county, there are other counties out there. the other counties could help pad his margin. >> this underscores that erie, pull it up again, and take it back to just thursday at 6:30 p.m. donald trump was leading in this county. and again, he had a bigger margin if you go back even

further, tick forward. they're counting mail-in ballots. even in the closest contested area, joe biden is picking up margins. joe biden takes the lead in the county. so whether it's a democratic county with a narrow margin or republican county with a big donald trump margin, vote by mail is heavily democratic in this state, and that is all they have left to count in the 160,000 sore ballots that are outstanding. whether it's a democratic stronghold like philadelphia or whether it's erie or whether it's westmoreland county, a republican stronghold, a trump stronghold, the vote that is coming in is leaning democrat up to this point. >> and what do we have in terms of the vegas sense of timeline with pennsylvania. >> and when they're going report? >> yeah. >> philadelphia has been reporting throughout the night. philadelphia has been reporting throughout the night. we don't know when. we don't have the best sense of how they're doing. it would be awesome if they reported right now. we had a good sense of things. look, we've been talking about this. this is our third night of doing. this and let them do their jobs. let them do their jobs. they will report. they're reporting in a timely manner.

people need to understand pennsylvania as a state has never dealt with the scale of vote by mail before. pennsylvania as a state due to state law did not allow these officials to start counting mail-in ballots until the election day vote was tabulated. >> which was a mistake. in hindsight, we see a couple of things. states that do this all the time like nevada or have really thought it through and put resources to it like florida, just think of it logically. if you were going to have people mail things in advance of a big event, okay, like an election, when would you want to count them? after that big event or during that big event when you're obviously going have a lot of issues going on, which is what precipitated you giving the option to do it earlier, or before? the whole point would be to get ahead of it. and yet pennsylvania and other states didn't either think it through, or maybe the republican legislature there saw some perceived advantage to democrats to doing it sooner so they wanted to do it later. i don't know what the reason is. but they did something that was

unintelligent and unproductive. they didn't give the staff or the resources to count or the rules to count them in advance. that's why we are where we are with this. it's not perfidy. it's not faithlessness. it's not deception. it's not democratic diabolical movement. it's the law there. that's what we're looking at. >> and you talk about the staff and letting them do it at the same time in election day vote. in florida they were processing and counting. you saw on tuesday night polls close, and within minutes, boom, huge batches just dropped in and immediate results. that was all vote by mail. >> more apparatus. that's how florida got it done. we'll see how accurate it is when everybody goes through it. but they had much different machinery down there. and also, because the mail-in ballots are harder to process than the other ones, because you go in person, you get your ballot. you go and put into it the kiosk and you take care of it. that's it. it goes to the scan tron. the whole vetting is whether or

not they believe it's you when you go in if it's a nonid state. the mail-in ballots, you send it in, they open it up. we've been watching the process in realtime last night with nick valencia who is doing a beautiful job of showing us the process in action. they opportunistic up. pennsylvania has a two envelope process. so you need someone just to sort the mail, put it aside for someone else to put it into the machine. and then a third person to do what they call aughtification. so it's like a three-stage process there. so it's more labor intensive. with all that said -- and look, it's all relevant. why? because somebody is trying to savage our process. somebody is trying to seed a lack of belief of integrity in this process. and that has never been less the case than what we've seen so far in this election. we haven't had, knock on wood, not a single gross irregularity claim of where we're really having to look into something. so think of that as we go the break. please stay with cnn. lactaid is 100% real milk, just without the lactose.

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it may be the wee harris, but history is really unfolding on our watch right now. vote counting in georgia is under way, and the state is on track to move into joe biden's column at any moment now. and it calls for a key race alert. look at the numbers in georgia, can you believe that? it is a dead heat. 49.4-49.4. the difference there, a mere 565 vo -- 665 votes. jennifer granholm, scott jennings and ron brownstein. hello to all of you. ron, i think you'll agree, it doesn't get any closer than 665 votes. well, unless it's like one vote apart. but you know what i'm saying. >> yeah, no, it is striking. and it is reflective of the

changes we are seeing everywhere across the country in this election, the lines that are being more deeply engraved. donald trump's hold on trump country is formidable and looks impregnable and perhaps deeper than 2016. but look what happened in the atlanta metro to make this happen. and only a margin of 240,000 votes in atlanta itself, but the two giant suburban counties outside of atlanta, gwinnett and dekalb. obama lost them by 60,000 votes. hillary clinton won them by 26,000 votes. right now joe biden is up by 129,000 votes in places that as the republican pollster told me we used to build the republican majorities in the state. and you are seeing the same story in pennsylvania. the four big suburban counties outside of philadelphia, montgomerie, delaware, chester, and bucks. right now joe biden is up by

275,000 votes in those counties. that's 100,000 votes more than hillary clinton was. and you can look at denver and its surrounding counties. you can look at dallas, houston, austin and their surrounding counties. yes, donald trump is very strong in trump country, but he is basically being repudiated in all of the growing metro areas that are driving population growth, and driving the economy. so it really is a bifurcation. that is what has brought georgia within reach. >> hang on, governor. i want to talk about philadelphia and all of them, because it's an important conversation. but i want to get scott in here real quick. you're a trump supporter. 2018, we were saying georgia, i don't know. i think it's a pipe dream for democrats. but here we are, a mere two years later. are you surprised at what you're seeing? >> you know, frankly, i'm not. because of some of the trends that we saw in 2018 that ron was just describing. we saw the continued flow of

votes from the republican party to democrats in the suburbs. as ron said, donald trump continues to do quite well among traditional republicans, among people in rural areas. he also did better among some minority voter cohorts that i think democrats probably didn't expect, or at least don't like tonight. but the truth is white males in the suburbs went away from donald trump. we spent a lot of time, don, talking about female voters, especially female voters in the suburbs. but it looks to me like the gender split was about the same as it was in 2016. but white male voters, we talk about yoga moms. these are the yoga dads. they went away from donald trump. so i wonder for the future of the republican party -- >> namaste, scott. >> go on. >> i'm sorry, go ahead? >> i was just going to say that the party used to count on these guys, and now they voted for joe biden. so the next messengers for the republican party are going to have to marry these two coalitions, right?

the working class voters that donald trump attracts, but then the white collar voters that seem to have gone away from the president. >> i don't know if they want to be called yoga dads. maybe they're soccer dads or pilates dads. you're talking about georgia. i know you wanted to talk about pennsylvania and philadelphia, what ron was talking about. >> yes. >> they're closing the gap in pennsylvania right now. it's just a matter of time until he officially, you know, pulls into the lead for now. we'll have to see. but he is rebuilding the blue wall. go on, governor. >> yeah, he is rebuilding the blue wall. and he did it with a very strategic strategy, joe biden did, which was he was not going to see cede working class people to donald trump. donald trump did a good job in 2016 of going everywhere to say to working class people that these trade agreements, your jobs are gone. huh-uh. biden said this is a group that should be democratic. working class people, whether you live in rural or exurban or

urban areas, they should be part of the democratic tent, because our policies totally help them. so he wasn't going to cede any of that. and that was a very important part of rebuilding this blue wall, whether it was pennsylvania, michigan, or wisconsin. i have to say, though, in georgia, i mean, i am just so in awe of stacey abrams because her strategy of registering people who, you know, they added 800,000 people to the registration polls between 2018 and today. and so now you have 67% turnout in georgia, and now you've got these two potential runoffs that will happen on january 5th for the senate for the control of the senate. and -- >> governor, hold on a second. someone in the control room has me keyed. can you unkey me so i can hear the governor? go on. >> wait, i've been saying all

this stuff and you haven't heard me? >> all of what you said did not cut out, but go on. >> i was just praising stacey abrams for her efforts on registration. >> yeah. >> and saying that there is an opportunity to do further registration even now because of these two senate runoff seats that are coming up for control of the senate. because if you really want to see policy change on the democratic side, you've got to get control of the senate. >> to your first point, you said that the former vice president wasn't going to cede any territory to working class people. but i think that is something that the democratic party really needs to focus on and work on right now, because they -- >> totally. >> because they are losing or have lost working class people in many ways in this country. scott, i want to bring you back. in i want to ask you about what's going on because the president is saying now, oh, my gosh, this is fraudulent. the election is being stolen from me. he's got other folks around him who are buying into this, politicians who are currently in office. donald trump jr. called out

nikki haley on twitter for not defending his dad's baseless claims on voter fraud. minutes later she praised the president. why does the family have such a grip on your party? >> look at the results. donald trump won 93% of republican voters. this was an incredibly close election. it's obviously that donald trump is going to continue to have influence in the republican party for the next several years. i think he is a personality, even if he loses this election is not going anywhere. neither is his donald trump jr. neither is ivanka. they're here to stay. and you're going have all these republicans vying for the nomination. and they want to be, you know, tapped by donald trump as somebody that can carry on with his coalition. the trouble with it all is that it's not -- apparently not true. i mean, there doesn't seem to be any validity to the claims. they're still counting the legal

votes that came. in count every legal vote. let every legal process follow its course, whether it's the biden or trump campaign that has a claim. and once those are resolved, we'll have a vote. it may take a few days. it may take a few weeks. but that's the responsible republican claim tonight. that's the responsible republican statement. but if you gout and try to dial on the hill that this election was stolen when there is no evidence that it wasn't, my view is people won't appreciate it in the long run, and it won't be good for your personal brand. >> okay. ron, i have to go. i think what you're saying is only half of it, scott. you can say that every vote needs to be counted, but what you also need to say what the president is doing is dangerous, and you should call the president out for doing that. go ahead, ron. >> quickly. >> i did. it's wrong. i literally -- >> i don't mean you. i don't mean you. i don't mean you. i'm talking about -- >> oh. >> people in office right now. go on, ron, quickly. >> governor granholm's point,

these two senate runoffs in georgia are a perfect encapsulation where there as a country republicans now hold 47 of the 57 seats. democrats hold 39 of the 40 senate seats in the states that voted both times against trump. we are petitioning as a country and somehow perfectly encapsulates it that georgia, a state divided between the urban and rural that we are seeing separate us everywhere will now get to decide which party controls the senate and how far joe biden can go in implementing his agenda in next few hours. >> we have a long way to go on this shift. you guys are going to be back. drink your red bulls or caffee or caffeine, monster energy drinks. we'll see you in a moment. thank you very much. hey, listen, we're keeping an eye on the battleground states. and what is going to happen in georgia, look at that. 665 votes separate these men. both vying to be the next president of the united states. one wanting to stay in office the office that he was close to

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all right. here we are. we're looking at the state of play. 253-213. on our watch, although it's the early morning hours, we have seen movement in pennsylvania, but more specifically in georgia, okay? right now the lead in georgia, in this key race alert is 665 votes. dead heat. forget about the estimated vote. there is more than enough vote in georgia to make a difference in this election for joe biden. why do we care? we care about all of them. but the president has to win georgia to have a path to 270 electoral votes. who says so? phil mattingly at the magic wall. so let's discuss it. phil, we're going to focus just on georgia. 665 votes have moved on our

watch. we're now dealing with smaller and smaller batches. is that just the eventuality, or could we get a big crop of votes? >> to the extent you could be at the edge of your seat at 3:30 in the morni ing on the third day an election. >> go ahead. >> look, here is the -- >> all right. here we go. here is the bottom line. 665 votes, we know there is one county that has been consistently reporting throughout the course of the last several hours of which there is enough votes still outstanding in that county to overtake president trump if you are joe biden. that county is right here. that is clayton county. we think they've got somewhere between 1500 and 2,000 votes outstanding. around 84, 85%. could get him there. still trying to figure out exactly what's outstanding to fully do the math. in georgia right now, what has

been consistently reporting, clayton is the ball game. clayton was the biggest outstanding democratic stronghold county with vote going into this night. had about 4500 outstanding. we've seen it whittled down with a couple of thousand here and there. and joe biden has been picking up vote every single time. we started donald trump was up about 1800 votes. he is now up about 666 votes. and we know clayton, spoke to a clayton official earlier who made clear they are working through the night. they are reporting as they can. this is what we're waiting on in terms of the immediacy of the actual vote count. will joe biden overtake president trump and will he do it in a matter of minutes? the expectation is that joe biden right now is on a pathway to overtake president trump. clinton clait on the plus. we do not expect gwinnett to report in a couple of hours. it is now this morning right now. we know gwinnett has about 4500 votes, ballots outstanding. votes that have already been cast that they're counting and they're waiting to report.

gwinnett, you can look at the margin here, joe biden is winning gwinnett handily. we don't know the ratio in which it is going to come in. but based on mail-in ballots, based on the fact that democrats have dominated mail-in ballots throughout the country, the expectation is that joe biden will do well in gwinnett. if you're a republican, you're saying where is the outstanding vote where donald trump has a chance to match, blunt some of what joe biden is bringing in right now, or is joe biden on a pathway to win the state of georgia? >> let's take a quick break. we'll come back. we'll work through the permutations. any votes that come in, we'll deliver to you right away. we'll be right back. proven ingredients that fuel 5 indicators of brain performance. memory, focus, accuracy, learning, and concentration. try our new gummies for 30 days and see the difference.

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all right. we have another key race alert in georgia. even though it is 3:42 in the morning eastern time, they are working through the night, and we know it because more votes just came through. look at the spread now between donald trump and joe biden. now 463 votes only separate the two men. where did these votes come from? what do they suggest about what could come next? let's go to the magic wall and discuss it with phil mattingly. what do we know about where they came from and what that tells us about the state of play? >> it's the hardest working in georgia right now. it's clayton county. they are reporting in one huge

batch. they've been reporting trickling out. they reported 306 votes. joe biden won 2 -- netted, netted 202 of those votes. where does that bring him down to now? 463 votes. we know there is still outstanding vote in clayton county. we know they're still working through the night. >> 1500? >> we were calculating that which were down. they were down between somewhere 2,000 and 1500. >> they reported 306 new votes. and biden netted 202, which means he won that batch by about 66 points. that's a little less -- he earned a little less than 85% of the vote, which if it continues on, based on what we believe the number of votes still out in clayton county, witness they're done counting and given the statewide margin of 463 at this point, those votes should in fact put biden in the lead if it follows the pattern so far. >> so clayton is working hard overnight as director dozier told us when she did the interview with us. we're not just waiting on

clayton county, right? it's not like well either this is going to settle the race. there are other counties. >> there are other counties outstanding. this is a county that has a very real possibility based on what we've seen the last several batches. joe biden has been between 85 and 88% every single time it's come out. as harry notes. that should based on what's left put him over the top of donald trump. however, you make a key point. there is still vote outstanding. there is vote for democrats. democrats are very keen on gwinnett county. 4500 ballots outstanding. they've been obviously -- they are in. they're being tabulated right now. we expect them to be released some time this morning that leans democratic. if you're republican, i have to to lean here. it is forsyth. i thought i got houston right and was proud of that. but it was forsyth that tripped me up. a little over a thousand votes in forsyth. republicans hoping this margin holds. we've been talking about it all night. the margins are not holding. regardless where they are in republican counties, because they're mail-in ballots, the mail-in ballots are largely

going democrat or blunting the ability for president trump to net gains here. you can also go down here as well. lawrence county. i believe has about 1500 votes outstanding. not outstanding. votes that have been put in that are being tabulated right now that we're waiting to see how they actually come out. so i think the question right now, and harry has been good at breaking this down. is we know there are votes in gwinnett county. we know clayton county is about to put joe biden ahead of president trump on net in the state of georgia. turn the state blue, at least for the moment. the biggest question is, in lawrence county and forsyth and president trump in that outstanding mail-in vote actually gain votes and make a comeback. i think right now democrats on the ground will tell you it's unlikely. but we'll see. count the votes. we'll see. >> absolutely. look, it's 3:45 a.m. in the east. i wish i could tell you, you know what? we've got this. go to sleep. we don't know when it's going to happen. it's been coming down in georgia. we got a move in pennsylvania.

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this holiday season, i see you found the snacks. mmm, delicious! i need this recipe. everyone thinks i made them, but it's actually d-con. what was that? judy? d-con. mice love it to death. a key race -- alert. look at what's happening in georgia. i mean, 463 votes separate donald trump and joe biden. and at any moment, it is believed, this is the way the trend lines are going, the trend is going, that joe biden will at

any moment now take over, take over the lead, at least for now in georgia. so what we're witnessing right now really is history. that's history in the making in this election. democracy in action. despite the president's false claims that he won the election, okay. and that the victory is being stolen from him. so let's bring in to get some perspective from this. cnn presidential historian douglas brinkley. douglas, you're from georgia. good evening to you -- good morning to you. i keep saying good evening. i'm used to being in evening. you're from georgia. give us perspective. you have clinton, carter, and kennedy, right, who the last time democratic president won georgia. >> well, you know, don, sometimes people forget that states like georgia were competitive. in 1960, jack kennedy was able to win georgia, even as a democratic catholic. but after that civil rights act of '64-'65 under lyndon

johnson's great society, the south, as we all know, went republican. but jimmy carter was from georgia, a native son. he was able to pick up some southern states back in 1976. and then bill clinton in 1992 was able to. but since then, it's just been bright red. but like texas, it's one of those states, north carolina, that people keep hoping if you're a democrat that it will turn blue. it looks like now georgia is on everyone's mind. the great hoagie har michael song. all eyes are on georgia. who would have thought that georgia may be the state that gives joe biden the presidency. >> i was going to ask you. and we're so divided right now, the country. are you surprised that this is happening in georgia? the demographics, i have to say, i lived in atlanta for a long time, and i saw that the -- i would say maybe the beginning of some of the demographic changes there, younger people, more diverse, more people living what we call it inside the perimeter or just outside of the from time

to timer in the surrounding suburb. >> you know, and i'd give ted turner some credit when he brought cnn to atlanta, determined to make it an international city, a beacon for the world. atlanta's known everywhere. and people, as you know, came from all over to atlanta. you go any community you'll find in the world, there are people from somalia or from nigeria, people from venezuela, costa rica. it became a great american international city, and it just kept growing and growing the rings around it. it's an amazing metropolis. and now this is atlanta triumphing over rural georgia that we're witnessing right now. and so it's a new day in the state of georgia. >> and you're right about that. you got cnn you. had coca-cola did the same thing. and of course you've got the universities, emory and hospitals and so on. it's -- the demographics are changing.

but let's talk about the overall big picture here. what we heard from the president of the united states, we heard it the other night, but we heard it today also in the briefing room. earlier yesterday in the briefing room, it was pathetic. it's dangerous. how do you think history is going to remember that spectacle? >> what an embarrassing moment it was for donald trump. he was like kind of shriveling coward, lashing out in different directions, humiliating our country around the world for no reason at all, except his own wounded ego. but if you really pull back from it all, it just shows you what a low class act this president has been. if you want to watch the way you lose an election, look at the way in 1992 that george herbert walker bush conceded to bill clinton. if you want to watch what a president does when they're in real peril, look at the way

richard nixon spoke to the country quoting theodore roosevelt's famous speech about the man in the arena and the dust and the blood of politics. nixon said goodbye and left. instead, donald trump's lost, and he's going to make us suffer and pay for it day after day after day with whining, complaints, lawsuits, threats to the supreme court. and so again, he is ending his presidency as it began, showing zero nobility. >> well, we have to see how it plays out. douglas brinkley, thank you so much. i really appreciate it. if you look at the numbers, if you're just waking up or getting up to go to the bathroom, whatever it is, your eyes are not deceiving you. things have changed a lot when it comes to georgia. really it's changed a lot in pennsylvania and a number of battleground states. look at that georgia, 463 votes separating the men. 49.4 to 49.4. that is close. more key race alerts coming up,

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welcome back to cnn's breaking news coverage. election night in america continues and continues it does. i'm chris cuomo along with the man d lemon, and we have had

things change overnight in a fundamental way in georgia. >> where did the time go in one fell swoop. even on this early friday morning rgs t morning, the path for joe biden is much clearer. he picked up thousands more votes in pennsylvania, that narrows the gap there while a nervous president is crying, stop the count, going crazy on social media. the trump lead in georgia, it's only just a few hundred votes apart. shrinking fast is that lead that the president had just hours ago. we've got a lot to watch in the overnight hours. >> what a study in contrast. you have our president shouting baseless claims at the same time fellow citizens volunteering across the country to give a basis to claims about who should be the next president of the united states. and we know why he wants to stop the count except in arizona because the count is going against him, and what we're

seeing is specifically in the state of georgia, we have a real situation to watch. it has changed just in the last hour. let's get to a key race alert. here it is, 16 electoral votes, dead heat, 463 votes separate the two men. it just shifted just a few minutes ago. why? small batches coming in from clayton county. all right. so let's check in there. we actually have nick valencia in jonesboro, georgia, which is of course, part of clayton county. good to have you, my friend. >> reporter: hey there, chris, we just got here in the last hour. it appears they may be done for the night. we did try to go in there to go live a little while ago. there isn't anyone on site to give us permission. i want to tell you what i saw inside. there was two rooms separated by a wall. in one room there was about 20 poll workers who looked exhausted.

i asked one on their way to a break how long they had been there, and they said they didn't remember. what we saw was them counting ballots, it appeared. after that, they stuffed them into a ballot box which was transferred into a room next door, where it appeared they were loading them into a loading machine, a scanner, where they're uploaded to the state. just within the last 30 minutes activity has come to a standstill. i mentioned that room of 20 workers, they were sent home, and we saw several of them get into their car looking very tired after what is only -- can only be described as a marathon work shift here counting through the night. i mentioned activity has come to a standstill. there's a dozen or so poll workers inside that room. just about 30 minutes ago, they were scanning those ballots. i took a peek and there's nothing happening in there right now. with these votes, we know the secretary of state's web site is not going to be updating until later this morning but they are being uploaded directly to the county's site, which is how we're getting them reported out.

as it stands right now, there's a very slim margin separating president trump, his lead here against joe biden. 463 votes and that margin is closing fast. at this point, chris and don, it only appears or seems at this point it's inevitable until we get the next update and joe biden slings into the lead here. >> appreciate it. we have seen people coming and going in their cars behind you. amazing work they are doing through the night. thank you very much, stay safe. 253 to 213. it's all about blocks that aren't colored in. those are the states that are in play. two of them will probably make the difference in this election for exactly how to the magic wall with phil mattingly. ms. dozer said they were going to work through the night. you have to give them credit. and they have been delivering multiple batches of votes and they have made a difference that takes us right down to the wire. >> look, put this in context, this is, what, 4.9 million votes

in the state. separated bill 463. 463 right now, and if you're looking ar looki looking around at the outstanding vote, you're probably feeling more comfortable in the biden campaign. just where nick was, clayton county, this is where we have been seeing throughout the night, a big democratic county. the margin is not reflected in the margin we have been getting in the batches of vote that's coming out. we have had them in a couple hundred at a time coming in, and joe biden has been hitting 86, 87, 88% in what we have been seeing. why does that matter, it's more than enough if it sticks on that track to surpass donald trump. we think there's somewhere between 1,502,000 votes outstanding in clayton county. we'll see what happens, when that happens, but the reality is when you look at the numbers, the margins, the remainder of

clayton should put joe biden ahead in total on the states. the bigger question is what's left outstanding, we know at some point later this morning, gwinnett county has 4,700 votes that need to be recorded. that should be beneficial to joe biden. i think the bigger question, forscythe county, lawrence county to the south, those are republican counties where president trump has a pretty decent margin. those are counties, both have a little more than a thousand votes that need to be tabulated and reported out. what does that do for president trump, is that enough to stop the bleeding? is that enough to either stop joe biden from overtaking him or if joe biden overtakes with clay county, does that give him an opportunity to come back and get back into the lead? the one thing to keep in mind, and i think this has been the case in several days, just because republicans are leading with a wide margin in a county,

if it's a mail-in vote, it has been leaning democrat iic. probably five, six counties, we're expecting a decent chunk, we're talking hundreds, then thousands. that's outstanding. we're down to 10,000 or so votes left in the state right now, and then provisionals, and military. this is going to be very tight no matter what. it looks, at least based on what clayton is doing right now. that joe biden is going to overtake in the next hour or so. >> and we're talking about georgia because if the president loses the lead here, and it stays that way, he can't win the election. that's why. he has to win georgia, other states as well, obviously, but it's a must do for him, not for joe biden, but obviously every state biden gets gives him a much different opportunity. for biden we have been talking mostly about pennsylvania. why? if biden wins pennsylvania, it's won and done. he would get 270 plus electrical

votes, and that's it. it's over. we saw a couple of changes there. then it went quiet. what's the state of play? >> joe biden is down 18,229 votes. there's about 160,000 votes we are waiting to be tabulated and voted out. the issue if you are the trump campaign is the bulk of the outstanding vote is coming in counties that look like this that are blue. the most notable results we have seen over the course of the last couple of hours have come from the city of philadelphia, and they have come in big for joe biden. 86, 87% margins. that is more than enough to put him over the top. the big question right now in pennsylvania, i'll be frank, when does joe biden overtake. that's the reality on the ground right now, where the outstanding vote is southeastern pennsylvania. everything you see that's blue here are counties that have outstanding vote. that's what the biden campaign is waiting for. that's what they believe will put them over the top, and soon.

>> we have kristen holmes on the voting desk with a little bit of a deeper look into where the vote is in pennsylvania, which way it could break. thank you for being with us. >> that's right, chris, phil was talking about all of this being in these democratic counties, but part of it is also the way that these ballots were cast. we know there has been a huge outstanding number of absentee ballots that have broke for joe biden in the state of pennsylvania. let's talk about how many are left and what that looks like. 163,501 absentee ballots left to be counted. the margin is still roughly around 18,000 here, so phil is talking about biden overtaking trump. there are plenty of ballots to go overtake and go beyond that. again, we talk about absentee ballots, we are talking about huge margins we are seeing in pennsylvania going for joe biden to donald trump. specifically, let's go to

philadelphia. 305,000 mail-in ballots have already been counted. now we are down to the last 60,000 left to count. now, we were trying to see if there was going to be some sort of data overnight. we have not gotten new numbers in hours. we're watching it very closely here. also in philadelphia, we can talk about this quickly. we mentioned it last time, those provisional ballots. these are only going to come into play if the margins are slim. i'm talking to democrats on the ground there that are feeling good. they don't think they are going to need provisional ballots in areas like philadelphia because they think the margin is going to end up being so big in biden's favor because of the absentee ballots. pittsburgh area, 36,000 mail-in ballots left to be counted there, including 29,000 that can't be counted until 5:00 p.m. on friday. we're talking about margins

here. all of the counties that are outstanding or most of them, it's absentee ballots that are outstanding. as phil has said multiple times tonight, chris, uyou have said t as well. in the republican counties, the remaining ballots are skewing heavily democratic. any democrat that's looking at this, biden supporter, they're feeling very good about where they stand right now. >> let me ask you something, in terms of timing and process, when we talk about the provisional ballots, and the damaged ballots, are people aware, do they have a mechanism in pennsylvania for you to track your ballot so that you know that your ballot is one of the damaged ones? provisional is a little different, you probably know if you were given a provisional ballot, and whether or not that ballot could be cured. cure is going to be the issue, fixing, with the damaged ones. what do we know about any of that?

>> there's a couple of things about that. the first is when it comes to provisional ballot, they have seven days to go over that, and that's very different. there's not a curing process in that because they still have to get processed, go through all of that. most of the provisional ballots are done at a voting place. it's not the same as mail-in. when we talk about damaged ballot, there's two separate things going on. you have the damage that the scanner couldn't read it. it doesn't necessarily nemean tt a signature didn't match. what it might mean is you put an x through one because you made the wrong circle and have to circle the other one. someone in erie county told me it's like this across the state. they go through all of the ballots when there are issues, they try to decide the

intelligent. there's a committee, bipartisan that looks at it and says clearly they wanted to volt for this person, so they manually put it in, and that is how that vote is counted. this is a time consuming process and this bipartisan committee, when they talk about how this voter intent was to be, they have to have a majority vote in order to move that forward. it is a very time consuming process. when it comes to curing ballots with minor mistakes, this is a win for the trump campaign today. the secretary of state had said that people had until november 12th, to come back and fix those minor mistakes or to cure their ballot, fix the signature, now it is november 9th and that is because the trump campaign pushed back on that. so that is a shorter window there, and that was a trump campaign win in their ongoing litigation, chris. . >> if you're a populist and

trying to empower people and get away from the institutions, why would you cut their time to fix their ballot unless what you want to do is make sure not one person more votes than absolutely has to. that was a great answer. thank you very much for helping us figure that out. ordinarily, it wouldn't matter but in this race this tight, they could come into play. thank you very much, kristen. let's take a break. late night election coverage continues next. vicks vapopatch. easy to wear with soothing vicks vapors for her, for you, for the whole family. trusted soothing vapors, from vicks they have businesses to grow customers to care for lives to get home to they use stamps.com print discounted postage for any letter any package any time right from your computer all the amazing services of the post office only cheaper

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we're watching the numbers. let's get this key race alert. there it is, pennsylvania. look at that, competitive as ever. the president has a small lead over the former vice president so we're waiting on votes there. 95 in but where those votes come from, that can make all the difference there and we believe that it will. let's bring in former michigan governor, jennifer granholm, and we were talking about the changing demographics in georgia before, and how georgia is now competitive when it comes to the democrats, but when you look at what's happening in pennsylvania, the democrats lost pennsylvania in 2016, if you want to look over to arizona,

arizona now in play for the democrats. what is going on here? >> i think one of the reasons is that joe biden was really strategic about making sure he did two things, one, is that he got his base out. and the second thing is that he did not turn away from trying to persuade those obama/trump voters, both were important, but what he did was cut the margins of those working class voters that trump won by like in michigan, 31 points. he cut it, brought it down to like 15 points and even though he may not have won the rural districts, he did less bad and that made all the difference. you cannot just seed the territory like i said before. i think joe biden had a winning formula. he will continue to do that. when he uses the word all, i'm

going to be the president for all of america, that really speaks to all of america, and it's a wise strategy. >> what's behind the numbers, ron, if you look at the numbers coming in, arizona is a little bit different. it seems to be moving, at least trending now in the president's direction. don't know if that will hold. if you look at what's happening in pennsylvania, look at what's happening in georgia, even in the roed counties, the votes coming in are mail-in votes. it's in joe biden's favor. >> you know, yes, and that's really a function of who chose to vote by mail given the president's warnings against it, but to governor granholm's point, i think we have a nationalized politics to the greate greatest extent i have seen in my lifetime, since the dawn of the modern party system where basically we have the same pl politics in every state. whether we're talking about atlanta or pennsylvania or even now arizona and texas, much less

colorado and virginia, you could draw an imaginary beltway around the metro centers, the biggest population centers of those states and democrats are doing better within that beltway. while republicans and trump are doing better at consolidating outside that beltway. as we said in the last hour, the four big suburban counties outside of philadelphia. joe biden is leading by 275,000 votes, that's 100,000 more than hillary clinton, and 150,000 more than obama. montgomery county is where the philadelphia took place. rich like that are like republicans, main line republicans is the phrase they used. lyndon johnson was the only democrat who won it in the 20th century. even franklin roosevelt didn't win montgomery county. joe biden is up by 139,000 votes and, that's true in gwinnett and cobb outside of atlanta,

shifting in maricopa, dallas and houston. the flip side is republicans are getting bigger and bigger margins in these nonurban counties as governor granholm said, joe biden made some end roads among blue collar whites in the north but in the south, don, those margins are still towering for republicans, and it is the biggest hurdle to democrats flipping those states. the metro mooucvement is enough. texas didn't get there, largely because of the latinos but it's on the same moving walkway. >> you're taking me back to the late '90s, early 2000s when i worked on the main line. montgomery county, right there. >> carry grant and jimmy stewart and katherine hepburn. >> there you go. >> you're going a little bit before my time with that. >> probably a little bit before your time. that's how republican it was. >> since ron didn't answer my

question, scott, talking about the vote, but i wasn't as specific as i could have been, did the president hurt himself by saying, you know, you got to get out there avote and don't trust the mail. did he actually drive up the voting for democrats, which may ultimately end up hurting him? >> well, look, culturally before donald trump republicans always wanted to be a group of people that voted on election day. a lot of republicans see election day as sacred. they like the cd of putting the ballot in the box. >> you don't think the proof in the turnout? >> yeah, absolutely, look at the election day turnout, but kwhwhi was going to say, when donald trump says something, it causes republicans to want to do it more. when he said don't vote by mail, vote in person, vote on election day, it exacerbated that even further. that's not inherently a bad

thing. obviously you can win a lot of votes on election day, but you wonder in races that are this close, we have literally thousands of votes, you wonder out there, you know, how many votes that were lost that would have been mailed in by republicans who didn't get to the polls. turnout was quite high and probably not a huge number. my advice to the party is don't denigrate any method of voting because you need every single vote you can get. look how close the races are, and to denigrate any method, if it costs a few votes, it can fail. >> in fact, i would think that republicans would want to embrace vote by mail. the great news about this election is that we have now expanded significantly vote by mail options and it is not going to go back, and i think you can learn a lesson from what's happened in these slow count places like in pennsylvania and certainly in wisconsin, and

pennsylvania where the republicans in the legislature refused to expand the count of the vote by mail options before the election like they did in florida or in north carolina and what ended up happening is you have all of this stuff late because republicans thought it would help to feed the president's narrative after the election. and that's really unfortunate. but i think the good news is that vote by mail is here. they have worked out a lot of the kinks and in the next elections you're going to see a huge expansion of participation. >> well, and it happened this time. i thought it was a good thing that americans have more time to vote. they weren't just rushing out. i got to get back to work, and getting out of line because they couldn't stay. got to go feed their kids and the babysitter has got to leave and all that. i thought it was a good thing that more people got to vote this time, regardless of who they were supporting. stand by, we'll get back ostto in a little bit.

>> highest turnout since women were able to vote. look at harris county. >> you got to stand back and stand by. >> come on, don. >> i got to get to the break. >> all right. look, how many cliches can i get in here. the votes are coming in. the ground is shifting under our feet. we're going to keep our eye on it. we'll be right back. we're going to have some key race alerts. of brain performance. memory, focus, accuracy, learning, and concentration. try our new gummies for 30 days and see the difference.

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we have just had a huge change in the state of this election. phil mattingly, what just happened in georgia. >> we have a new match of votes from clayton county. the development is huge.

i'm going to do math. what we have from clayton county is joe biden picked up 1,602 votes, donald trump picked up 222 votes. that nets out for joe biden, 1,380. donald trump was ahead by 463. 1380, 463, the new leader in georgia is joe biden by 917 votes. for the moment, the state of georgia, it will update shortly in the magic wall, for the moment, according to the county web site, joe biden has turned georgia blue for this moment by 917 votes as clayton county has dropped what looks like the remainder of its outstanding vote. >> donald trump cannot win this election without georgia so for now joe biden has taken the key piece in the puzzle for donald trump. why are we doing it here?

that's just about time in the system. this information is from the county board of elections. they put it out, the math is what it is. we have a new leader in georgia. two remaining issues. >> there's nor outstanding vote, i'll swipe this away. keep this in mind, that is the lead for joe biden when this updates, that was the outstanding vote in clayton county. we knew it was going to come in, probably around 1,500, 1,600, ended up being 1602 votes. that is not the entirety of the vote that's outstanding in the vote in the state of georgia. we are waiting for other counties, gwinnett county, expected to report tomorrow. there's also republican counties like forscythe county that has north of a thousand votes, lawrence county, another republican county, go down here, lawrence county also has about a

thousand votes left. the big question, and we have been talking about it all night is just because it is a republican county, lawrence county, 64/35%, however, what is remaining is vote by mail, has still been leaning democrat, while president trump may pick up vote, will he be able to net a significant amount. that's an open question. joe biden is up by nearly a thousand votes in the state once it updates, that given how close this is, given how little vote is outstanding and given how the majority of the outstanding vote comes from democratic counties and all of the outstanding vote comes from vote by mail, that will be difficult to make up. joe biden is outperforming in the most recent batch what his current county total is, and i think you can apply that.

we have seen that throughout the even in the red counties. joe biden is going to out perform. that vote by mail will be much more favorable to him even in the red counties. >> harry enten thank you very much. so now the open question becomes why, why is georgia so significant for trump but not for biden? let's take a look. >> we'll map this out. we have been talking about this, and i think this is really important to actually know what's going on. we have been talking a lot about pennsylvania, why? you add 20 electoral votes to joe biden's total, you're over 270. why is georgia so important, president trump has an up hill battle. he needs to win everything left on the map. if president trump were to win north carolina where he's currently leading, if he's able to hold off joe biden in pennsylvania, give him alaska, we expect him to win that, you give him nevada, you give him arizona, go ahead and give him maine, too. joe biden wins georgia, there's no way that donald trump can get to 270 electoral votes.

i'll give donald trump maine, too, so you see what could be a possibility. keep in mind, joe biden is closing quickly in pennsylvania, he leads currently in arizona and nevada, however, if joe biden wins georgia, there is no pathway to 270 for president trump. that's why it matters so much. president trump needs georgia. he needs pennsylvania where joe biden is about to overtake him, and joe biden is leading in arizona, and he is leading in nevada. >> let's do the other path to 270. we have never done it because georgia is so fundamental to trump. if biden wins georgia, what does that mean for him in terms of his different paths? >> let's go through this. we'll go ahead and give president trump north carolina. we're gaming this out at the moment. >> and by the way, biden doesn't have georgia, the big news is georgia for the first time has changed hands from trump to biden by 917 votes now. but it's still not over. so but just hypothetically, what could it mean? >> let's talk about trend lines and how things have been moving. you saw it happen in georgia,

and it's about to happen in pennsylvania when they start reporting again. they have taken a little bit of a break. give biden georgia, that brings him to 269 electoral votes. joe biden can win any of the other states, and he's over 270 electoral votes. joe biden based on what's outstanding, what we know and what we have seen is in a very good position in pennsylvania. joe biden right now is leading in arizona. we will see if that holds. we should get the next update from maricopa county, and joe biden is leading in nevada. there is a very real pathway for joe biden to 306 electoral votes. if you're the biden campaign, all you really care about is getting over 270. let me explain why that matters. we talked about this last night, given how litigious the trump campaign has made clear it wants to be, if you're the biden campaign, you feel a lot more comfortable if this isn't a one state win, not just winning with 270 electoral votes or 271.

if you win pennsylvania, and you win georgia, and you win arizona and you win nevada and you put up 306 electoral votes, it's not about a recount in wisconsin which has been called for you. it's not almost about what is certain to be a recount in georgia. that is a comfortable lead. that is a lead that no republican can look at and say, we cancel that, and you want to know why, i'll show you why. that's the same amount of electoral votes that president trump got in 2016. and while democrats were certainly not happy, and democrats some of them were trying to figure out ways to see if there was some way to stop it from happening, hillary clinton conceded the next day, that was the reality of the map, and everybody grasped 306. there was no way to try and overcome that, even though michigan was 10,000 votes, wisconsin was 22,000 votes. you want to get above 270 for the biden campaign. that's what you care about. having a cushion, given what's going on, given the atmospherics, certainly wonuldnt hurt. >> the cushion point, very very

strong. when the shoe was on the other foot, you guys were okay with it. that's probably not going to fly. nia-malika henderson, if the expectation is, well, you guys are okay with it, now leave the margin alone for us, we know trump doesn't play like that. we know the republicans don't, they did it with the supreme court justice but the significance of the change in play for the moment in georgia. >> huge, i think for democrats' spirits in some ways. they were down because they didn't see the sort of repudiation that they thought they would see in this election. so to make end roads in this state in the sun belt which was such a focus for democrats for so long is a real boost for them. listen, who knows if trump can overtake this lead, based on the trends, probably not. it will probably go to a recount, but, you know, it's certainly, i think, good news for biden, and you see donald trump clearly watching these returns, and i'm sure it's upsetting to him. he's saying these ballots coming in from these states and the

count should stop. these are illegal votes which is absolutely absurd. all he can do is fume as his presidential prospects of getting reelected seem to drift away. >> litigation doesn't work as a tactic of the president of the united states, the way it did with citizen donald trump. citizen donald trump threatened to sue you which i experienced firsthand is a tactic, and it may scare you into doing something differently. you can't just scare, you have to go to federal court and make a case. it's a very high bar. he hasn't had a good record of getting over it. in terms of the numbers, harry, did we get it right, and what do they mean? >> i would say three things, you were talking with phil about the idea, if you're up in all of these places, you can request recounts, and at the end of the day, the electoral count isn't that close. the secretary of state is republican, the governor is a republican. they're not fixing any votes any sort of weird thing. they're not doing it in any of

the states. obviously it takes a talking point away from the president. the second thing, joe biden made a last minute visit to georgia. joe biden was going what the heck is he doing. they saw something in the polling and it seems to be paying off this hour. that visit may have made the difference given how close the vote count is in the state. right now at this point it looks like there are going to be two runoffs, senate runoffs in the state of georgia in january to determine u.s. senate control and based on biden's lead right now, perhaps that state is a little bit more democratic than folks give it credit for, and might give democrats a shot at taking back the senate. >> and we should mention stacey abrams, all the work she did with registering voters, it paid off in this instance. it didn't pay off for her necessarily in 2018, but she registered almost 100,000 voters and i'm sure some of those folks are showing up in this election. >> fair point. right now it is paying off.

let's see what happens. >> i think a couple of things about georgia. one, it's trending democrat. i mean, it's still got a long way to go. it's turning into what's going to become a battleground state. i used to be a newspaper reporter during the newt gingrich days. when i look at the counties go democrat, it's quite frankly shocking. and plus, my wife's whole family lives down there. i know it pretty well. you look at cobb county, that used to be a bastian of conservatism. that's where newt beginning rgi to live. joe biden had gone down and did a visit. so did donald trump, if you remember, and i remember looking saying why is he going into georgia two days before the election. well, not even going into georgia, he went into a conservative part of georgia, which is north of cobb county, which was northwest pushing republicans even farther out.

i think when we look at georgia, harry and i and neil were talking about this earlier, when we get the data back and find out exactly what happened, there's no doubt the african-american vote carried joe biden. okay. however, i would say in the state of georgia, you have to take into account all of the northern migration that has gone down there since the early 1990s when the olympics came in in '96, but we saw a lot of corporations move down there. when you're looking at the caller counties on the outside, these are all white northerners who have lived down there now for a decade or two decades. >> quick refresh. why is everybody so perky at 4:41 a.m., one, we love the job. two, the job matters. joe biden for the moment is in control in georgia. how did it happen? what does it mean? we'll take you through all of it right after the break. new vicks immunity zzzs gummies are fortified with zinc and elderberry to sustain a healthy immune system plus melatonin for restorative sleep

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take a look at your screen. we have had a significant change in the state of this race. joe biden is now in the lead in georgia. phil mattingly, what did we see happening? >> we're still waiting for it to update in the magic wall. what we have been telling you, the county throughout the course of the night has been updating. working through the night, to get their final vote allocations out, has put out its final vote. clayton county, 1,602 votes for joe biden, 202 votes for donald trump, netting out joe biden, wen we knew for these updates, 46 463 votes was the lead for donald trump. what this means in the state of georgia, if joe biden wins this state, president trump has no path way to 270 electoral votes. joe biden is now up by 917 votes. this should update shortly. we took this straight from the county web site when they reported. and i think the big question now, one, we saw this coming.

we have been talking about this for the last couple of hours, the way clayton was reporting, the biggest outstanding vote, democratic county, they were coming in at about 84, 85, sometimes 86% for joe biden. that's well above what he needed to overtake donald trump here. he has done that now. big question right now, what's left outstanding, and can joe biden hold on to the lead? what i will tell you from a top line perspective is the lot of what's outstanding is coming from democratic counties. there is not much outstanding generally. we're probably down to 10,000 votes, less than that. harry, you want to check me on that. >> there's not a lot of votes left in that state. >> meaning what. >> what does that mean? >> essentially what phil was saying. i'm agreeing with our colleague. >> we think it's around 10,000. >> with provisionals and all of that jazz. >> but to provide some context of what that means, there's about 10,000 votes left, and we know roughly 4,700 of them come from gwinnett, which should be

reporting sometime this morning, and if you look at the margin, you're talking about where the vote is coming from, what is it going to track with. it is going to track with democratic vote if it's coming from gwinnett. we don't know exactly what it will be. we have seen mail-in coming from democratic counties, and this is likely to stick in joe biden's corner when it starts to report, and why that matters, because joe biden is no longer trailing. joe biden doesn't need to hit 62, 63, 64%, now donald trump, the onus is on the trump campaign to start overperforming joe biden from here on out. there are a cup republican counties with a thousand, 2,000 votes outstanding, right now the biggest vote comes from here, and for joe biden, that's a good sign, particularly when you are ahead by 917 votes. >> one step of context, when some people see this today if it starts holding because the president poisoned the well today on purpose, people will start to say, oh, see, this is it, it was fake. georgia, okay, has all republican -- it just updated, good, we had the numbers right

anyway. >> it makes me feel better that my math was right. >> here is the situation. georgia is an entirely republican infrastructure. governor, attorney general, secretary of state, of course in charge of the state's election processes, so the idea that the fix was in is demonstrably false, first of all, from what we understand, and you don't think that governor kemp, pal of donald trump wouldn't be screaming foul if there were problems in the state? nothing. if there's a recount, it will be done by an entirely republican infrastructure so the idea of manipulation is just wholly without merit, but this is what happens when the president poisons the well. you have to make sure that people understand. the headline, joe biden is in the lead, 917 votes in georgia. this could block donald trump's chances of being president for a second term. let's take a break. when we come back, more developments. life doesn't stop for a cold.

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joe biden is now leading in georgia. he's leading by 917 votes. the director in clayton county

promised us that they were going to work through the night to get the vote out, and they did just that. this edges joe biden closer to 270 electoral votes if it holds. this is temporary. this is not a projection. for now joe biden is in the lead. it would help him. it would really hurt the president. the president cannot become president of the united states again if he does not win georgia. that's why it's so important. it doesn't save joe biden, but it would kill donald trump politically. okay. so with that, now that we have is this, the president has been up late tweeting. what's he saying, ugly things. he's saying he won. it's easy, this is all fraud. it's all illegitimate, and there is no basis for any of it. to be honest, i'm not reading the tweet because i really believe we shouldn't be. i really believe those days are behind us, not that trump will be president again, but i think the days of giving a fair

hearing to an unfair statement that we know is over. we shouldn't be doing it. twitter is flagging the tweet as misleading. when you look at the man's threat, i don't know who else could survive on twitter with as many flagged tweets as they have. that's the state of play. let's see if he has to pay for it with his office. let's talk to our justice correspondent, laura jarrett. good to see you. >> good to see you. >> am i wrong that, yes, there's been a lawsuit about having a monitor and where they can be, yes there's been a lawsuit about how many days you get to cure your ballot, which is an odd thing to oppose, but in terms of any meat on the bones of video tape, people signing other people's ballots, huge numbers oc of hidden ballots, all the suggestions of fakery, trumpery, real word, anything to prove it.

>> no, and the courts have re recognized it. the thing to recognize, his bottom line is they aren't going to change the vote totals in the way that the president needs right now, and that's what our viewers should really recognize. this is noise and it's really aimed at delaying the process. what's he doing, he's tweeting out his grievances, they're full of lies, as you said, we're not going to read them. here's the thing, the courts have actually weighed in on this. he's campaigned in state court. the dispute was about how close they could stand, watching these ballots being counted and adjudicated, the judge said you want to stand closer, there was a dispute because of covid, you can stand a little bit closer. case done, fine, but of course the president doesn't mention that he won that case. what do they do, they run to federal court, and in that case, the judge said look, is the campaign in the room, are they having an equal chance to look and observe these ballots being counted and the campaign had to admit, that, yes, the trump

campaign is in the room. the judge dismissed the case as essentially moot. there's no there there. obviously all eyes on georgia. those two cases were in philadelphia, but judges in michigan and georgia have dismissed similar lawsuits. we may see more. they are not changing the vote totals. >> laura jarrett, thank you so much. as we get more developments, you know, i don't mean to to go about the hypotheticals of going to the supreme court. we have no reason to even pursue it triright now as an option. thank you for jumping in and giving us clear eyes on the situation. this is a morning you may never forget. the vote count is moving forward in the final states that will decide who leads us as president of the united states. we'll be right back. want to brain better? unlike ordinary memory supplements- neuriva has clinically proven ingredients that fuel 5 indicators of brain performance. memory, focus, accuracy, learning, and concentration. try our new gummies for 30 days and see the difference.

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it's 5:00 a.m. here in new york city. i'm chris cuomo. don lemon joins me as always, and it may be early, but it is now prime time on this friday morning because we just had big news in a race that counts as many of you are waking up in the east. >> a lot of people are going to wake up and say oh, my gosh when they see what happened overnight. there's a new batch of votes that put joe biden over the top, at least for now, ahead of president trump in georgia. traditionally, a ruby red state. biden now leads there by a super tight margin, but, you know, it's still until the lead. it's a vital one. we done know what's going to happen.

it all has to play out. the president cannot win this election without georgia, so if it remains this way, the president has no path, but again, it's not done yet. biden also picked up thousands of more votes, by the way, in pennsylvania overnight, chris. >> the race is changing, and that calls for a key race alert. >> obviously we start with georgia, 16 electoral votes. donald trump needs them to win through the electoral college. the spread right now, joe biden for the first time up 917 votes, still a statistical dead heat. there are still more votes to be had, and if they continue to break the way they have to this point, in the last couple of days, joe biden may pad that lead. so it is not over. there are more votes to come in. things could change. there may be a recount. but for now, joe biden is ahead in the state of georgia. nick valencia is in jones

boroujonesboro, which is in clayton county where the votes came from. they promised us they would work through the night, and they have and they put out the vote that made a difference for joe biden. >> and they have done such important work. we are seeing democracy in action. you have been highlighting their work for the last 48 hours, and we wanted to bring you a live look inside what's happening right now in clayton county. we know they started counting the absentee mail-in ballots at 9:00 a.m. yesterday. we saw an hour and a half ago or so, roughly a dozen or more poll workers leave, and this behind me, this is who's left here, a group of about a dozen poll workers here in clayton county, and things have pretty much effectively come to a standstill. it was within the last several minutes that we saw batches of ballots, we believe, being scanned into the system. if what has been happening, if this pattern holds true, we should expect another update here in a little bit, maybe a few minutes. we don't know. of new votes or votes that are

now counted in georgia. this has been exhausting work. they guaranteed that they would go through the night until the job is done, and this is exactly what they have done. i want to move here to the other side so i can show you, show you the layout here of this building. it used to be an old police department headquarters as we understand, turned into an area where they are processing and counting ballots. this is the room where you saw video earlier that we showed you last hour where there was about 20 poll workers. we understand, and this is all information that we're getting secondhand because there's no one on site here talking to us officially. as we understand it, as other reporters have said, this is the room where they were going through ballots that had potential discrepancy, duplications, and they were transferred over here, chris, that's the door that leads to the room i was just showing you. it's in there they scan the ballots and they started with 4,300. it appears they have come to the end here. we can't be clear, but that's how it looks in clayton county.

>> i appreciate you. i want to let you go. are we right when we say that many of the people working there are volunteers? >> that's right. that's right. they're either staff of the county. they volunteered. some i understand are paid. i did speak to poll workers on the way out of the location yesterday where we're at, they said they maybe were going to get a paycheck, they didn't know. they're certain not doing it for the money. it's all about democracy in action. >> they should get paid. they're doing something that truly manners. what we call americans, people volunteering their time, many have other jobs they have to leave and get to, worked through the night to deliver us a look at our democracy in action, and they should be celebrated for that. in fact, everybody who voted should because as you know, nick, we have never seen participation like this in a presidential election. it's a real testament to the strength of the country in hard times. let's get to jason carroll with the biden campaign. giving a lot of credit to one

person for the temporary swing in georgia, we'll see what happens, but right now, a good moment for biden. >> we'll see what happens, and that one person, of course, is stacey abrams, first we should note that the biden campaign has made it very clear that they saw georgia as one of their possible paths to 270. their data showed that. but a lot of folks, a lot of democratic operators have said, look, the biden campaign owes a great deal of credit to stacey abrams for all of her efforts on the ground. you remember in 2018 when she lost her bid for governor, right after that, she got to work and formed a nonprofit group with the expressed goal of stopping voter suppression in the state, and turning out voter registration in communities of color. abrams was one of those people very early on who thought, look, this is a state who has the potential of turning blue, and so she was really getting out the effort there on the ground,

and the campaign paid attention, as you know, former president barack obama was there in the state last week. joe biden paid -- was in the state. went to two locations in the state. kamala harris spending time in the state, so they saw the potential there, but a lot of folks there on the ground are saying that the reason why we're seeing some of the outcoming we're seeing so far there in the state, is due to stacey abrams, and she deserves a lot of credit, chris. >> just so people understand, you're standing there not randomly right now. where you are is the potential site of a biden victory event, right? >> reporter: that is correct. we are here waiting to see what will happen, and waiting to see if it will happen today, and you know, in terms of talking to some of the folks in the campaign, the feeling is that friday, today, could be the day that joe biden reaches 270. they're paying a lot of

attention to what's happening in philadelphia, still feeling very strongly about what's happening in philadelphia, feeling as though when all the votes are counted and at the end of the day, they're going to have what they're calling a decisive victory there in the state of pennsylvania. we'll wait, we'll see what happens, but right now, the stage is set. a lot of folks are wondering what's going to happen sort of later on here today, but look, the campaign is basically at the mercy of those who are counting the votes, and vice president biden for his part has been saying all along, just be patient. count all the votes, let the democratic process play itself out, but the stage is set. some folks are betting the stage will be set and ready for what happens later today. >> appreciate it. especially at this time. we're with phil mattingly at the magic wall. how did it happen in georgia, and what is the likelihood that the change is real, meaning not just for in moment. >> take a look at this map. this whole southeast has been red. this whole southeast has been

red. it was red back in 2016 for democrats. georgia has been out of reach on the presidential level since 1992. before that, just jimmy carter. georgia is blue. georgia is blue. we'll see if it holds. we'll see if it holds. we'll dig and go back out and explain why it's important for the bigger picture. what happened is we saw vote come in from clayton county. clayton county is a democratic county. look at the margin. joe biden leads the county handily, and over the course of the night they have been the county reporting. hats off to them for working through the night and continuously churning out votes, batch after batch after batch, even if it's only 200 votes, we're going to joe biden by rate of 84, 85%. that was above what he needed. he has been overperforming, democratic county, reason why, mail-in vote, it's what we have seen across several states and that put joe biden over the top. what we are waiting to see and are likely to see is what else is left over.

couple of things here, my understanding, based on the math i have been doing in my head, clayton county may not be done. there may bill twail actually b. that neimay pad his lead. >> a couple hundred. based on kind of the back of the envelope. >> harry enten. >> maybe 500. maybe a little bit less. somewhere in that neighborhood. >> thank you, bud. >> that's clayton. we have seen how that goes for joe biden, if that comes in, it will pad his lead based on what we have seen to this point. democrats are also looking to gwinnett county, a blue county, gone towards joe biden for an 18 point margin. vote by mail, bigger than the margins, 4,700 votes here, another opportunity for the biden campaign to pad their lead, two republican counties, forsyth, a little over a thousand votings. we' -- votes, down in lawrence

county as well, just because it's a republican county, doesn't mean the vote is going to move heavily towards president trump because it's mail-in ballots. we will have to watch how this plays out. if you talked to democrats, they believe if joe biden overtook president trump based on how little vote was left, it was likely a lead that would hold. we will see how that happens as the vote comes in over the course of the day. >> without getting too deeply into this because we don't have to, this will be perceived differently by the two camps, eventually after an election, there won't be two camps anymore because it's getting us nowhere. the direct point is this, there will be a suggestion. here's the proof of what the president was saying. i'm not going through the detail of his latest litany of attacks that have come throughout the night because i can't substantiate any of it, even twitter is flagging the tweets of this president on the subject but we will remind you of this, for the president to be right that this was somehow taken from him, that means a republican governor, a republican secretary of state, and a republican

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it's made for him a veteran who honorably served and it's made for her she's serving now we also made usaa for military spouses and their kids become a member. get an insurance quote today. we are back now. listen, we're watching the key battle ground states all over the country. georgia is really the one that we're paying attention to now because the former vice president just pulled ahead for now in georgia. let's bring in andrew yang, and john avlon. a lot has changed. what do you think, how are republicans feeling about this now? >> this has to be very disconcerting, i think a lot of people, certainly democrats

hoped that georgia would be in play. i don't think a lot of republicans embraced that idea. i think republicans believed in the demographics of georgia remaining the same, and they have changed. they have changed under our feet. you know, you lived there. we visit there because we've got a big bureau there. we know the demographics have changed. the voters there have changed, and i think when you look at, you know, elections like ossoff versus perdue, you have the tendency to think the demographics haven't changed, it's still a red state. that could say more actually about the infrastructure of someone like david perdue, and the republican party. same for lindsey graham and south carolina. he won, maybe not because that state is as red as it used to be, maybe it's because he's an election machine. same with mitch mcconnell. in georgia, tough acknowledge,

whatever happens in what will probably be a special election, those demographics are changed and they are benefitting joe biden currently. >> ron brown stein, i was talking to him about this earlier, when you look at the metro centers, almost like an earthquake and you have the bands that drift out into the suburbs, and that's what's happening pretty much and if you look at the battleground states almost every metropolitan area around the country. but it happened in the presidential race but not necessarily in the congressional races or senate races. >> that's right. there are lots of reasons for that, on the house level there's the additional burden of gerrymandering, which makes it difficult to flip seats. as we talk about red states and blue states, and even in the deep south, what we know is actually the deeper divisions in politics are urban versus rural, and the south, cities in the south have been voting democrat by increasing margins as their demographics in the state changes. that puts a lot of places in play. nobody at the beginning of this cycle thought georgia would be

in play. people were putting it in the same bucket as texas. that's a pipe dream. >> doesn't that scare the folks that the president was trying to get to turn out? the folks who live in the rural areas, people afraid of the changing demographics of this country, is that not a motivation to them. >> that is the theory of the case f you look at where donald trump has chained, that has been an inflammation point. nonsouthern democrat to win georgia since jfk, and the politics were different. and bill clinton, and jimmy carter pulled it off. it's significant that joe biden has done this. with kamala harris on the ticket, this is, look, it's a razor thin margin, people, but this is extraordinary. >> this is also why folks during the democratic primary thought someone like joe biden is better positioned to potentially go after places like georgia versus someone like elizabeth warren, for example. this was sort of the dream, you

know, the fever dream and that it might become a reality today i think validates those impulses to choose a more moderate candidate. >> there's so much to talk to you about here. first i want it ask you quickly, did you ever think we would be in this position with georgia, what's happening in the philadelphia suburbs, and atlanta and so on? >> this was the dream that georgia would flip blue, credit to stacey abrams for helping make it happen, and making sure that votes are counted in georgia. network, if you wanted to take a break from politics, i've got some tough news for you because everyone's eyes are going to be on georgia for the next two months, you're going to have two special senate races that could determine the balance of power in the senate. 50/50, kamala is the time breaker. >> i want to talk about that. it's not just that, we're going to have probably some litigation, a lot of litigation from races around the country frr from the president and republicans. we're going to have to see what happens if joe biden actually,

dooe indeed, becomes the winner, if this president is going to hand him the keys to the station wagon, we're going to deal with the special election, and we've got to deal with the balance of power. and you're right, i think a lot of money. >> so much money is getting spent. >> is just going to pour into georgia, and we're going to be watching it. >> and there is a way we could have been spared this, where if you're concerned about polarization in the united states of america, which i believe we all should be, if you had ranked choice voting in these georgia races, then we would be spared these special elections that are happening in january, rank choice voting, it encourages civility, it diminishes, extremism. >> can you briefly explain what it is. you posted this, right, and a lot of people on my feed were like, sounds great, what is it. >> we got to do it quick. >> rank choice voting, rank your favorite candidates and if your first choice doesn't win, it goes to your second choice until someone gets over 50%. >> and that happened with susan

collins. >> then jazz hands. >> think about this, think about where we are right now, georgia, right now, the former vice president is ahead of the current president, who is a republican. former vice president obviously a democrat, ahead of a republican in ruby red georgia by 917 votes at 5:21 on a friday morning. who would have thunk we would be here. and more votes are coming in. we know that because we have seen the live shot in philadelphia at the polling place. we have seen the live shot in georgia at the polling place. who knows what's going to happen next, and maybe pennsylvania. there's pennsylvania right now, philadelphia, maybe pennsylvania will be next to go to the former vice president's favor. we'll see. don't go anywhere. we'll be right back. we all have our own journey ahead of us. our own hopes and dreams. we'll pass many milestones. moments that define you. and drive you. to achieve even more.

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key race alert, there's been a big change in the state of play this this election. look at the board. georgia now in the lead, joe biden. 917 votes right now. there may be some more vote coming in in the state of georgia. this is huge. why? president donald trump needs the state of georgia to win this election through the electoral college, so big change of play here, will it hold, we'll see. but there is more vote coming in there that could pad joe biden's lead. we'll see. pennsylvania, we've also been watching, why? if joe biden wins pennsylvania this election is over. so what is happening right now? the lead is down to 18,229 votes. it has been coming down.

we are awaiting more vote. we don't know when, so we are watching it. let's figure out how we got here. let's go to the magic wall and phil mattingly. you called it early in the night. we had to watch georgia. why were we watching and what made the difference? >> we knew what vote was outstanding and where it was coming from, and we knew joe biden has an opportunity to surpass donald trump. that has occurred, it's not a matter of if with fa rig, it's pennsylvania. if you look at the map, you are seeing a similar pathway here in pennsylvania, also similar to what we saw in wisconsin, michigan, donald trump started with a huge lead, why, because pennsylvania counts the early vote first, and the early vote went heavy towards president trump. it did in multiple states throughout the country, and then they started counting the mail-in ballots. it has come in huge for vice president biden. what is left outstanding are democratic strongholds and it's all mail-in ballots. again, mail-in ballots across

the country, especially in pennsylvania have leaned heavily democratic. what is left outstanding, look down here, southeastern pennsylvania, philly, philadelphia, being the anchor there, put out into the suburbs as well, that's heavily democratic, you see the blue, a lot outstanding, right now as we push forward and look around what's left in the state, joe biden has an advantage in terms of where the vote is outstanding, how the vote was actually cast, vote by mail. if you're the biden campaign, you look at this 18,000 vote lead for donald trump right now, saying not only are we going to surpass that, we are going to surpass that by a decent amount. now, we're still waiting for it to be counted and waiting for it to be reported. it has been slow over the last couple of hours. one example, philadelphia right now, still 8% outstanding. you look at that margin, 80% to 18%. rounded up, 81% to 19%. philadelphia's mail-in ballots have been coming in somewhere

between 85 and 88%. if joe biden holds that margin, he surpasses easily what's happening in dpephiladelphia. that's what you're watching this morning. georgia has flipped blue, we'll see if that holdings. georgia that has flipped blue. pennsylvania is on track to do the same thing at some point this morning. >> so to bring in don lemon here, phil is saying it's not if, it's when. when goes to, well, when do we start seeing more vote out of pennsylvania. we're being patient because we want the people to do the job the right way. that's what we're waiting on, don. >> we have the perfect guest. stand by and listen to thris. al schmidt is here, philadelphia city commissioner responsible for elections there. thank you commissioner, i appreciate you joining us, as we are speaking now, you see the vote totals changing in georgia, and also in pennsylvania. so can you -- we're lackiookinga live picture. philadelphia, pennsylvania, that's where the votes are being counted. are we going to see anymore ball lots coming in soon.

>> yes, our last report was around 1:00 a.m. this morning. and we have been counting for the past several hours. and i expect you'll see another update in the next hour or two. >> in the next hour or two, you think we'll get it, sometime between now and 7:00 a.m. all right. how many votes? >> i can't say just yet. >> okay. so we have been watching these votes come in from philadelphia through the night, and it's helping joe biden close the gap. you heard where phil mattingly said they were coming in, a lot of them from the democratic strongholds in the southeastern part of the state, which includes philadelphia. how long before the counting is complete, do you think? >> well, the counting in philadelphia has continued uninterrupted from the beginning. we had a brief pause yesterday for about two hours as a result of some litigation, but it's

just critically important that we continue counting every eligible vote cast by voters in philadelphia. we got about 360,000 total mail-in ballots in philadelphia. we've counted about a little over 306,000, around 306,000 and at 50,000 some yet to report. we have been counting for the past few hours. and we'll have another update for you shortly. >> okay. so listen, all 50,000, this 50,000 in the next couple of hours. let me just go through the numbers here because i just looked them up. so you said it was, let's see, it's own site showing there in philadelphia, about 305,939 votes, that's the almost 400,000 you talked about, correct? >> yes, and just to clarify, we have about 50,000 left to report. we will have an update in the next couple of hours. that's not the full 50,000, that i know, but i can't say just yet

how many that will be. >> that was my next question then. would it be all 50,000, and why can't you say that, you don't know, are you being coy, you'd rather not? >> it's important that we all do this in the right way and we report information until the official channels like we always do. >> do you agree they're going to come in from the democratic strongholds with what phil said? >> well, in philadelphia county, applications for mail-in ballots were roughly 16 to 1 democratic to republican. and while not everybody votes, you know, their party affiliation, the results have certainly skewed that way. >> let's talk about what we heard from the president, not too many hours ago out saying last night that votes there in philadelphia should be thrown out because observers haven't been able to do their jobs there. his tweet has already been

labeled misleading. you are a republican. you have been there every single day. you actually helped out with how this would all work. give us the truth, please, commissioner. >> my party affiliation doesn't and shouldn't affect what's true and what is not true. observers from the democratic party and republican party from the biden campaign and the trump campaign have been in our counting area observing right up against where the process is taking place from the very beginning on election morning when we began this. >> so observers have been there the entire time including republicans? >> the entire time. the entire time. >> so then what is this dispute? why are republicans saying this, not all, but some, why then is the president saying this if observers from both the republican party and the democratic party have been there the entire time?

>> i can't really speak to what their motives might be. i do know we went to federal court yesterday and a federal judge agreed with our position, you know, we want to make sure that campaigns and parties have transparen transparency that they deserve, and obliged to have in the pennsylvania election code. i would also add that we have a live stream on our election counting process 24 hours a day. and if you have trouble sleeping, you should take a look at it, it's very calming, it's very mechanical and methodical and although i doubt any of us are going to have trouble sleeping. >> i've got to run, but real quickly, what do you want people to know out there? there's a lot of concerned people, democrats and republicans, you have the president's supporters, they're listening to the president. this is somehow a fraudulent process, and then you have democrats worried that their rightful votes may be taken

away. >> you know, all of these election boards in the country, including ours have to just stay focused on our job, continue counting votes. it does feel sometimes a little like you're under siege right outside. last time i joined you from our counting room floor, now it looks like i'm joining you almost from an undisclosed location somewhere, which is just my office here, but so many people working so hard to count the votes of voters who cast eligible votes on or before election day. >> thank you, commissioner al schmidt, we appreciate it. and viewers you heard from al schmidt, he is saying there are about 50,000 votes left to be counted there. we should know something in about two hours, within two hours. not all of the 50,000, he said, but he wouldn't tell us how many. so things are changing in realtime here. and if you're just waking up, probably went to bed seeing some numbers, and now they're all

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welcome back to our coverage, we have a developing situation here, joe biden has at least for the moment taken over the lead in georgia, and pennsylvania may have some new information for us soon. phil mattingly and i chris

cuomo, we were listening to a local official in philadelphia talk about when more vote may be coming. could be soon. >> and we now have a better idea of how much. >> and i think those are the two important items here. we know that philadelphia is going to report sometime in the next hour, hour and a half. we don't know how much they're going to report, but we know what's left, and we know what's left is 50,000 votes. we want to do some back of the envelope math, president trump up by 18,229 votes. philadelphia, right now, has an outstanding vote all absentee ballots of 50,000 votes. so you look at this margin right now, 80.5% to 18.6%. let's say out of that 50,000 votes you put that margin into those 50,000 votes, you would say based on that, joe biden would net 30,000 votes out of that group if you're going 80/20, and what i want to say is 80/20 in philadelphia is conservative. we have seen the philadelphia

reporting over the course of the night, the last batch around 1:00 a.m. was somewhere around 86, 87% for joe biden. we're being conservative when we do the back of the envelope, top of the head map. if joe biden nets, there's still outstanding mail-in ballots being tabulated in the other blue counties surrounding it. 30,000, when you're trailing by 18,229, not a math major. >> right. >> but that will give joe biden a lead and a solid lead that is only, if you look at what's still outstanding in this area here, if you know there's 36,000 votes to be counted in pittsburgh and those votes have been going 77, 78% to joe biden, that gives him a 12, 13,000 vote lead with all of that outstanding still, probably about roughly 100 ballots left outstanding in the state. i have been forward about this where pennsylvania is going over

the course of the next couple of hours because i and my good friend harry have been trying to work through this. it makes clear the pathway we're about to follow in the next couple of hours. >> there ain't no way that joe biden doesn't take the lead in pennsylvania based upon what is left in philadelphia. >> why so confident? >> why i'm so confident is for exactly the reasons phil is talking about, right, you have 50,000 votes there. you've got joe biden who is netting, you know, a 60 point margin, should jump him out based upon that math, even if you were conservative, a 60 point margin, 80 to 20 based on all of philadelphia. and we know the mail-in votes lean more democratic than the overall philadelphia population. it should net him 30,000 votes, being conservative simprks ri, now the margin is 18,229, and i wouldn't be surprised based upon what i think is the distribution of the vote by mail that in fact nets him closer to 35 or even 40,000 votes, so it's just to me, math, chris, it's just there

for him right now. i don't know what else to say. >> well, try to say the answer to this, which is then after philadelphia, based on what we suspect is left overall in the state, what could it mean for joe biden at the end of the day? >> i wouldn't be surprised at the end of the day if the current math holds that joe biden ends up with a margin in the state of pennsylvania, again, if it holds, 50,000 to 100,000 vote margin in the state of pennsylvania seems quite doable based on the math that is out there. >> why wouldn't it hold? >> let me show you where harry is getting that from first. we went to philadelphia, delaware county, there's 9% hanging out here, about 9,000 votes, ballot, trying to go off the top of my head, you look at that margin, the margin has been more generous to joe biden in the mail-in ballots. that's delaware county, 5% left in chester. that's obviously blue. 5% left in montgomery. a little bit here. not a huge amount, 4, 5,000 votes. a little bit of a tighter margin

here but bucks has moved heavily democratic as they have started counting mail-in ballots. bucks was leaning trump, was a president trump lead yesterday at this point in time, and now it is blue, so that's where harry is getting it from. he's going through where the vote is outstanding. the vote is outstanding in strongholds and the vote is all vote by mail. to your question, if you're president trump and you're looking at the state of pennsylvania right now, what is your hope? well, you look at where there's still vote outstanding and there's not a ton left. and you're looking at the red. here's the problem. the red, even the vote by mail, is coming in democratic. so you've got problems if you're the trump campaign, but have to count. have to wait and see. we'll see what comes in over the course of the next couple of hours. >> an exhaustive analysis, but thank you. pennsylvania may change hands and do so in the next few hours. what a night we've had. let's see what happens next together. you want immune support you can trust. at nature's way, that starts with quality ingredients.

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what will be the state of play between these two campaigns when they wake up this morning and they see what has changed overnight. let's discuss with errol louis, margaret talov, and alex burns. what do we know about how the president and his team are dealing with the news about georgia changing hands and pennsylvania getting dangerously close to the same fate? >> well, chris, good morning. a lot has changed overnight, but of course the president and his team could see a lot of this coming last night. and so you may have been watching the president at the podium last night, and thinking what is going on over at the white house. my colleague jonathan swan has overnight reporting that shows that behind the scenes, just before president trump went out there and made several baseless

claims about election integrity, there are recriminations, concerns, angst, fear, frustration, both among white house staff, the campaign, and many of those surrogates who you see usually go out on tv and support the president. there's tremendous frustration inside trump world at fox news, both for calling those arizona results early, and setting the tone on election night, and also intense frustration and fear last night. they're concerned that fox might actually be the one to call the race for biden overall. no one has done that yet. these numbers are moving, of course, as we speak, but that's the real frustration because the feeling is if it were fox to call it, it would be tremendously bad for optics, which as we know is really important to the president, and the surrogates when they look back at george w. bush's time in 2000 remembering james baker being the face out in front of

really credible voice who could reach across the partisan aisle, surrogates saying have rudy giuliani, and pam bondi, and corey lewandowski as your version of jim baker is not what wants to see. a lot of unraveling behind the scenes. >> margaret, thank you very much for sharing that with us, and thank your colleague as well. errol, let's take another step down crazy town for just a second. this isn't just your run of the mill president trump pernicious lie where he's trying to tear something down. this is by definition seditious. this is the president saying you should not trust this. you should be angry. it is intentionally against me, and by the way, correlation is not causation, but then, what do we find in philadelphia, the same place that was worried about having more trump folk too close to the people counting ballots, a humvee is obtained by

authorities, they find a weapon and arrest somebody who wanted to get into the polling center and not for good reason. just how high on the list of bad acts is what we heard from the president last night? >> well, it is historic. it's really very far beyond the usual kind of mistruth that we hear from the white house. this is really dangerous territory, as you suggest. it's also an interesting challenge to news organizations. i mean, i was struck by the fact that the broadcast networks cut away from the president as he was speaking about a very important topic in realtime. i think a lot of folks have really decided that this is just not worth giving the benefit of the doubt to somebody who has abused that doubt, has abused that benefit over and over and over again. i don't know if he expected or wants to see disruption at the polls, it would certainly, i think, lend some credence to his otherwise baseless claims if he felt that, you know, a lot of

people, as the president likes to say, think that the election was stolen. now, he was telegraphing this for weeks. we knew exactly what was going to happen. we knew that there are mail-in ballots that happen routinely in many many states, probably most states, actually, and a lot of that is by operation of state law so that nothing illegal is happening. he has nevertheless chosen to try and divide people and act as if something is happening that is illegal. and he said it only, i mean, he really telegraphed it, really, chris, he said weeks ago, if he was behind, if it looked like he was losing, this would be his tactic, and we're watching it play out in realtime. very unfortunate. >> as the name of the podcast goes, you decide, and he decided to go after early voting as illegitimate and waved his people away from it, and now he can thank that for not having the ability to compete in early voting, mail-in voting, with people who wanted to vote for joe biden. so alex burns, that takes us to

what's the next step, what can he do if his theory is the only way i get to adhed here is by subtracting from biden and that means getting rid of his votes? >> the answer we know now is he can't do very much, that there have been all of these lawsuits filed over the last couple of days. none of them seems to carry much weight legally, and they have gotten a pretty chilly reception in the court so far. he can request recounts. the trump campaign has already said they will do that in wisconsin, but you're looking at a margin of more than 20,000 votes in that state, and when there was a recount there four years ago, it changed 131 votes in the presidential race, so not much for him to work with there. the litigation that we were so focused on before election day in pennsylvania where the president and republicans were stepping in to try to stop the counting of certain mail-in ballots, all concerned ballots that arrived after election day, so those are not even the votes

that we're talking about right now in pennsylvania. so the president doesn't have a whole lot of options, and that's why i think you are hearing this focus from him and his allies as margaret was describing on the optics of this, this fixation on who is calling what states and when strikes me as almost totally misguided because a television network saying that a state has gone for joe biden is not what makes the state go for joe biden. the votes are what makes a state go for joe biden, and right now, it doesn't look like based on the math that we have in front of us like the president has enough votes or pathways to get votes in order to change the tide of the election. >> alex burns, margaret talev, errol louis, thank you to each and all, and appreciate living a day in history with all of you. the vote is still taking shape. the moment that we get new results and we just got flagged by a pennsylvania official, that they may happen on our watch. we will tell you as well. let's take a quick break.

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