>> announcer: live from abc news election headquarters in new york city, here again, george stephanopoulos. it is 11:00 in the east, 8:00 in the west. the polls close in the 48 states and we can project three more states for joe biden in the west. california, 55 electoral votes. won by hillary clinton by 30 points back in 2016. joe biden will win. its 55 electoral votes in 2020. he will also win the seven in the state of oregon. and he will win the state of washington as well. it's 12 electoral votes. you see the entire pacific coast, no surprise, it is going to go to joe biden. at this hour, joe biden has 187 electoral votes. president trump has 114. again, right now it is a

complete repeat of the 2016 map. all the big battleground states are all in play. and one of the key ones, this could be a new state in play for 2020, is the state of arizona. it's been a long-time republican state, but right now, with 75% of the expected vote in, joe biden has a lead over donald trump. tom llamas. >> yeah, so, george, the first thing i want to show our viewers is on the early vote. we have talked so much about the early vote. but you need to talk about this number if you talk about arizona. joe biden with a ten-point lead in the early vote, and that's so important because if you look at his lead it's by ten points an as well. he's winning in the biggest county. three-fourths of the vote going to come from here. one of the things joe biden did here, he spent big. went to maricopa and spent $17 million. democrats looked at the map, saw donald trump underperformed.

kristen cinema comes in, she wins. we have to talk about tucson. pima county. joe biden on top. overperforming there. we haven't talked about that a lot, but that's the home of mark kelly. he's on top, too. his range, ten points in the senate race against martha mcsally. >> former astronaut, husband of gabby giffords, the congresswoman of arizona who was shot. want to go to whit johnson. what are you hearing there? >> reporter: the biden campaign is feeling good about the early results and what they're seeing although this is what they expected early in the night. we had the huge voter turnout. 85% of the ballots cast early. democrats knew that they needed to take an early lead. but on the flipside, republicans were counting on today, the trump campaign told us that they had data that showed them they

would outnumber biden supporters at the polls on election day by a ratio of 4-1. i can tell you by talking to voters, trump has strong support. david was talking about the independent support women spoke to three self-proclaimed independent voters who voted for obama previously but this time voted for a second time for president donald trump. and one of them actually split the ticket. you might be hearing quite a bit about that in arizona. he voted for donald trump but also for the democrat mark kelly for the senate. two years ago in 2018, 150,000 voters in arizona voted for the republican ducey but also voted for the senate democrat kirsten cinema. we have seen that independent spirit here in arizona. this is maverick country. in the spirit of john mccain the voters here like the give the thumbs up or thumbs down on the individual candidates they like

and the issues they care about. i don't want to forget about the senate race. this is huge. this is one democrats have been eyeing across the country. you have the astronaut mark kelly against the combat pilot martha mcsally. kelly maintained an edge in the polls. if he were to win, this would billion the first time a the state of the arizona could send two democrats to the senate since 1953. that's about 68 years. and i can tell you, george, again, this is that senate seat that belonged to john mccain. his wife cindy endorsed joe biden, but the voters we spoke with didn't care much about the endorsements. >> two big issues in arizona, covid and its impact on the community. >> reporter: covid impacted on the latino community, and of course we have been talking about this so long, this is a community that has been hit disproportionately hard.

some experts say this is a community devastated by covid. george. >> we are now going to hear house speaker nancy pelosi is coming out to speak to the cameras. >> thank you for joining us. i know transportation is always challenging in the time of coronavirus, but thank you for joining us virtually here this evening so i can praise you for retaining our house democratic majority. under your leadership, madam chair, we have held the house, and now when all the votes are counted we'll see how much better we will do than that. we are in a situation where some of the states have just said, we're not counting anymore until tomorrow morning, and of course the west coast has not chimed in yet, so there's more to come. our race this time was all about health care. this was vote your health. we had that in the last election. our for the people agenda was we

are going to lower health care costs by lowering the cost of prescription drugs, preserving preexisting conditions. it became the issue of the 2018 election under the leadership of the policy committee that madam chair was a cochair of then. carrying that message into this election because it is of concern to the american people is amplified by the coronavirus. so our purpose in this race was to win so that we could protect the affordable care act and that we could crush the virus, that we could stop the spread of it, that we could reward our workers who risked their lives to save lives, and now might be losing their jobs, and that we can put money in the pockets of the american people. so i'm very, very proud of the fact that tonight -- relatively

early -- we are able to say we have held the house. it is something quite spectacular because -- >> there's house speaker nancy pelosi proclaiming victory in the house tonight. democrats will retain control of the house. cecelia vega, sorry about that. we interrupted you. finish your thought on arizona. >> thank you, george. i appreciate that. we were talking about covid and the impact on the latino communities. as we have seen in polling heading in, covid is -- but we saw from president trump time and time again in multiple visits to the state, and he made many. the trump campaign was heavily focused on arizona. this is a state they do want to win. one of the messages they kept hitting over and over again was immigration because of the state's location on the border. he talked about the wall repeatedly and the mistruth that mexico is paying for the wall.

mexico is not paying for the wall. immigration is low on the issues for americans heading into the election today. when you talk to republicans on the hill they get frustrated with the president's continual focus on this issue because it's not one that's necessarily a winning one for the base heading into the election. they wanted to see him expand that conversation into states like arizona to focus on covid, the economy, but immigration was a message he drilled in on time and time again. >> linsey davis, it's a recurring theme of the night, this election defined in many ways by the pandemic. >> sure. going into tonight, i think one big question that loomed large was how were americans going to respond to the increase in infek infek -- infections? 1,000 people died today of coronavirus. yet when we're looking at the map, we don't see much has

change as far as the way people generally -- haven't, again, heard from the battleground states yet, but we haven't seen a lot of change from how people cast their votes in 2016. there couldn't be much more daylight between the candidates. >> i want to take that to jen ashton. we have seen through the campaign such different visions on how to hand it will pandemic from joe biden and donald trump as the entire country, basically, more than 42 states, are in the grip of this second wave. >> absolutely, george, and we heard dr. deborah birx in an internal white house memo citing that we're going into the most dire period of the pandemic to date. she is expecting to see 100,000 cases a day in the next week. and we have seen different approaches. we have seen different approaches when it comes to testing. we have seen some missteps. we have seen a series of broken down communications and mistrust

in the biggest and most powerful public health organizations we have -- the cdc, the fda, the world health organization. and to circle back to the state of arizona, to pick up on what cecilia and linsey said, we have seen in the pandemic, while it did not start the racial disparities in health care, it put them under the spotlight. when you look at arizona, one population we have not heard that much about, american indians and alaskan natives there's a disproportionate affect of the virus. they represent 4% of the arizona population, 12% of the deaths. this is a population that 30% to 40% of residents do not have running water in their homes. when you talk about battling the virus it's not just about the vaccine and therapeutics.

it's very widespread. >> david muir, what are we seeing in the exit polls on this? we have national exit polls now. >> just to pick up on linsey's point that there could not be more daylight between them -- joe biden saying i can't flip a switch and fix things but we have to address the virus before we can address the economy. this is the first time we can do. if containing the pandemic was the way you voted over the economy. when you break that down, joe biden, 80% to donald trump's 18%, if the most important issue to you was containing covid-19. if the most important issue was opening the country, getting the economy going again, it's almost the complete opposite. 76% for donald trump and 22% fft joe biden. joe biden leading amol exit

polls, 55-40. among women in the country, joe biden 56% to donald trump's 49%. we look at men, donald trump 49%, joe biden 48%. not only is the country divided but many of the key battleground states are divided right down the middle. >> no question about that. martha raddatz, covid is something that came up this our visits across the country. >> it did. i have to say, i was surprised when i crossed the country. it was almost like people were done with it. it was very blue state/red state. they were wearing masks in blue states. they were not wearing masks in red states. so people would talk about it. but i think in so many ways there are so many bigger issues, especially to the trump voters. remember -- we have to remember, they're voting for an incumbent now. in 2016 it was, we don't want to vote for a washington guy. he's something new. he's a businessman.

they're voting on his record now, and that record is covid. that record is the economy, that record is immigration and race relations. so they've made a decision, those trump voters, that they like what donald trump has done in these last four years, including covid. trump voters i have talked to and said things about covid -- one voter in texas, who's a very strong supporter, had a mask on. he said he only wears it when he goes into certain establishments so he can get into them, but his mask said, "this is dumb". today he told me, dr. fauci, everything he says is wrong so. that message is resonating in those areas, too. but you go through ohio -- i was especially surprised in ohio -- there were so many people out not social distancing. and this is in columbus in a very crowded area. they had masks but most of them were pulled down. but they were not social distancing. and they were just out. they just wanted to be out and

try to forget about covid. >> martha, thanks. heidi heitkamp you certainly see that in the dakotas. >> i think what's happening is people have brought into herd immunity as the only way to control it. it's not something you're going to get over until you get through it and they don't want to disrupt their lives. so sure, they know someone who's died, but they were old or they were this. what is really puzzling to me is that we are so willing to make old and disabled people kind of the victims here and then just accept it. and you're seeing that in these vote totals, in the behavior, especially in red states. they don't want to change their lives. they don't think that changing their lives will change the outcome of the coronavirus. >> heidi heitkamp, thanks very much. let's take loot look at the state of ohio right now.

we've now got 85% of the vote in. donald trump appears to be pulling away. chris christie, that's what you were hearing from the state. >> it was. gop leadership said as this progressed he was going to open up a more substantial lead and i'm hearing the statement thing in north carolina that thom tillis is leading by more than a point and the president is leading by just less than a point over joe biden in north carolina. and that's been a steady progression through the evening to chip away at that. and they feel very confident in north carolina, again, that both of those are going to go the way ohio has for trump and tillis in the senate. >> let's pull up north carolina right now if we can. we've got 95% of the expected vote in in north carolina. very close race right now. only about 80,000 -- 70,000 votes separating donald trump and joe biden.