>> announcer: live from democracy plaza, here now are rachel maddow and brian williams. >> here we go, 6:00 p.m. in the east and we're underway. americans have been voting for days setting records and still voting at this hour in what is a titanic struggle for the future of our country. it will now be decided during an uncontrolled pandemic in our country, which explains the 100 million plus votes that are already in. brian williams here with you from our nbc news global

headquarters in new york, joined by my colleague and friend rachel maddow at the far end of our expanded studios, rachel? >> thank you, brian. nicole wallace and joy reid are here my by side in our corner of the studio at a physical distance that belies our emotional closeness. [ laughter ] >> i got to come up with a different one every night. our election night mvp steve kornacki is at the board standing by for the forced results, that are starting to come in tonight. joe biden back in his hometown wilmington, delaware after one final push through pennsylvania. stopping in philly and in scranton where he visited his childhood home, the former vice president started his day early this morning by going to church and then by visiting the grave of his late son beau. >> while for his part, president trump started his day by calling into fox news and aside from a brief stop at his campaign headquarters over in virginia, the president has been largely out of view this day.

tonight, the president is huddled at the white house behind a new non-scaleable wall where he is expected to host 250 to 400 people as one does during a pandemic at an indoor election night party in the people's house. >> it is going to be a big night tonight no matter what happens in the end, we are in for the long haul. we recognize that the long haul might not mean this evening in terms of getting results, but we will be here with you for it throughout. let's get started now with the closest thing that we've got to a road map for the journey ahead. steve kornacki, we're going to be looking to you-all night long. let start. what do you got? >> here we go. we will be getting results actually we think this hour from kentucky from indiana, all the polls not closed there but some will this hour. before that, let's take a look at what we can expect tonight. we'll fire up the road to 270. the battle ground map. there is a couple ways to look

at this. first of all, let's start with this. are there any states tonight where president trump is going to be on offense? i mean by that, are there any states donald trump did not carry in 2016 that were clinton states he could pick off tonight and add to what he won in 2016? the trump campaign is talking about, remember these three tonight, new hampshire, minnesota and nevada. clinton states in 2016, the trump campaign has been saying they think they have a shot at. we got to say, coming into tonight, the polling we've seen before the election has not put president trump in great position in those states so the burden is on him tonight as these votes come in to show he can make something happen that hasn't happened there in the polls. if he fails to pick off a new hampshire, a minnesota or nevada, then biden's starting point tonight is where hillary clinton finished in 2016. 232 electoral votes and then the question shifts and it becomes where is joe biden on offense? the answer to that we know. you're looking at the battle ground here, you are looking at states that donald trump won in

2016, that he's trying to defend and that the polls coming into today to varying degrees show him in trouble in. can donald trump hang on to at least 270 electoral votes worth of these states? the most immediate problems on this map for donald trump we've been saying this for awhile, wisconsin, michigan, pennsylvania, three states that he won by the skin of his teeth in 2016, less than 1 point his margin in each one of these states. if donald trump does not add any states from the hillary clinton column in 2016, if he doesn't pick off any tonight and loses three states, he loses the election and he's in particularly tough shape according to the polls in wisconsin and michigan. if he were to lose just those two, he would be on the cusp of defeat, trump would. that sets up the drama that we're going to see in the first few hours tonight because this is the interesting thing about the pandemic election. as important as wisconsin, michigan and pennsylvania are to this election, it's going to

take awhile to get the results there because of the mail in ballot situation in pennsylvania, if it's very close, it could even potentially take a couple days. what we think we are going to get a good look at, though, starting at 7:00 east were tonight, just about all of florida except the panhandle, we're going to start seeing a lot of votes out of florida. we're going to get a really good look in the first couple hours in florida who is winning, who is losing there. north carolina in the early hours we should get a lot from. ohio, georgia potentially, even texas a little bit later, 9:00, 10:00, 11:00 we might get a good look at texas. every single one of these states, a big electoral college battle ground was won by donald trump in 2016 and becomes given what we outlined here, the challenge in the great lake states a must-win state for the president. if he does not pull off a hail marcy pass or flip hillary clinton states, he's got to go

five for five in these states. he doesn't need one or some, he needs every single one of them and then we get out west, you can probably include arizona in that category, as well. look at it this way, the president early on tonight in a bunch of big states is facing what may very well amount to elimination contest. he's got to win one after the other after the other. if he does pull them all off, if he runs the table in the southeast, gets ohio, gets arizona, then the drama will shift to those great lake states. those two states there, wisconsin and michigan where the polls have really put trump in dire shape and then to pennsylvania, the one that even his campaign talks about is a must-win state if trump can sweep everything before that, that would then put pennsylvania potentially in position to settle the election. if trump trips up, if he loses florida, if he loses georgia, carolina, ohio, texas, any of these states, that effectively could be it for him. >> steve kornacki, let me ask you following on something we

discussed this weekend when we pennsylvania and michigan, leaving aside those three states that we paid so much attention to, those other states on your map, where is biden most confident or where do the polls show him most likely to pick off an important trump state? >> here is the interesting thing if you look at and want to compare we talk about nevada, the most recent poll we got out of nevada put joe biden ahead by six points right there. and so when i said i think trump of those three nevada, minnesota, new hampshire that nevada was probably his best shot at getting a clinton state is because six is the closest that he is in those three states. that's a different position than joe biden finds himself in basically every state we just talked about. if you look at arizona, if you look at texas, florida, georgia, north carolina, pennsylvania, michigan, ohio, wisconsin, the only possible exception here where you see polls of joe biden trailing by that kind of a

margin in any of these states would be iowa where there is one poll over the weekend that put joe biden down by seven points and what previously had thought to be a bit of a tossup state. so biden's position in these battle ground states is different at least in the polls coming into today than trump's is in the blue states that he's trying to pick off. that's why you don't see them in the battle ground right now and that's whiy i say the burden is on trump. we saw states suddenly become competitive on election night and the polling running up to the election wasn't showing. the burden is on trump to show us in new hampshire when you get a poll closerly tonight to show us in minnesota and nevada that something is happening there that the polling is not picking up on because those states look different in the polling than the other trump won battle groundkcorkornacki, we'll be checking in throughout the night. thanks. >> we sure will. we want to go to miami makes,

florida where alicia is outside a polling location there. that's one of the big prizes of the night. what have you seen there during the long day's journey into night? >> well, brian, this is a state that every four years is incredibly close and this year promises to be no exception. here is what we know for sure. 9 million floridians as of yesterday had already cast their ballots, whether those were early votes or votes by mail. democrats came in today with about 100,000 vote advantage. the advantage for republicans was that they had about 150 more high propensity voters. the question, did those voters come out? did they stay with republicans? the other target that everyone has been talking about, the npa voters, no party affiliation. did they turn out and did they break for joe biden as polling was indicated they likely would. democrats also a little concerned about miami-dade

county, which has historically been a democratic county, a question of whether or not republicans have increased their margins there in part due to president trump's overture to hispanics. if you're looking for early indicators tonight, they said as the votes are tabulated, as you look at early vote and mail in voting, if joe biden is ahead by 420,000 votes, democrats are going to feel like they are in a good place. if that number is below 370, democrats are going to be very worried and anything in between those two numbers, well, everyone is holding their breath. brian? >> all right. going to be a night of a lot of math. alicia menendez adding to it for miami lakes, florida. let's go to chris jansing in sc

scranton, p.a. >> reporter: big numbers here this is a small county, they have had lines as long as an hour, i'm told that's not something they normally see and we also seen places like in bucks county and suburban philadelphia, i think we have pictures we can show you where the lines stretched on for three to four hours although that was unusual and there are very few report reports and nothing that would lead you to believe what we're seeing, there are legions of lawyers spread out across this state. only about 103,000 people voted here but stirs of lawyers have been in and out of the county election offices, of course, today they weren't very busy but they would be watching tonight is the vote count, of course, many of those early mail in ballots are being processed. we've watched them being processed in philly. i was just told, i was on the

phone with the elections officials here. they say they will be able to finish that processing and maybe actually get a number figure out who is the winner in this county by midnight tonight but there is something else people are noticing. that is the seeds of doubt the president has sewn without proof about the validity with mail in balloting because they see a lot here and elsewhere of ballot spoiling. that's people who got a mail in ballot but have decided that they're too worried their vote won't be counted, there will be questions about it and it will be litigated and so they're bringing them here and voting. i've actually talked to people who have done that. so finally i would say as a big trump supporter is going by, joe biden was here. four stops this morning in his hometown and he wrote on the wall from this house to the white house with the grace of god, pennsylvania will have a

big say, brian, in whether that happens. >> chris jansing in pennsylvania on a cold night. thanks. rachel, over to you. >> here with me in the studio, nobody i would rather spend election night with, joy reid and nicole wallace. i know that both of you in addition to doing all your regular work, have been in touch with people all day. nicole, i want to go to you first because while steve kornacki talked about states and states that biden wants to pick off from the trump column, you started bouncing in your seat a little. >> i have a note that says trump state and their state is north carolina and the tillas campaign has them down one for tonight's election. we talked whether or not ticket splitters exist, the trump campaign pushed back and said trump is one ahead but that would have you believe they are ticket splitters, people that vote for different people on the senate ticket than on the

presidential ticket, so i think north carolina is one both campaigns are watching. i would say this, listen to kornacki and having talked to thousands of democrats around the country and florida, iowa, and texas is very strong for the president. however, donald trump's own campaign does not have him ahead in any of those three states. he's way behind in wisconsin and michigan and behind enough in pennsylvania their only path to victory would be to declare victory. i'm not sure that message has reached the president and told that he has phone calls and feeling confident. >> what you described is the view of his campaign. >> his advisor and people that have done this before. there are not a lot of those people that have done this before but the people that know how to read the tracks will

acknowledge but in these thre k bringing our attention to, they are wary about arizona. they think mcsally is polling lower than they are but that usually isn't the case a senate candidate is so far behind a presidential candidate. people usually go in and support the ticket. and they along with the biden campaign are keeping their eye on north carolina. >> i've been hyper focused on florida. i wasn't going to do this. i was going to let florida go. >> florida won't let you go. >> it's steve kornacki's fault. i asked what state is going to have your interest? he said florida. so i spent the entire day on the phone and texting with people in florida, people watching the polls and have people watching the polls and i spoke with a republican strategists who basically said that the goal tonight for the trump campaign is to bust up the narrative by

winning florida, to break up the confidence of the biden side by shocking them all by just out right winning florida because florida counts early. it's possible that could happen. here is what the numbers look like at least as of 5:00 p.m. democrats have had about 3.93 million people vote. it's about 10.3 million and this alicia menendez at 9 million when she was out there. it's 10.4 million total. republicans have 4.0. it's razor thin there. there are 2.4 million npa voters. it will come down to them. >> no party affiliation? >> no party affiliatioaffiliati. florida has one of the largest unaffiliated voters. lots of young voters and disgruntled republicans. it's a mix. the way that the campaign and people on the campaign -- on the democratic campaign side feel is that biden is up between 2.4 and 3% with nba vot brks arknpa vot.

that's what their models are telling them. the other little x factor, though, is there is a certain percentage of republicans who in their models, they believe are voting for biden and this is what the lincoln project was doing. they had a goal of flipping a certain percentage of republican voters. florida was a big target because florida has a lot of seniors and a lot of people in places like the villages that is legendary retirement that's normally very republican but covid changed the way seniors vote in florida. it's shifted them slightly back towards biden and you have to remember obama, biden won florida by a razor thin margin. at this point it looks like biden is tieing in places where even obama barely lost. >> more simply, they had to make some choices. the biden campaign chose to send president obama to florida. that was a choice made -- that was an informed choice. >> 100%. >> they see something here in

the end that may have brought florida a little closer than we're seeing. >> it's a tossup. to be clear, florida is always a tossup. if it wasn't, we would have died and been in another universe. florida is a tossup but it's slightly a biden-ish tossup. >> in terms of how i spent my day today, i've been marinating in the numbers, particularly on this issue of ticket splitting and whether or not voters split their votes by party between senate and president will be more interesting tonight than we think because one of the things we haven't focused ochoen that much in the national media because the top of the ticket race is so fascinating and so fraught is how close how many of these senate seats are. you would be shocked to know how many of them have 2.5 points now. that's true in red states and blue and swing states. i'm looking for senate races to go in inexpected ways tonight and learn things about the divided loyalties of partisan voters. >> are you hearing this? the other thing i've heard and would be interested to hear, if

you're hearing the same thing, there is some real annoyance with cindy mccain because of arizona and the issue because the idea there is a possibility that people might vote for mcsally who are also, who are -- that all the mcsally votes are trump, right? that the other vote, that the kelly vote could be one of those ticket splitting votes and that -- right? they're worried about -- there is a worry about arizona. >> i didn't hear annoyance at cindy but donald trump for making john mccain, after he died, an obsessive target buzz that hurt trump in that state. >> there is a lot we'll have to keep our eyes on. the clock in the corner of the screen is critical. that counts us up to the start of the next hour where we have six states closing. we'll have partial vote from indiana when we come back from this break, and we're going to talk with the dean of the south carolina congressional delegation. many called a king maker after

making clear joe biden passed through the south congressman james clyburn is with us right after this. james clyburn is with us right after this ♪ ♪ maria had to do everything for me. she had these awful blisters on her back. i don't want shingles when i'm your age. actually, if you're 50 or older,

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we're looking towards these poll closings. georgia, indiana, kentucky, south carolina, vermont and virginia. speaking of south carolina. joining us now i'm very closed to say is congressman james clyburn, the third ranking democrat in the u.s. house. the dean of the south carolina delegation. sir, it's an honor to have you with us tonight. thank you for your time. >> thank you very much. >> so donald trump won in south carolina by about, i think, about 15 points in 2016. south carolina is not seen as one of the most competitive presidential races this year, but that senate race between jaime harrison, who you know so well and lindsey graham looks like it will be one of the most expensive senate races in world

history. you've been very confident about jaime harrison in the home stretch here. how do you feel tonight? >> i feel very positive about jami jamie. thank you guys very much for having me. jamie is already a winner. what remains to be seen is whether or not he gets legislated to the senate. he has demonstrated how to run a campaign. jamie came back home after working on my staff in washington to run the south carolina democratic party and a lot of people didn't know this but two years ago, south carolina picked up democrats, picked up seats in the south carolina legislature that had not happened for a long time. because of the work that jamie was doing and so he knew exactly what was taking place in the

state and laid a real solid foundation for his campaign and went out to raise the money and he did a real good job of it and why i'm so impressed is because this was done with a lot of young people who had been laying out of the system, and he told me when you first decided to go this route that he needed to bring young people into the party all ethnic backgrounds, religious persuasions and he did it and he got to work with each other a long time before they got into this campaign. so when you ask why have they been so effective with this campaign, it's because they knew each other. for four or five years so you know the stuff that goes on in the campaign and the principle

and these people knew each other and respected each other and working together. so jamie is a winner. there is no way to go but going forward. >> james clayburn of south carolina. sir, we know the next half an hour will be fraught as we wait for the poll closings and first summits. thanks for making time for us on this momentous night. >> thank you for having me. >> we have some of the first votes in for today. let's go to steve kornacki. >> these are votes, no many but indiana. we're getting a scattering of counties here, just four counties here in indiana you see overwhelmingly trump. this is a very, very small amount of the vote. indiana a state the president carried biy nearly 20 points. mike pence's home state. i can tell you as the indiana comes in a little bit this hour, not all of the polls in indiana are closed. one place we're looking at is here in the indianapolis area

because this is the area of indiana that has been moving dramatically. this is marian county where indiana is and if you go one north there where hamilton county is, this an area here that typifies what democrats hope will happen nationally over the course of the night. it densely populated fast growing area where donald trump lost ground in 2016 from what republicans have typically done. there is a congressional district with an open seat race. we want to see when the votes come in early if we see an early trend in indiana along the lines of what democrats say is going to happen in metro areas just like the undindianapolis area. we don't have anything to report. before we go going and all these other states we'll be able to see something, a scattering of counties in deeply red indiana, as well in kentucky, another state trump won overwhelmingly in 2016. we're getting a scattering of counties.

nothing surprising here in the initial reports out from again, heavily trump counties , two basically reporting. you early votes and as well, we mention exit polling. we have initial looks at the electret and what might be informing the choice here and we'll get those to you shortly. >> thanks. very interested in the suburbs of indianapolis and northern kentucky. trymaine lee in greensboro, nk -- north carolina. >> reporter: i'm in front of the old courthouse in greensboro where later this evening, election officials will be counting the ballots. the reporting of the actual tally will begin 45 minutes later than expected because of a few issues that a couple polling locations had in opening. still, election officials tell us that they expect tonight to have 97% of the vote counted. now that's in stark contrast to other states talking about starting tomorrow or later than that.

so far, they feel good about it but again, they're experiencing like so many other starts, record levels of attornturnout. in 2016 they had 4.7 million casts. in early voting alone in north carolina, 4.6 million. they still feel confident even given the sheer rush of ballots they expect to be counting. >> trymaine lee, thank you for that, greensboro, north carolina. a break for us i'm told. more coverage when we come right back. coverage whene wcome rigt back election... (fisherman vo) how do i register to vote? hmm!.. hmm!.. hmm!.. (woman on porch vo) can we vote by mail here? (grandma vo) you'll be safe, right? (daughter vo) yes! (four girls vo) the polls! voted! (grandma vo) go out and vote! it's so important! (man at poll vo) woo! (grandma vo) it's the most important thing you can do!

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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 get the services of the post office plus ups at up to 62% off get our special tv offer a 4-week trial plus postage and a digital scale go to stamps.com/save and never go to the post office again whoever wins, donald trump, mr. biden, whoever wins, we're coming to that table this time. we're not just going to give you our vote, we're coming to the table. we have issues, real issues that need to be addressed. >> a concerned voter in florida. it has been said that the state of florida is anywhere between

five and seven of the most critical political states in our country. at least three of those states are along the i-4 corridor through the middle at the one end of that is st. pete where correspondent kerry sanders is. kerry, i imagine it's been a busy day down there. >> reporter: it's been a very busy day here. st. petersburg is in a retlex in the last 40 years in florida if pinellas county, these are the most immediate numbers in pinellas county. as of 6:30 tonight and we're looking at the democrats at 206,000 votes, republicans at 212,000 votes, 132,000 no party

affiliation. i'll do a little quick math for you. with about 79% of registered voters in pineellas county, 45% democrats, 36% no party affiliation and that is the key vote that both campaigns want, that no party affiliation and within that group, they narrow it down and look at the senior vote. brian, if they can get those 65 plus voters who have no party affiliation to break one way or the other, it's expected not only will it make the decision here in pinellas county, it often reflects when the state will do and this is a very, very evenly split state where we have about the same like amount of republicans and democrats so it always comes down to those n brbnb -- npas, no party affiliation.

>> steve cokornacki at the boar has something. >> brian, you just asked about the somebody bushuburbs of cinc. we're looking at kentucky, this tier of counties outside cincinnati and you see we are getting vote reported there substantial enough that in this very early count, biden is ahead in kentucky. i'm flagging this for two reasons. we're interested in these suburban areas around the country to see if there is trends there but number two, because i want to take folks through something that will be a very important dynamic as results come in whether it's in kentucky or any number of other states tonight. this is a very good example because this county, canton county, the votes, holy cow there is joe biden up 2-1 and by the way, this is in a county donald trump got 60% of the vote in 2016. keep in mind, the vote we're looking at here, these 23,000 votes and change, this is the early vote.

this is the mail in vote. in kentucky and many other states, we're expecting in all the polls the last few weeks have been saying that the learl mail vote will favor democrats and the same-day vote when that gets added in, i can show you. this is the early vote. we're waiting for this, this is the same day vote in kenton county. whether it's counties all over the country, the drama is going to be the same-day vote. does it bring trump back to the 2016 level when that's all reported or have democrats actually made gains here? this is going to happen in someways where the numbers move around potentially very dramatically. keep that in mind tonight. what looks like a bigger early democratic lead may not stay one. >> over to nicole wallace. >> joining us now is someone who like me has been white knuckled and ringing their hands on the insides of campaigns on election night. david plouffe and i were on opposite sides in 2008, i was on

the losing mccain campaign. david plouffe, good to have you. let me ask you about what both campaigns are looking at in the final days. we talked about them sunday night. they're the tracking polls. they're the usually often the most accurate kinds of polls because they are very targeted. what does that say to you? it's my reporting both campaign tracks say the same thing, joe biden is ahead in those three states we talk about so much, wisconsin, michigan and pennsylvania. >> well, you know, a campaign's number one job is to understand where the voters are because that's how you make decisions, right? if they're being honest about the numbers, i'm not surprised that there is a confluence there and we had an unprecedented of state polling. which is great. after 2016 it provided more detail what is going on there. we have some sense of the vote share that we're liking to see.

the question is turnout. as steve kornacki said, i think in every battle ground state, texas may be even but in every other battle ground state, it's will trump lead? we're seeing in florida, democratic, republican npa, you know, if biden gets 88 or biden gets 12% of the republican vote and trump gets 7% of the democratic vote and biden narcotnarro narrowly wins npas, if there is a 200,000 vote republican turnout, biden will win. we have to wait and see the returns in these counties but yeah, i think that's right. i think those three upper midwestern states, they've been resilie resilient. biden led in those prepandemic. they have been stable for almost a year. >> really quick, i was going to ask you what you thought trump had to make up in terms of same day vote because of his main line message to the whole

country and i'm not sure to whom it was intended that the absentee vote and the mail in ballots were rigged and fraud. he was going to get them thrown out. if turnout ends up disappointing in the eyes of republican senate candidates and trump campaign, he may have shot himself in the proverbial foot there. >> nicole, let's use one of our favorite terms when talking about the trump campaign. >> i know where you're going here. >> there is just -- by the way, there is no republican senate candidate or house candidate or anybody running for any office, they need the votes. trump is out there. basically, what he's done is overloaded. there is some percentage of republicans, i'm sure that would have voted early by mail but because trump was attacking mail and decided to do it today. he's got everything riding on needing extra ordinary narcot-- extraordinary turnout. he needs something more than

strong turnout. >> david plouffe, always good to talk to you. we'll call on you early and often as the night goes on. >> if you were not paying attention to anything that's been said tonight on television, the fact he has a wawa cup -- [ laughter ] >> tells you everything you need to know how much democrats are focused on pennsylvania tonight. very subtle mr. david plouffe. >> very not settle. >> we're 18 minutes away from poll closings in virginia, florida except the panhandle. georgia had so much focus. we have former g ee ee eer cand us. stay with us. hope over fear. [ cheers ] >> we choose truth over lies. [ cheers ] lies [ cheers ] with this seal, this restaurant is committing to higher levels of cleanliness. ♪ ♪

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6:47 eastern time. welcome back. voter suppression is not on the ballot anywhere in our country but it is thoroughly a part of the story line with legal issues, those will be the per vi purview of the chief legal correspondent ari melber standing by to talk with us. >> thank you very much, brian. lots of exciting stuff. we're tracking breaking election day stories. a federal judge ordering the postal service to do a sweep to make sure mail ballots are delivered in pennsylvania, florida, georgia, mimp mitchiga flori because they missed a 4:30 p.m. deadline and a sweep is going on in 400 facilities. we seen central p.a. only 62% of mail ballots went out on time. a new case of alleged meddling. there are suspicious robocalls, some telling voters to stay

home. other people thought this was a pandemic warning and others falsely saying they could vote tomorrow. moments ago, i caught up on zoom with michigan secretary of state about this. do you have a sense how many vote rs were reached or impacte by the robo calls? >> consistent enough to be concerning. we're not talking about one or two reports but we're talking about a significant hand full. we're not going to have near full results tonight. >> interesting coming from, of course, the top elections official in michigan. we know some of the timing tonight will be driven by state law. for example, take a look. there are states that enablerlier processing of ballots. they could have more thorough results earlier like florida and minnesota while other key states like we just heard from in michigan, wisconsin, and pennsylvania can only start processing later under the law. they may not get final results tonight. if a candidate is winning in a

state by a blowout, some of these details matter less. winners declared. on the rules, some states must start later and take longer. let's be clear. not only is there nothing suspicious about that, it's the law. rachel? >> thank you for that. that story about the judge ordering the postal service to go sweep for ballots, postal service essentially not doing it and now the judge being like you have to come back to me and explain why. that's happening on election day while polls are still open. incredibly, incredibly dramatic. let's bring into the conversation now stacyey abrams. founder of fair fight action and southern economic advance 7ment project. real pleasure to have you. thank you so much. >> thank you. >> ari was talking about states that go fast and slow in terms of when we're going to get vote totals tonight and the whole country is feeling very impatient. bha should we expect about georgia in terms of results tonight and timing? >> georgia is one of the states

that allowed precanvasing. proce processing started earlier. tabulation doesn't begin until polls close. we should have some results around 8:00 p.m. it will take time. we have more than 56% of the voters -- almost 56% turn out in early voting. a little under 4 million voters. that's a lot of early voting and absentee balloting that has to be counting. for georgia and voters across the country we want slow and accurate. not fast and wrong. we know that georgia is one of the states that will come in earlier than other states because georgia allows you to cure absentee ballots and fix mistakes with signatures and other issues. there might be ballots that aren't immediately clear as to how they were voting. >> while we're talking to you we're seeing images about long lines to vote. these happened to be from

atlanta. earlier today. we have seen in recent election cycles including you running for governor. absolutely atrocious. and unacceptable lines in order to cast votes. how have things been along that score today and during the early voting period in georgia? >> things have been much better today. we have a handful of precincts and a few counties that are being requested to stay open later because of slow starts today. we were able to threw fair fight and other organizations to get out good information when we knew there were problems. a lot of changes we see in 2020 came about because of the litigation we filed in 2018. and the work we have been doing through fair fight and others to expand access to the polling locations and make certain the counties were given poll books they knee and ensure early voting locations were expanded and had drop boxes.

that's the work we have been focussed on and we are seeing results tonight. >> i know that what you're talking about is vote rights and voter enfranchisement and making sure people can participate in the democratic process. what are you expecting tonight in terms of out come? you have the two incredibly crucial and interesting senate races in addition to a hard fought presidential campaign after all you have seep and your experience what do you think will happen in georgia? >> i don't do predictions. i would spend my time in las vegas not politics. we have extraordinary turn out with early voting. a strong set of numbers heading into tonight. and i would rather been democrats than republicans in georgia tonight. >> i hear you. stacey abrams. it is always great to have you here. thank you so much. >> thank you. >> all right. we are of course approaching the

top of the hour. about seven minutes away from 7:00 p.m. polls are about to close in key states including georgia. and virginia. and south carolina. we have a look at the newest results coming in. just ahead. stay with us. ♪ ♪ when you're through with powering through, it's time for theraflu hot liquid medicine. powerful relief so you can restore and recover. theraflu hot beats cold.

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we are sneaking up on 7:00 p.m. here on the east coast. about to get the first -- vermont. we have a couple minutes here. what are you watching for? >> florida. i'm getting texts. everyone feels the same way. toss up. i can't get anyone to guess what's going to happen. >> you're talking to stacey abrams. first of all nationally she gets so much credit for what she's done in the state. and as you were talking i looked at you and said i heard something about georgia. it was of the biden campaign.

they are feeling good about georgia. yesterday and today. they are keeping an eye on georgia. >> between georgia and florida, it sound like what we are hearing is that both campaigns think the florida sa toss up. >> yes. >> the biden campaign maybe optimistic about georgia than they are letting on. >> yeah. the biden campaign was feeling optimistic about north carolina and georgia than florida. florida might have tightened. they sent obama there yesterday. there's a lot of fluidity. >> there's weird stuff there are a lot of new voters. a new american citizen voters. the caribbean registered more democrats than republicans. the turn out seems to be higher than republican caribbean. it's a tiny pocket. >> it's so hard to model in the first place. it's complex.

and earl ly voting changing and it's going to be hard to extrapolate. >> you talked to stacy. even if democrats don't carry georgia and north carolina and texas. the investigationments they have made are long term doom for republicans. they are activating voters who will remain as democrats and younger. of color. and they ain't going back and republicans would have to completely alter their entire carbon make up to make them ever come to them. >> the fact we're not talking about virginia with suspense. the product of democrats making that investment in virginia. over the decade. >> looking for suspense tonight. that's what we have to deliver. as we come up cothe top of the first hour of returns. that would be 7:00 eastern time. first list and here we go.

here's what we have for you. at 7:00 p.m. these are all projections. georgia too early to call. indiana as expected we are projecting donald trump. as the projected winner there. virginia too early to call. though biden is leading. in kentucky, too early too call at this hour. south carolina, too early to call. at this hour. vermont, up in new england. too early to call. here is the long and road to 270 electoral votes. again. one state awarded as expected it went to the incumbent president. senate races we're watching in the battlegrounds especially. georgia senate. too early to call. that's the special election in the os off purdue race.

too early to call. south carolina lindsey graham bid to stay alive too early to call. virginia. warner leading the race. officially we have it too early. kentucky. mcconnell bid for reelection. too early. senate at this hour. and we're going to return to this all night long of course. with the hurdle the democrats have to regain control of the chamber. what have we learned thus far? >> i'm just eyeing this screen because i want to tell you what's about to happen. what we're expecting about to happen in florida. the polls are not closed in florida. the panhandle is in the central time zone. they will stay open for an hour. the rest of florida is closing. what florida does is here we go -- let's take a look. first one. lee county. 80% of the vote in.

donald trump with 57%. biden 42%. we are looking at the early vote and the vote by mail. that gets reported in all of the counties very quickly. after polls close. you can expect a bunch of these to start coming in in fact i want to move north. this was a county in 2016 that told us early what was happening nationally. this is the early in mail in vote. trump is leading it with 56%. joe biden at 43%. this county just north of tampa. trump won it by 22 points in 2016. this represented a massive surge to donald trump. one of the early signs along the gulf coast in 2016 he was having a better night than expected. this is critical. with the early mail in vote trump is not doing as well as he did in 2016 over all. remember, we expect the early mail in vote in florida and in many other states to be much better for joe biden.

than the same day vote. you are not seeing the same day vote being reported out here. the early and mail in. there will be more early and mail in vote than there is same day vote. we expect the vote is yet to come will favor trump. the question -- that vote we expect will be reported out in relatively short order. the question is with that same day vote, in the county and all the counties is trump getting back to his 2016 level? exceeding it? falling short? as these counties come into focus that's the story we'll be telling. we have the early and mail in vote. we'll see the same day come in. we'll see if trump can get up there. we have counties coming in. i want to call them up here. 54% of 45%. again this is a county where on the same day vote. we have probably three quarters of all the votes cast here on the same day vote we expect

trump to do better. can he get that up to 58%? adds the same day vote comes in. here's lake county. a big one for donald trump in 2016. 60% of the vote. notice the trend here. in all the early reports we're getting. this is a lot of vote coming in. trump is several points shy of the 2016 number. the question is how well does he do when we start getting the same day vote. here's what i expect in florida. 45 minutes everything in the eastern time zone in florida is going to start lighting up like this. one county after another. we'll get the early vote and mail vote and what amounts to the clear majority of all the votes cast in the counties. and then after that reported out in all of the counties, they are going to start adding in the votes that were cast by people who went to the polls today. that is the story we'll track. in every single one of the counties. as they come in. that's the story in florida. i want to check georgia to see if we're getting votes yet in

georgia. it looks like we aren't. the one thing i want to flag -- so much of the democratic strength in georgia is concentrated in the atlanta metro area. there's a collection of nine counties here. the clinton won by 30 points in 2016. stacey abrams won by nearly 40 points in 2018. this is what makes her breaks the democrats statewide. we think we will get the votes here especially in atlanta. later in the night. i think expect georgia starts to report we may get more from the republican areas and waiting on the atlanta metro area. the story right now for the next half hour and let's see if we have more is down in florida. four counties so far. we have the early vote. we'll continue to monitor that. these will be the best numbers in these counties that joe biden gets. and the question will be can trump over come it in the the same day. here we go. st. petersburg.

interesting. trump won this county in 2016. this was a big win for trump. look at that. half a million votes were cast here in 2016. this is going to be as good as it gets for joe biden. the question is as the same day vote comes in. as this total gets to 100%. is biden still above that 47% that clinton finished with in 2016? anything above that represents an improvement for biden. represents slippage for trump. represents good news for the democrats. this is biden's starting point. as we get the same day vote in from florida. i'm taking a look back here. obviously we are going to be paying close attention to these three counties down here. miami-dade, broward, palm beach county. big counties here in the southeast part of the florida. democratic counties. expecting to vote just like this shortly we want to see in miami-dade this is where the trump campaign is talked about making in roads with cuban

american votes. denting a big democratic margin in 2016. we want to see signs of that. broward is a core democratic county. ft. lauderdale. we'll look for that. we have another one coming in. citrus county. keep in mind 2016 it was this part of the state in particular. the gulf coast, tampa, north. st. pete. you saw trump surge in 2016. relative to how republican ts normally do. you're getting the early vote. it's a county trump got 68% in 2016. already at 67. same day vote to come. that would be -- you say you like to see that number in trump campaign. republicans areas. we are getting basically republican areas reporting right now. we want to see the democratic areas. we want to see miami-dade and broward. what biden is looking like there. gulf coast especially this region here, this is where you

really saw that surge. by the way, you saw this surge for trump in 2016. one of the reasons for the surge retirees. who live here. where are they retiring from? often the mitd west. wisconsin, michigan. this was a harbinger in 2016 for what was to come later in the night. that's why i'm paying close attention there. i'm looking to see if anything else has come in. continue to monitor this. i expect the next half hour this thing will be lighting up. >> i'll ask you to do something that's unfair for me to ask. it's second order math. adds we have been talking about we have been studying and preparing our audience for. as you described. the advance voters the absentee and mail in ballots that we're getting first were expected to skew democratic. the day of votes. people voting today is expected to skew republican. towards trump. given that expectation, can you

tell already from the vote that is are coming in that are again absentee and mail in ballots if they are matching expectations in terms of how well biden expected to do with the voters? >> again, i'm interested in this one here. this is where st. petersburg is. this indicates we're looking at the vote that we have yet to come. about 150,000 yet to come. this is interesting. if joe biden -- this is a substantial about six and a half point improvement over clinton here. if biden lands at 50 in the county, that is good news for him. there's a little bit of a pad here potentially for biden as this starts to come in. again, if you're the trump campaign you're trying to get up to 59%. he's not far off from that. citrus county needing to get up one point. for the trump campaign and a citrus county that's not a bad

place to be. for the biden campaign they might like what they're looking at and we'll continue to look at this vote comes in. >> there will be fascinating to watch the votes race in. more poll closings in the middle of the hour and top of the next. >> yell, wave your arms usually drill if you have stuff. michael steel. former chairman of the republican party. affiliated with the lincoln project. standing by. you have been watching and listening. you want to get on the board based on what you are seeing thus far in florida for the sake of the viewers. >> the important thing that i think to note that steve pointed out is the level of under performance by donald trump relative to 2016. this is the problem when you go out and your strategy is to just work the same day vote. in other words, if trump placed

an emphasis on some of the early vote instead of telling voters that vote by mail was a bad thing. a lot more seniors would have participated. and dependent voters would have participated. you're beginning to see the failure of the strategy as he's got a drop off of 4, 5% in some of the early vote counties. so the question now becomes how do you make that up same day? typically across the statewide race, you're looking at maybe i think from 2000 they were lucky if they got a 3% make up in terms of closing the gap between where the opponent was and their campaign. the reality is it will be hard to make up these larger gaps of 45 to 55 from the last time or 55 to 59. this time. it's just a problem because you didn't do the full stretch of

the campaign. you're seeing it play out in the numbers. >> we appreciate you being an engaged viewer from home. keep us honest throughout the night. steve clearly needs more electronics on his belt. i notice a couple more counties have lit up. >> hills boro. this is tampa. biden here jumping out this is a 12 point -- this is a democratic county. from 2016. this is obviously democratic over performance for the time being. relative to 2016. this is 11 and a half point advantage. clinton won this by seven. the question is about 80% of the vote. 135,000 votes remaining to come in. 600,000 basically reported out so far. does that 55 continue to stay above the 52 that clinton finished at? any county where biden is

finishes over clinton is progress for democrats. any county trump finishes under what he got in 2016 that would be falling back a bit for hip. we're tracking this county after county. we got some this looks like one precinct from orange county. orlando. you can see that is about 312 votes. broward. there you go. look at this. wow. this looks like 163,000 vote ts reported out here with 860,000 to go. i believe what we're looking at here. i want to check this. is this same day vote in broward? unclear. i say that because this is very small what you're seeing here. we're getting a different color. let me get clarification. broward is a big one. we're expecting 1 million votes. this is big for democrats.

ft. lauderdale. let me see if we can get an answer. palm beach. we continue to only have a sc scattering. i'm looking to see where we have not yet checked. did we look at lee county earlier? i think we did. the question is can trump get up to 59%. i'll continue to monitor these and let you know if we have more. >> let me follow on with that. is there any reason to expect something special about broward in terms why the proportion is so different compared to other counties? >> broward my former county. they tend to report slow. and broward is one of the true blue counties that is a bell weather for democrats. they call it the sixth bureau. there's so many new yorkers. broward under performed a lot in 2016. it came in towards the bottom in

terms of turn out. that was a big problem for clinton. it was a problem in 2018 for gillum. broward under performs democrats under perform. what i was hearing today broward is potentially going to hit 80% turn out. that's the projection. miami-dade same thing. >> it's really high. >> broward tends to sometimes -- when obama ran, it was one of the best performing counties. it tend to be better performing for obama personally. than other democrats. miami-dade was quite light. that was one of the big concerns for the campaign today. that miami-dade was super-light. broward was strong mail in and early. i'm not surprised. >> the reason that i'm singling it out. miami-dade is 84% in. a lot of the counties that we're getting large numbers of votes in they're in that proportion. that's not what we're seeing from broward. >> we got a million votes in in

miami-dade county. this is a big one. let me clarify the screen. we have a million votes in. the bulk of the vote we'll get. joe biden is leading here. the lead is nine points. this is significant because we have been asking has a president trump made inroads with his pan ib voters in south florida. in miami-dade. this 54, 45. this is a county that clinton won by 30 points in 2016. again, we think there this is primarily i believe early vote you're looking at here. again the vast majority of the vote will be early. there maybe a scattering of same day precincts part of this as well. this is we were looking was the miami-dade number for biden going to be lower substantially than the clinton number. there's still room here. i want to get clear on what's to come. there's room for this to grow.

my look at this is there have been in road that trump has made with cuban american voters. likely in miami-dade. again, this is an enormous county. they reported out a million votes. donald trump is running above the 2016 number. look at the statewide total that's starting to take shape. i'll go north to broward. i asked about palm beach we're waiting on that. anymore out of orange county. i'll keep looking and stop talking to myself. >> big update in miami-dade. >> that's huge. >> we were talking in the break. bha i have been hearing is there are issues with the mail in vote. it's unusually low. it's not just low meaning disappointing for democrats. it's low. even the numbers steve was showing. the bulk of the democratic strategy is miami-dade, broward, palm beach. and tampa. that is normally where they win elections. the rest is all red.

if you're getting such -- people that's what people found unusual. >> forgive me. i will ask every time we hear the sound. we have a call. as expected joe biden has been awarded by the projection the state of vermont. we'll go to the national map. there we are. road to 270. one each at this hour. back to the east end of the studio. and the ongoing conversation already in progress. >> indiana and vermont. so if you have those on the bingo card in terms of drama. those are now settled. let me ask you to weigh in. florida so far. the miami-dade numbers for the democrats look daunting. in terms of what they were hoping to do statewide. >> i said sunday night. biden felt better about north carolina and georgia than florida chl there was a sense

that county might come in. florida is sort of a graveyard. for both parties. it has been trending more republican. i think florida the story of florida, florida is reddening as quickly as texas is turning purple. the demographics in florida might be a state we're not talking about four years from now. for many days, florida has felt good for trump. >> florida and nevada. the sort of angry grandparents moved to florida and hate taxes. and the fun grannies move to las vegas. >> one is blueing and one is reddening. >> we are in the middle of a bunch of exciting things happening in poll closings and data. let's go back to steve. >> we have in your opinions from georgia. here's my first wrong prediction. i said it was going to take a long time in the atlanta metro area. we have what looks to be early voting from cob county. a huge suburb. right outside atlanta.

go back a decade a few years even this was a core republican county. you're looking at joe biden and again i can show you this, the color here this represents early vote. this represents mail vote. joe biden said would be his best number. he'll come down from this. this is it was a big deal four years ago. when clinton eked out a win in cob county. that was a sea change just for a democrat to have more votes than a republican. again this number will come down. here's the question. does it come down back to clinton land in 2016 or find out democrats have made big gains potentially in metro atlanta. an area they are relying on statewide. >> georgia is a state remind us where we are expecting early votes to reflect potentially artificially inflated biden number? trump number? in terms of the order by which they count. which candidate might expect to

look good in the early numbers? >> we might have a mix here. i think in most of the we are going to get the early vote first. they can get the ballots processed ahead of time and in position to just get them reported out. if polls close. i'm looking around now. some of the states we get a mix. it looks like in all of the counties that i'm looking at so far. we are basically looking at early votes. so far in georgia, certainly the statewide number in georgia right now. which represents a small scattering of counties here. these are the best numbers in the counties that biden is likely to have. >> all right. 7:21 right now. we have had polls close thus far. virginia, georgia, south carolina, florida, except the panhandle. we are heading towards poll closings in north carolina shortly. and ohio. and of course the top of the hour a whole bunch more

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poll closings 7:30 eastern time. expected in north carolina and ohio. and in west virginia. as we await those poll closings moments away, we are watching the florida map light up like a slot machine. as steve pings from county it county watching that vote come in fast. >> first of all we keep going county to county. let's zoom out and look at the big picture. half the vote in florida. 6 million votes already counted. what's happening we have nothing from the panhandle. that will close shortly. heavy ri republican. we're getting mostly early vote from the counties. i want to update a few.

we're in the early vote. joe biden sitting about 53 and a half. you can see more same day is tabulated it's come down a bit for biden. 2016 clinton was at 47. biden at 51. still above the clinton number. how far will this fall? we're watching that story. we have now got again what primarily looks to be the early vote. this is where jacksonville is. and again this is one that trump won narrowly. biden right now is over that clinton number. trump is under his number. let's see what happens as more vote comes in. another big one. same deal here. a 55 to 42 trump county. can trump get the number back up to 2016 levels. this is the big picture just emerging. trump in so 34 places needs to pick up 5 points or something.

to get up to his 2016 level. one other biggy. sump ter. the oldest median age. this is the villages. the retirement community. they have just about all the vote in. there's a scattering to come. probably less than 7,000. trump is 67%. remember, this was a big one for trump in 2016. he got 69%. 69 to 30. right now it's a hair under that. with a few votes left. let's see if that adjusts a bit. that's a big one. folks were keeping an eye on that. the big picture coming in to focus as with e get this early vote. a very close race in florida. look at that. joe biden in the statewide margin about 10,000. again. >> wow. >> for the democrats there's a will the of vote to come. and vote in general in broward county. and i believe as well in orange

county. these are two huge democratic areas that will pad the total. when you got all the early vote counted from this state. biden needs to be ahead. the same day vote here will favor trump and the panhandle is going to favor trump. it's not all filled in yet. even the counties that are filled in. we got palm beach. we'll continue to monitor. >> wow. can you show us 2016 palm beach. >> clinton got 57. joe biden sitting at 60. i will double check this. i think this is basically the early vote the mail in vote. we're getting a scattering. >> and that sound means we're approaching another set of states. the 7:30 poll closings north carolina, ohio, and west virginia. the time has arrived. 7:30 exactly here in the east.

here's what we have from the news projection. west virginia too early to call. as expected donald trump in the lead there. here's the bar graph of where we stand. early. very early yet. in the road to 270. one each awarded. you see the electoral votes have been awarded as well. big one we're watching tonight is georgia. it's a battleground. we have it as too early to call. you see the break out there. in early vote. the map of the road to 270. looks like this. at this hour. right about now. it's going to be a complex one by the time this is over with tonight. 11 to 3. senate races we're following.

north carolina. too early to call. west virginia. too early. the incumbent is leading. here's the senate make up at this hour. we can't show this often enough. because of the percentages needed the seats needed if the democrats want to end this night back in the majority. back in the u.s. senate. when we last left our friend, he was looking at new vote in from florida. >> we continue. the time zone to the top of the hour. you can see the time zone cut off. not a huge population area. the panhandle of florida we're about to start everything that happened here for the last hour will happen here. again we're looking at. this is a good moment to freeze and take in the picture. before you start getting the

panhandle. it's not complete. we're getting close to a complete look at roughly the early vote looks like in the eastern time zone. all the stories about record shattering turn out favoring democrats or republicans. you're seeing those ballots opened and counted and processed and reported out. again, when all of these are complete with the early. if you're joe biden you need to be ahead. if we froze things and tally up the early vote he would be. there's a ton of vote to come in. early from broward. where he'll get a huge number. a ton from orange. orlando. also the same in tallahassee. you have democratic areas that have not spit out the -- there ss. biden took the lead. a big batch of votes in broud broward. there it is. that just happened. we have i would say very likely just about all -- very close it all of the early vote reported

in broward. biden now getting 66% the same day to come. what that did statewide. that's a huge effect there. put him ahead statewide. he could get smaller bounces still. that will happen in orange county. probably any minute. that will happen in leon county. biden wants to get ahead in the early vote and with stand the same day. and in the panhandle. these are not entirely -- it's worth reminding folks we think in 2016 clinton very roughly won the early vote portion of the balloting by six and trump won the same day roughly by 12 points. that trancelated into a trump victory of one point statewide. the balance of ballots will be different this time. reminder you can have the splits between the same day and early and can make a big difference. again waiting on a couple big

democratic areas. there are core republican smaller counties to come in. when all the early and same di is in. biden wants a pad. he'll need it. >> i want to bring into the conversation somebody who has seen florida politics up close and he's been in the middle of it. former congressman is with us. we're lucky to have him. let me ask for your take on this. you're watching the florida numbers coming in. we're doing math in our heads. and previous races. in the middle of a pandemic with different voting patterns and projections. what are you seeing looking at the numbers in florida? >> what we're observing here tonight in florida is what steve and others have been following. the trump campaign gaining ground in latino areas. the number miami-dade. that has to worry the biden

campaign. clinton won it by 30 points. a ten point lead now. that is evidence that trump has gained ground with latinos. however. troubling sign for the trump campaign white areas the biden campaign gained ground compared to clinton in 2016. really an inversion of trends. for years it's democrats gaining ground in florida hispanics and republicans doing better with whites. in year that is reversed. no matter who wins this state that will be a big story tomorrow. >> about two-thirds of the vote in in florida. it very close right now statewide. biden ahead by a little. we expect the panhandle counties when they come in they have the poll closing. we expect those to be heavily republican. don't we? >> that's right.

out standing from the panhandle. >> here in the state of florida. as steve says it's really important for the biden campaign that those early votes especially absentee and big counties here in south florida continue coming in for him. he will have to with stand that inflow of red votes from the panhandle and traditional voters who voted today in the state. >> former congressman. thank you for joining us. we continue to watch the florida numbers come in. it's from a human perspective, you talk about the stuff in advance. and game it out. and expectations. what you have heard from sources and campaigns and tracking polls. you feel like you have a sense. and it comes in. and it's like so overwhelmed with the ongoing on rush of data. that's why we're at. with the rest of florida coming in. the panhandle counties will be closing at the top of the hour.

meanwhile we have too early to call races in states all over the eastern sea board. that have shut. we'll take a quick break. when we come back we'll have more from the florida numbers and check in on virginia, georgia, some of the other too early to call races that we're tracking. you can't claim that as a dependent. because it's inanimate! [ sigh ] people ask ... what sort of a person should become a celebrity accountant? and, i tell them, "nobody should." hey, buddy. what's the damage? [ on the phone ] i bought it! the waterfall? nope! my new volkswagen. a volkswagen?! i think we're having a breakthrough here. welcome to caesar's palace. thank you. ♪ (combative yelling) he used to have bad breath. now, he uses a capful of therabreath fresh breath oral rinse to keep his breath smelling great, all day long. (combative yelling)

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less than $16; and a schultz 4k television for less than $2. i won these bluetooth headphones for $20. i got these three suitcases for less than $40. and shipping is always free. go to dealdash.com right now and see how much you can save. welcome back. 7:41 eastern time. as we look at the view from our backyard. i am told in the last couple of minutes because a commercial break rolled. depending on where you live in the country. not the fault of any human. humans maybe harmed as a result. you missed two calls that we made at 7:30. not so much calls as estimates. they remain the same. that is that ohio is too early to call. as is the presidential race in the state of north carolina.

which was and remains too early to call. that's our status. over to rachel and the east end. >> i hate to go back to you in the middle of this. i have a bunch of stuff i want to ask about in terms of other states. can we talk about florida. >> nothing yet from the panhandle. we're waiting on -- tallahassee. we don't have any of the early vote. we got orange county. orlando. biden getting 64% in the early vote. absentee vote in orange county. compare this to 2016. clinton won with 60%. biden over that number. let's see if that can hold up. the remaining vote comes in. we have i believe here -- a quick look at the gulf coast counties update them. here we go.

we want to monitor more and more vote came in. very little left in pas co. core trump county. he got 59 in 2016. he's at 58.7. biden no third party candidates. don't make too much of this. biden a little bit ahead of the clinton number. north along the gulf coast. still vote to come in. same day vote that we expect to favor trump here. 63%. he's trying to build that up. he's coming close to the numbers. citrus county there's not much left. he's over it by a point. look at this. 70.6. to 71% in 2016. just a few votes left here. you see this pattern here -- look at this. 57.4. 59%. more vote to come in. trump in the gulf coast counties looks look he's on pace to come right in the neighborhood of that 2016 number. if he just hitting those numbers that's good news for his

campaign. the question is can the democrats offset that with gains anywhere. we talked about miami-dade. that's a bad sign for democrats. what we have been monitoring. st. petersburg. the biden number started about 53 and change. now down under 50. 49.7%. the clinton you remembnumber wa. 60,000 votes to come in. clearly the trend the trajectory of the same day vote is favoring trump. look for that 49 to come down further. this may not be the gain democrats were hoping. next door. tampa is. again, biden clinton number was 52. biden at 53 and a half. 75,000 votes left to be counted here. clearly again the same day trend is favoring trump. it's that election day vote. look for this vote to come down.

it might end up north of 52. again, we are just looking here at stuff that looks similar to 2016. with the biggest change on the map in florida miami-dade. i'm looking to see if we have anything more. there's 200,000 votes to come. likely a lot of same day. already under performance from joe biden. that's a worrying sign for democrats. they have to make up for it somewhere. we'll keep looking at these. and see if something appears on this map. the statewide vote here, getting close here -- we're still waiting. this is we are close to being able to say we have the early vote and same day in. from the eastern time zone part of the state. this is the last big jump biden will get in the early vote here. this number is 83,000 votes. that number will jump. we're now in the faze here a lot

of the counties the same day vote is starting to come in. and even in counties where trump isn't doing well. he's doing better in the same day vote. and of course has the panhandle to come. >> steve, thank you. we can start to see the ark of how that will go in florida. we will not know until we see it. >> i want to bring in claire mccaskill. from missouri. find out what's on your mind as you watch thus far tonight. >> i think that i see the trump campaign walking down a field with mines. any of the states could blow up and they're in trouble. they may get passed the first one. florida. it looks like it will be close. it doesn't look like it will be a decisive victory for either side. they have the next land mine. which georgia. and north carolina. and then of course the mother of

land mines in pennsylvania. trump has to win these states. biden doesn't have to win all these states. so, i still see that biden path is clear. and he's got a lot of them. and i'm of course waiting to see more votes on the senate races where i'm paying very close attention to iowa, maine, north carolina particularly. to see if we'll call schumer majority leader. >> when the sun comes up? >> if you look at states where the senate race are in play, most of them can count votes today. and previously. in other words we think we'll get results in georgia, north carolina, we should get results in iowa. obviously colorado and arizona were not as worried about. we feel comfortable about those states.

we may know more about the senate when we go to bed at 3:00 a.m. than the presidency. >> okay. i'll take the optimism. keep watching with us. we'll go back to you when things warrant. steve has early vote from ohio. >> i think we're taking a look at the early absentee vote -- statewide. in ohio. that explains why joe biden statewide leading so much. two places here that are accounting for vote. core democratic county where cleveland is. and we'll play that game. let's see does he end up over the clinton number? he's at 75%. clinton got 66%. biden will need substantial improvement across ohio. this is an eight point victory statewide for trump in 2016. franklin county the state capitol. columbus. this is 76%.

61% clinton landed in 2016. again, more than half the vote in here. we think the next half is probably more favorable to trump. how far down does that biden number come? he wants that to land not at the clinton number. he wants to land substantially ahead. here's an interesting one. outside of columbus, this is a traditionally republican sort of bedroom community suburban area. the early vote here in delaware county. a big one. biden leading it 54, 45. trump won this by 17 points in 2016. that was bad for a republican. this is one of the areas traditionally deeply republican. where democrats think they can make gains and have made gains in the trump era. this will be interesting to watch. biden over that significantly over that clinton number. we again expect trump to make up ground here as the rest of the vote comes in, but does this

number land substantially above 2016 right there? i'm just seeing zbansville -- okay, we're only getting a couple of votes there. we got -- okay, here we go. now this is interesting. this is the early vote in mahoning county. this is youngstown. they had one of the biggest, most dramatic swings to donald trump in 2016. he lost the county to hillary clinton. he lost it by three. four years earlier barack obama had won this county by nearly 30 points. this typified -- when we talked about that blue collar midwest surge to donald trump in 2016, this is the capital of it, mahoning county, getting within three points there for donald trump. joe biden sitting at 62% in the early vote here. so let's see. does that come down? does that finish above clinton? is biden able to reassert himself in some way? reassert that traditional democratic advantage?

he's certainly not going to get to where barack obama was in tb12, but could he finish substantially north of clinton did in mahoning county? that would be a big signal because mahoning county was the kind of county trump was making leaps and bounds in 2016 past what we've seen from republicans before. so, again, that's the statewide picture. heavily slanted to those democratic areas, in terms of the votes that's been reported so far. don't read into that statewide number. i'm just going to check back here in florida one more time. look at that. you see that advantage biden had all but depleted right now. we still don't have leon county in. still don't have the panhandle. and, again, i'm going to look to see -- did a little more miami-dade. and you can see as we inch our way up to 100% of the vote in miami-dade, the biden share, which was 54.5% the last time we checked is down to 53.9%. that's the political gravity in the eastern time zone of florida right now. it favors trump at this moment

just because it's the same-day vote primarily we're talking about. broward, 66. palm beach, biden sitting at 58%. and, again, statewide in florida, a little south of 7,000 votes is the edge at the moment for joe biden. >> if you think we are juggling a lot of data and information right now. wait until eight minutes from now when 17 states have poll closings. we're going to take a quick break and get organized before that happens. we'll be right back. stay with us. ♪ here? nah. ♪ introducing the all new chevy trailblazer. here? nope. ♪ here. ♪ when the middle of nowhere, is somewhere. the all new chevy trailblazer. making life's journey, just better.

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so we fixed it. mio. we are closing in on 8:00 p.m. eastern. whereupon we will have poll closings in alabama, connecticut, d.c., florida, illinois, maine, maryland, michigan, mississippi, new jersey, oklahoma, pennsylvania, rhode island, tennessee. busy night. right now we are still watching

the vote come in in florida. steve kornacki, can i also ask you for an update on georgia? georgia has been closed for a little while. we expect a bit of a slow count in georgia, but what do we have there? >> yeah, it's not going to be like florida where we're suddenly getting -- oh, here we go. back to steve. >> we missed the -- i was going to -- let me cut in there. we missed the audio from brian there. we've got issues with brian's mic. nbc news is now projecting a winner in the kentucky presidential race. president donald trump projected to be the winner in kentucky. that will be eight electoral votes for the president. sorry about that technical difficulties. steve? >> take a look at georgia as we come up to the top of the hour. this is very different from

florida just in terms of the pace of the votes being counted here. you've got about 300 -- excuse me, about 425,000 counted here, but i just want to, you know, circle it. we said at the start of the night the atlanta metro area we thought would lag. we do have a substantial share of the vote. although a lot still outstanding. a substantial share of the vote in cobb county. there's about a nine-county area here, nine counties right in the atlanta metro area. i'll just put some stats here so you keep these in mind as the night goes on. there are nine counties that hillary clinton won in the atlanta metro area, including fulton county, atlanta itself. they account for a little bit more than 40% of the entire vote statewide and hillary clinton won these counties by 29 points in 2016. so that's why i keep saying we really want to see what is happening here. she won these counties by 29. and she lost collectively everything else in the state. by 29 points.

and that added up statewide in '16 to a five-point win for trump. now, why these are even more interesting is in 2018 when stacey abrams came within an inch of winning the governorship, she didn't win these nine counties by 29 points, she won them by 36 and she drove up turnout. so you have two ingredients there, higher turnout at relative to the rest of the state. bigger margin. and, oh, by the way, a third ingredient. this is one of the fastest-growing metro areas in the country. so for democrats they think they can get a bigger margin. they think they can account for a bigger share of the statewide vote tonight. we want to see if that's happening. we've got a lot of the early vote in cobb county. not much else here, especially fulton is going to take a while. i think georgia will get a lot, but it will take a while. >> okay. ten seconds to go to bring us to the top of the hour. a slew of poll closings at 8:00 eastern, in addition to updates on the states that have already closed. the 8:00 hour is now upon us and here we go.

in the state of florida, if you've been watching our coverage, you know the state of conversation there. we are saying the race is too close to call. separated by just under 10,000. in the commonwealth of pennsylvania, big race, big electoral vote fight tonight. too early to call. in the state of new hampshire, too early to call. in my home state of new jersey, joe biden the projected winner of 14 electoral votes. in the commonwealth of massachusetts, joe biden the projected winner tonight. in the state of maryland, joe biden the predicted winner tonight. in oklahoma, donald trump holds on on to oklahoma. in delaware, native son joe biden is the projected winner. in d.c., where you can vote without representation in congress, joe biden the projected winner of the district of columbia.

in illinois, too early to call is our call. in tennessee, too early to call, though a lead by donald trump. in missouri, too early to call. in alabama, too early to call. nutmeg state of connecticut, too early to call, though we note a lead on the part of joe biden. mississippi too early to call. maine too early to call. rhode island too early to call, though we note a lead at this hour on the part of joe biden. ohio, of the battlegrounds, remains too early. georgia remains too early for us to call. north carolina remains too early to call. here is the long and winding road to 270. the colored-in states are the

states we have projected, the states we have awarded. let's check in on some senate races. first for us this hour. in alabama, jones tupperville vice. too early to call. in maine, widely watched race complicated by the state system and third-party candidates. it is for us too early to call. here is the number the democrats need to gain control of the senate. steve kornacki, we were talking to you. >> well, we got ohio. let's take a look here at ohio. we got a lot more of the vote coming in now in ohio. again, this is going to be more democratic favorable vote here. although a couple of places we want to look at. remember, biden needs to make up not just ground from 2016 because this is a state that hillary clinton lost by eight, he needs to make up substantial ground. we mentioned earlier delaware county. you know, this is just outside columbus, traditionally core republican territory. we're now at a point where there is a little over 30,000 votes

left to be counted here. the bulk of the votes are now counted in delaware county, and joe biden continues to lead here. it's 54-45. it's at the point here where even if trump is truly cleaning up in these final votes, there's gonna be significant improvement here for joe biden in this county from hillary clinton in 2016. and, again, you go back a little further in time, a 23-point margin there. so 23 for the republicans in 2012. 17 was trump's number here in 2016. and, again, biden is sitting almost ten points ahead with only 30,000 or so votes to come here. that is the type of area i think we've been talking about for four years where you talk about a lot of college degrees, white collar professionals, suburban, bedroom community, whatever you want to say. that's the kind of area. and you're looking at, i think, now enough vote to say there's been some progress there for democrats. let's also take a look at lucas county where toledo is. this is a core democratic county

in ohio, city of toledo. that area, the question was how much is the margin going to be for joe biden? again, in 2016 there was the clinton margin. solid. it was 18 points. but here was the 2012 margin. it was 32 points. this was the kind of slippage all across ohio, all across the midwest clinton got in '16. obama won lucas county by 32. clinton won it but it was almost cut in half. again, you see biden sitting here nearly 50 points ahead. i think we're looking at early democratic favorable vote. let's see how much this comes down, but this is sort of the metric, is biden only falling to the obama 2012 level? that's a level that won obama the state of ohio. or is biden going to fall closer to the clinton 2016 level or, you know, 60% or so. that would be disappointing for him there. so we'll watch those as they come in. again, you can't really see much statewide because you don't have enough republican -- you have too much democratic area there relative to the rest of the state. i want to take a look here. you do see trump has pulled

ahead in the tally in florida as the panhandle, we've reached 8:00, begins to come in. >> steve, can -- before you get away from florida there, in terms of the democratic counties in florida. >> yeah. >> are we now seeing them get close to their vote total? >> yeah, let's go through the biggies here. miami-dade, we've been monitoring. biden sitting, again, hispanic vote, cuban american vote. this is where the dems are running ten points under where clinton got in 2016. let's go north to broward, oh, boy. >> 99. >> we're almost all-in. that's good for the democrats, but keep in mind, this was a 36-point margin for hillary clinton. you're seeing 33 here for joe biden. let's go one north to palm beach. biden actually running here, for now, a little bit over clinton, but you got more vote here. same-day. expect that to be a little bit more favorable to trump. let's look in orlando. you're getting close there to all the vote or close to all the vote. there is biden sitting only a point above the clinton number. let's go over to the gulf coast

and see hillsborough. yeah, i mean, there is a little bit of vote to come here. let's see if we get the exact number. about 30,000 votes to come here. room for biden to fall down to that clinton level is kind of what it looks like. pinellas, biden sitting at 49.6%. how many votes are we looking at left? about 50 grand left in pinellas. remember, it was 35.5 when we first saw the early vote there. i'm just going to look at leon county here. let's see if this comes down. they say duval, right, in jacksonville? he is a little bit ahead of clinton there. this might be an improvement here. this might actually be a county that flips narrowly from trump to biden. biden might look at this map as a democrat and wish you were seeing a little bit more of that tonight. >> i hear you. nicolle, you were talking about florida and expectations on the democratic side? >> yeah, the biden campaign has been very clear-eyed since florida. they sent president obama there over the weekend. it was not a state that joe biden barnstormed through in the

final weekend. he hasn't set a foot there since thursday night. it is drumponald trump's hometo. he in trumpian flourish left new york behind, became a resident of the state of florida. it is a state that has become increasingly difficult for democrats to win statewide. you can feel the hopes and the dreams of our viewers falling down and you can hear liquor cabo cabinets opening all across this great land. florida is not a state biden was counting on, not essential to a biden win. the biden campaign is not flashy but the biden campaign has been talking about the same three states that our own steve kornacki has been talking about day after day after day. they've been talking about wisconsin where they are ahead. they've been talking about michigan where they are ahead. they've been talking about pennsylvania where they are ahead. i've said this since sunday night -- >> can i just remind people that in 2018, remember, people were all dejected and depressed after

the florida gubernatorial race and then a blue wave happened. florida is not representative. it's such a unique state that is isn't bellwether in any way. i'm not 100% sure it's that much of a purple state. it's just becoming a red state. miami-dade isn't a bellwether. there isn't a place like miami-dade anywhere in america. it is very much influenced by the politics of cuban american immigrants and this anti-communist hardcore message that trump did, you know, they didn't spend a ton of money in florida, but where they spent they spent on cuban radio. hammering biden as being some sort of communist and, you know, obviously that made a difference in miami-dade. >> well, talking about big states and blue expectations and liquor cabinets, steve kornacki has the texas map up there, which i find very interesting. steve, why have you got that there? >> yeah, rachel, a couple of things to point out before we dive in. not all the polls closed in texas. most of the state closes 8:00 eastern. there are still some open here. this doesn't look like a lot of vote, but over a million votes cast here because we're getting

the dallas-fort worth metro flex. and what we're getting here, remember, we saw all the stats for last month about historic shocking early vote totals in texas, especially in places like the dallas-fort worth metro area. i want to show you two counties here where we're getting what looks to be the early vote. dallas county here, biden -- again, this is the lion's share of the vote we're going to get. 800,000 of the basically million votes or so that are going to come out of here, we just got the report on. biden's leading these by 33 points. this is a county clinton won by 26 in 2016. this is a county four years earlier, look at this trend, 15 for obama, 26 for clinton, and now let's see what happens with the same-day vote if comes down, but biden running north of that clinton number. it's even more dramatic if you go up here to denton county where almost all the vote is now counted. check this out -- this is dallas-fort worth metro flex. trump, 53, biden, 45.6.

only about 5,000 votes left to come. look what happened here in 2016. donald trump won this county by 21 points in 2016. look at the longer-term trend. mitt romney won this county by 32 points in 2012. when democrats said they think coming into tonight they have a shot to take texas, they are talking about the area we are living in right now. living in on this show, at least. the dallas-fort worth area, they're talking about the houston area. they're talking about the austin area, the san antonio area. they're talking about metro areas where those kind offis of shifts, 2012, 2016, even the 2018 race where beto o'rourke came within three points of winning statewide. there have been massive shifts to democrats and the democrats say those shifts have gotten bigger since donald trump became president. and looking at denton county right there, that's a very interesting sign. denton county, i'm just looking, in the senate race where beto o'rourke lost three points statewide a couple of years ago, the margin here was eight.

it's sitting at 7.3 right now. so democrats right now with 5,000 are a little south of that. where harris county, here we go. houston, we got the early vote in houston. joe -- in the houston area, joe biden 56. donald trump 36. this is 1.4 million votes. there's only a couple hundred thousand left now. you see the biden advantage. again, this is the early vote. the early vote in texas is going to be the lion's share of all votes. what did this look like in 2016? hillary clinton won it by 12 points. what did harris county look like in 2018? this was a four-point margin -- excuse me, that's the houston metro area. i apologize for that. but this -- and then if you go back to 2012 -- i think you got something. you can see the trend. >> we have a projection, and that is a trump victory, as expected, in the state of tennessee with its 11 electoral votes. that is our nbc news projection

when all the votes are counted. steve, back to you. back to the state of texas. >> yeah, so, i mean, again, what we're seeing here in texas, and this is going to start to light up. this is a lot like florida in that we're going to get the early vote here. i think the early vote in a lot of these counties is going to be 80%, 85% of the all the vote that comes in. we're not going to get all the state this hour because there is some mountain time zone. but the question is going to become, and i think the answer might be a little less clear in texas than it was in florida. the question is, how much does this erode as the same-day comes in in texas? so, again, we're talking about harris county here. houston, you know, it's a little bit more than a 13-point advantage for biden in the early vote. that's a little bit north where hillary clinton landed in 2016. i'm not -- now we're getting williamson county. i want to take a look at this. we just got almost williamson county. >> wow. >> here you go. >> this is the suburbs of austin. >> wow. >> hillary clinton got 42% here.

with only a scattering of votes left, looks like biden's going to win this county and that is a ten-point improvement. exactly between denton what i showed you a minute ago, williamson, i don't know yet about harris. this and dallas, too, this is what democrats are talking about. they got very close here in 2018 in that senate race because of counties like this. so anywhere -- they need a little improvement there. anywhere they're getting improvement puts them closer. of course, the question's going to be in texas, not just how the rest of these metro areas fill in. just there are a lot of rural, small counties here that add up for republicans. and there's going to be a question there, you know, is trump driving up the turnout there? is trump driving up even more support there? we're going to monitor this in two phases. the diplomats hit levels they haven't hit before in these metro areas. do they withstand the rural onslaught from the trump vote in this state? early just off the bat here in texas, a lot of those, certainly in williamson, that's a number democrats wanted to see. >> let's get some professional

advice looking at those texas numbers. i'd like, if we could, to bring into the conversation michael steele, former rnc chairman and david plouffe, former obama campaign manager. looking at texas, has been a blue dream for democrats. meaning when they wake up they never win there. there has been so much hope the democrats have invested there. especially looking at the high turnout numbers. david, let me ask you to go first. what do you see when you look at these early numbers out of texas? >> well, i think, rachel, the question will be in the metro flex area, in harris county and some of the suburban areas in the southwestern part of the state, you know, biden's going to do quite well when the early vote gets reported. the question is in some of those democratic-leaning counties, at least they are tonight, does that lead hold, does he add to it, does it erode, number one? and overall turnout, does trump just blow out turnout in the small, rural parts of the state that offset some of these gains? everything i'm seeing would suggest what we thought heading

into today is texas is going to be close. and, you know, what we're seeing in florida is trump overperforming in miami-dade. now, i haven't gone precinct by precinct. i'm eager to do that. and the question is that could be unique to florida. and some of the gains we're seeing in ohio, in some of the florida counties, certainly in texas counties like in the dallas-fort worth area, you know, would suggest when we get into the philadelphia suburbs, the madison suburbs, certainly macomb county, you know, some of tho trends may continue. texas looks like it could be quite close but, again, it's a fascinating vote. we get all this vote dumped early in some states that is democratic leaning. other states republican leaning. i think patience has to be the key word. >> michael steele, i'm going to ask you to be patient for a second. i think we got to go to brian for an important call in a senate race. brian? >> indeed. can project that when the u.s. senate goes back in session, mitch mcconnell will either be majority or minority leader. in any event, the voters in the

state of kentucky have awarded him a seventh term in office at age 78. mitch mcconnell has pushed back the challenge from amy mcgrath. right now a pretty healthy lead. he is our projected winner in the state of kentucky. already awarded to donald trump. rachel, forgive me. back to your conversation. >> no, it's good to know. the -- that senate race has been interesting because democrats i think motivated both by enthusiasm for amy mcgrath, but a lot by the -- a lack of enthusiasm for mitch mcconnell and a desire to try to give him a hard time at home. democrats poured a ton of money into that race. in a way that was never really reflected -- there was no parallel on the poll numbers to reflect the amount of money that was spent trying to get amy mcgrath competitive there, but mitch mcconnell will be back in the senate leading the democrat -- leading the republicans, excuse me, in either as brian said in the majority or the minority. now, back to michael steele.

michael steele, looking at these texas numbers that we have been reviewing as they start to come in, what are you seeing? >> well, what i'm seeing is something that i think is very interesting to note from the -- from the biden campaign over the last ten days or so in the campaign, how they systematically emphasized a play in texas. the rest of the political world kind of shaking their head going why? but the biden campaign knew something and paid attention to something from 2018. and that was the transformation of the vote. the other thing to understand here, rachel, that this is in one sense not a new phenomenon, in that the democrats have been -- and i've been saying this now for 20 years in my various roles inside the republican party watching texas. democrats have done a very good job building base vote there. getting voters used to voting for democrats. and that's now played itself out in 2018 and i think it's going to play itself out in a very interesting way, to david's

point, close, but it's still a very interesting setup for what will come in the future. i don't think -- and i will be very surprised if -- if biden pulls off a win in texas, then that would be a hoopla, but the reality of it is he's shown a pathway for democrats to turn texas from red to a very good purple, and i think you're seeing the beginnings of that tonight. >> all right. we are watching those texas results as they come in. gentlemen, thank you. we will be coming back to you. i'll tell you we have been getting new numbers from texas as we've been talking. we're going to take a very quick break come back with those texas numbers. we're also going to go live to harris county. we're watching the final votes come in in the all-important state of florida as well. eyes on georgia, on north carolina, on virginia, on ohio, on a number of other states. we're in the middle of it. we'll be right back. - [announcer] did you just reward yourself for spending

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at 8:23 eastern time, we come back from a break with two calls. the state of west virginia, as expected, has been awarded to donald trump with its 5 electoral votes. and then the land of steady habits, as they call it, the nutmeg state of connecticut, 7 electoral votes in the joe biden column. we'll show you where that leads us as the states color in on the road to 270 with awarded electoral votes thus far. while we were in that last commercial break, the colors started exploding off the map of north carolina, which leads us back to steve kornacki. steve? >> all right. let's take a look here at north carolina. let me call it up here. and, again, this is very similar -- there was a delay in north carolina. the polls are supposed to close 7:30 eastern. some polls around the state were left open. that means under north carolina law they are all delayed. so we're just starting to get results. but, boy, they had a bunch teed

up. we've got about 3.5 million votes now that have been reported out very rapidly. very important to talk about the sequence of these votes. this is a lot like florida. we're getting the early vote. we're getting the mail-in vote. then we're getting the same-day vote. probably going to be high watermarks for biden. the question can he withstand the same-day vote with trump? with that in mind, let's take a look at some of the places we're getting that early vote. wake county, raleigh, the state capital. you see there, 2/3 of the vote going to biden. how does that compare to clinton in 2016? this, let's see if it holds with the same-day coming in. this is an area democrats wanted to drive up turnout and squeeze more votes out. keep an eye on this as the rest of north carolina comes in. another biggie for democrats, mecklenburg county. 100,000 votes to come. can he stay over that 63% mark? that margin overall for trump

statewide in 2016 in carolina was 3.5 points, but basically that's it for the democrats. raleigh, greensboro, winston-salem, asheville, charlotte, fayetteville here. let's take a look and compare this, 60% with the early vote. how was this in 2016? it's a little bit north of there. so these are the core democratic areas. there are still some republican areas to fill in. also, up here, these are a lot of heavily black, rural counties here. this was an area in 2016 where democrats didn't get the turnout level they were hoping for. we're not seeing a lot early here. let's watch these counties fill in and see what happens. i think the key for democrats here, can they drive in more in sort of the tragical here. can they get more black turnout? and i'm just going to check next door -- okay, this is a core republican county. this reminds me a lot identify if you remember when i was looking at delaware county in ohio, this reminds me of it. we don't have much to show there right now. again, the name of the game for democrats for biden is to drive

up his statewide lead as much as he can. i expect as more of this early vote comes in. you see it's in from a lot of the cities. not in from more rural, republican places. trump will cut into that a bit and then the same-day's coming and it's like florida. can biden withstand it? he is right now farther ahead than he got in florida in the early vote, at this at this moment. >> steve, will you show us again, before you get out of north carolina there. >> going back in. >> sorry. will you show us how much we got in charlotte? >> yeah. >> mecklenberg county -- >> -- to come. it's the question of biden getting nearly 70% of the early vote. we expect that will be lower. the question is how much lower. if he's fighting trump to a draw he's going to win this county by about 200,000 votes. he'll get a 200,000-vote plurality. if he wins by a substantial margin on election day he can add to that.

>> okay, joy and nicolle, before all of this -- before all the numbers started washing over us. oh, look, this is mecklenburg county in north carolina, ballots being delivered. live shots of what's happening here in terms of the mechanics of this election as we are starting to see that vote come in in north carolina. before we started to see these numbers coming in, we were talking about the biden campaign and the trump campaign and their expectations. both of them seeing florida as a toss-up. the biden campaign being less confident about it. but them being more confident in north carolina and in georgia. we are now seeing strong numbers. >> yeah. >> for biden in north carolina. >> well, let's not forget, you know, north carolina has acted like a swing state before. barack obama won north carolina by about 14,000 votes in 2008. he only lost it by about 90,000 votes. it currently has a democratic governor who won by a hair in 2016 when trump was winning that state as a presidential candidate. so it has swing state properties. it's where moral mondays began. there's been a lot of activism. bishop william barber and others

have really pushed that state. the big issue there, health care, health care, health care. has been for years. >> i will also say in terms of partisan politics in north carolina, they have been on the republican side at the vanguard of procedural radicalism in north carolina. >> yes. >> that is where we saw the state legislature there, for example -- >> yep. >> -- really pioneer these very radical anti-democratic, both anti-capital "d" democratic and small "d" democratic disempowering the governor once he was elected. taking things away from him that had previously been powers of the governor. it's been radicalized the way republicans have in the last decade. and i think that's really sharpened politics -- >>s angered people. >> so you guys are going to get sick of me saying this. if i were on the biden campaign, i would keep my eye on north carolina, but i would be obsessively watching wisconsin, michigan and pennsylvania. that's the whole ball game. now the reason north carolina is interesting to watch is because

it's an insurance policy. >> yes. >> but the whole game is wisconsin, michigan, pennsylvania. we're going to keep watching north carolina because the people of north carolina are beautiful and their votes deserve to be covered by a network like ours. in terms of path to 270, sideshow, sideshow, people. >> not a sideshow. >> insurance. >> if trump loses it, trump then creates a new imperative for himself somewhere else. >> correct. we are only talking about states trump won four years ago. biden is on offense on the whole map. north carolina would be an embarrassing loss for donald trump. a glorious win for joe biden. but the path to 270, what steve kornacki has drilled into my brain, if i were on the biden campaign, what i would be trained on, i'd be watching -- >> and it's what they think, too. >> i would be watching those three states. >> back to brian. okay. coming up on 8:30, it isn't much in terms of new news. another state on the map. you see it. along the mississippi river. but here we are.

we've just passed the 8:30 mark, a and in arkansas, here is all we have to tell you. our projection is as of now it is too early to call between biden and trump in arkansas. back to the east end and our conversation ongoing. >> let's bring into the conversation now our friend chris hayes, who has been watching these things alongside -- alongside us. chris, i feel like in some ways we're watching the manifestation of the campaigns that we have covered so intensely over these past months. we're now seeing what the campaigns tried to make true come true. on the other hand, we're balancing it against our own expectations and common wisdom expectations of what we've heard from the campaigns, in terms of what they were sort of wishing and hoping would happen tonight. how are you seeing it tonight so far? >> you know, i think one of the weirdest things we've seen consistently in polling going into tonight or one of the most interesting is joe biden was outperforming hillary clinton among white voters both with college degrees and without and

underperforming in some cases significantly with hispanic voters. that has been reflected interestingly in the trump campaign. if you remember, the trump campaign in 2016 was about the wall, it was about the muslim ban and the maenexicans who wer coming who were rapists. they have really ratcheted that back down the stretch. they obviously saw, i think post-kenosha, they couldn't run up white voters as much as they could and made a quite clear faint in another direction messaging wise. particularly those miami-dade numbers and you look at other counties that more of those white suburban counties, and even white counties that are largely rural or non-college where hillary clinton lost by 30 or 35 points and joe biden is running 7 or 8 or 9 or 10 points ahead. it's actually bearing out part of the picture that the polling has been telling us. and i think everyone should keep in mind the one weird trick donald trump used to win the electoral college in 2016 despite losing by 3 million votes, was overperforming in the polls by a subgroup, white

non-college voters both widely distributed through the country and incredibly concentrated in the upper midwest. so far we're not seeing any indications that there is a misalignment between national polling on that and those subgroups. something to look for in a bunch of these counties as they come in to get a clearer sense where we are nationally. >> chris hayes, thank you my friend. i'm going to shoot it to brian. brian? >> i want to shoot it to steve kornacki to talk about texas and what we are seeing fill in that map right now. steve, i've been looking over your shoulder. >> yeah, again, brian, we're looking at that early vote, which is going to be the bulk of the vote in most of these counties. coming in in some big places. we mentioned dallas earlier. let's go next door to where fort worth is. again, looking at the early vote here, basically a draw between trump and biden. how does that compare to what happened in 2016? well, in 2016, this was a nine-point win for donald trump. by the way, in the 2018 senate race, when beto o'rourke lost by three points statewide, he won tarrant county by one point.

what's left to come in tarrant county? we've counted about 700,000 votes. there's about 170,000 left to come. again, i said in texas i think maybe a little bit more of a question of what that same-day trend was going to look like. let's see if we can establish it. right now we need to see more vote come in. we need to see the same-day vote come in. does biden gain ground there? does trump gain ground there? bear county where san antonio is, again, got the bulk of it. 675,000 votes. this is the early vote. less than 100,000 votes, we think, left to be counted here. what does this do when you compare it to 2016? biden right now running five points north of hillary clinton. again, some votes to be counted. this could come down a little, but biden probably there going to end up ahead of where hillary clinton did. this is the democratic strategy. it's to improve not just on how clinton did against trump in '16. really, it's to improve on how beto o'rourke did against ted cruz in the dallas metro area, dallas-fort worth and the austin area, san antonio, houston area.

these are core democratic areas. they also -- let's see when we get the rio grande valley in. still waiting on that. remember, kamala harris made a trip down there i think late last week. oh, we got one in. just one second. let's see what we're looking at here. this is small but early vote, 55-44. let's see. let's see what the same-day vote did down there when it comes in. that is under for biden. small county but in that rio grande valley we said we wanted to look at. we'll keep looking at these. >> all right. steve, thanks. we want to go to correspondent and native texans garrett haake. he's out in houston. garrett, first of all, explain to our viewers just how big an area and population we're talking about. compared to the rest of the u.s., when we talk about harris county, where we know the early vote has been a record setter. >> reporter: yeah, look, houston -- harris county's going to have more total voters in it than does the entire state of nevada and they've got something like 6 electoral votes to their name.

it is the driver of texas politics, especially for democrats if you're trying to win at a statewide level. and looking at the numbers that have been reported early so far, it's not clear that biden's going to have the margins that he needs here. this is a place that beto o'rourke won by 200,000 votes or so in 2018. biden is up right now, but he's only up by about 189,000. there's probably 200,000 or so votes outstanding. that's how many were cast today. plus mail ballots that will continue to come in. but biden if he wants to not lose by three like o'rourke did, needs to expand on those margins here in harris county. harris county dems have been hoping they might get up to 1.7, 1.8 million total votes cast here. it looks like they're going to fall short of that. just like in so many other places. had to build the big firewall with early votes. some of the places that steve has been mentions. and wait for the 200 other counties to kind of roll in with big republican returns. and right now just looking at this early vote, again, this is

the early and mail-in vote reported in harris county. you know, i'm not sure that biden has built a tall enough firewall here. >> all right. garrett headachaake, you keep a on it for us. claire mccaskill in missouri has been shifting her focus in the east to north carolina, on both the presidential and senatorial fronts. claire? >> yeah. the numbers coming in in north carolina are very good for the democrats. and, you know, nobody i love more than nicolle, but i got to say, to -- my phone started blowing up when there was some comment made about north carolina being a sideshow. to the senate it is the senate. to all of these democratic senators, winning that senate seat is absolutely essential. to dethroning mitch mcconnell from his perch. so north carolina is catching people's attention, and i'm hearing from folks in ohio that the numbers there look better than they expected in some counties. so i think we thought we were going to be talking florida and georgia a lot.

it may be that we end up talking a lot more about north carolina and ohio. >> nicolle wallace, your name was invoked. >> yes, see white house staffers always invoke the ire of senate candidates. and i didn't intend to do that. i would just add to north carolina, the tillis internals had tillis down one tonight, so i do have some reporting on that. it is in line with what you're reporting. and, look, my only point is that when you're on a campaign and you're a presidential campaign staffer, you are singularly focused on the path to 270. and north carolina would be a glorious win for joe biden. as would arizona. and they're still keeping an eye on arizona. but we shouldn't pull or viewers into dramas that aren't necessary for joe biden to get to 270. that was my only point. for joe biden to get to 270, the strategic plan, the travel schedule, the surrogate schedule, the advertising dollars, the phone banking, the

g geo-tv programming was always designed for i guess the path of least resistance and that was wisconsin, michigan and pennsylvania. incredibly important to joe biden and kamala harris. they still feel good about it. they're also keeping an eye on arizona. they're keeping an eye on ohio. i think not so much you, but we have a tendency sometimes because of the timing of states closing to take our viewers on these journeys that aren't central to joe biden's path to 270. that was my only point. no offense meant to anyone in north carolina. >> well, the senators are very excited about both arizona and north carolina. for obvious reasons. those are two of the four senate seats they must pick up. >> yeah, i mean, the senate race -- at some point tonight we should talk about how the senate races are unfolding thus far. we did have some drama around the mitch mcconnell seat because he did have a democratic challenger in his home state. the question is whether he's going to be majority leader in the senate or minority leader. he has held on to his senate

seat, but will republicans hold on to control. now, if joe biden wins the presidency, the democrats need to pick up three seats tonight and then vice president harris is going to spend a lot of time in the united states senate. but if donald trump wins tonight, the democrats are going to have to pick up four. and the last time they picked up four in a single night was in 2008, which was a big, big, big blue obama wave. getting the four for the democrats is going to be a lot harder than getting to three. >> but -- >> so the fates of the presidency and the senate are absolutely intertwined. >> right, but you just said 2008. the year that obama/biden won north carolina, right? >> that's right. >> let's keep in mind, again, tom tillis kind of stayed under the radar and sort of stayed away and wasn't really as trumpy-a-trumpy as a lot of them. then he weighed out on and pretended like he couldn't pronounce kamala harris's name. he had to go be big and racist and put a big spotlight on himself. there is a spotlight on him, he's in a state where the

governor is already a democrat. democrats have already proven they can win in statewide in north carolina the same year trump won. they've already won it. and, again, when obama lost north carolina in '12, it was by 90,000 votes. barely lost it. so the reality is stillis is one of the most endangered senators out there. and i'm not so sure that north carolina isn't as -- isn't more in play than florida in a lot of fundamental ways. >> well, but, again, it will be interesting to see whether or not cal cunningham, the democrat running against tom tillis, whether his fate is inextricably tied to joe biden and kamala harris, or whether there may be some divergence in those two seats. that dynamic, some of them swing states, some of them not, where the senate races appear to be unhitched from the presidential race i think is going to make for some real drama and some really interesting end of the night discussions in terms of where the fate of the senate is. but before we get too far down that path, it looks like something else is happening in florida. steve kornacki, do you want to

walk us through what you've just received in florida? because statewide they're at 91% now. >> yeah, we are looking at, you know, you can see here in florida right now, trump's margin is hitting a 232,000 votes. there have been a lot of developments here since the last time we checked in. what's left to come here, miami-dade still has about 130,000 votes left. interestingly, it looks like in the same-day vote that we've been looking at, biden actually doing -- holding his own, i would say, in the same-day. remember, he dipped under 54% overall. he's now hit 54. that suggests as maybe more same-day comes in he may not fall farther than that, but already fallen far from where hillary clinton was. there's more vote to come in tampa. looks like about 30,000 left in the tampa area. i'm just looking to see here the same-day trend there is favoring trump. more vote -- here we go. we got about 50,000 still in pinellas. biden under 50%. duval still has about 45,000 left. biden, that will be a bright spot on this map for him.

that is better than hillary clinton did in 2016. we're just looking at orange county where orlando is. biden, take a look at this. you can see basically at where hillary clinton was. a little bit, a touch over where hillary clinton finished in 2016. if you just hit this button here, i just want to take a look where the remaining vote is. >> ooh. >> the bigger the bubbles here, the more raining vote there is here. you can see there is a little up here in the panhandle. republican, as i said, tampa, we just took a look at hillsborough and pinellas. it doesn't look like the trend of the vote that's remaining there is going to be that favorable to biden. nor is that the case in duval. in fact, and in miami-dade, as i said, biden might be holding his own, but it doesn't look like he's making big gains. the other big one that is left here is palm beach. we can just see 66,000 to come there. again, biden's margins falling a little more as more same-day has come in. the one question mark, i'm being told, in florida we can to make

sure -- i think you'll see about 912 -- 912,000 votes right now have been counted in broward. our estimate less than 500 remaining. we are just checking to make sure all the precincts are accounted for here. there is a possibility there might be a little bit more in broward, but otherwise, no, you look at this and that map -- i'll put it up again statewide, you know, north of 230,000 votes. at this point, you know, trump's -- that's bigger than trump's margin was in florida in 2016. he leads by 2.2 points here. let's see if there's anything more from broward, otherwise it's what i showed you. >> all right. steve kornacki watching those votes come in in florida. as we see them come in close -- over 90% statewide at this point. we are still looking at a lot of too early to call races, including big, important ones in terms of the path to 270 like georgia, like north carolina, like ohio, like florida, like new hampshire, like pennsylvania, a lot still to come tonight. we're going to take a quick break. >> before we take a quick break,

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welcome back. we are inside of 15 minutes to some major poll closings, but we want to check in on north carolina. we still have it too early to call. we could not be watching it more closely. also, the state of georgia, we still have it as too early to call. as steve kornacki can back us up at the big board. steve? >> yep, brian, we're taking a look here at north carolina again. let's take a look at what's left to come in here. what you see, if you look here, the darker orange -- i'm not sure what this looks like on everybody's screen. i think they call that burnt orange, i'm not sure, but that represents the early and the mail-in vote.

you see that's 3.9 million. a little bit more of the early and the absentee vote. and as we've been saying, we expect that to favor biden in most places tonight. at least to be better for biden than the same-day. the small bit of yellow or gold or whatever that looks like on your screen, i'll circle it because it's very small in case you can't see it. this represents the progress we're starting to make in the vote counting toward the same-day vote. about 1.8 million left to be counted here. now, these are not necessarily going to be exact in terms of the split. sometimes in the counts in these counties, there is same-day vote that gets mixed in with the mail and vice versa, but roughly we think we're going to see a lot of same-day vote here. about 1.8 million votes to come in. you can see some counties left that have not reported anything yet. they're going to report their early vote so that number can grow just a little bit still, too. but basically biden right now with the votes that have been counted, have been counted which is the early vote, the mail vote and everything that's colored in right now, biden leading statewide 52-47.

again, what it means is all these core democratic areas, whether it's asheville in the west, greenville, charlotte, fayetteville, these are places that came in early strongly for the democrats. there are some counties that are smaller but strong for trump when they come in. the name of the game here for biden is if we get to a point where this is all filled in in primarily early vote, you want us to be ahead then because we expect it for trump. >> steve, forgive me. we are awarding the state of arkansas as expected to donald trump. 6 electoral votes. that's where the vote is coming down as of this hour. and this is what this state does now to the map. you see red filling in in the center of the country. arkansas now completes that three-state swing. you see the blue coming up in the northeast. we're back at it.

steve. >> and that was north carolina brian, and i'm just looking here at georgia, see if we can give you an update in georgia. again, we expected that donald trump would jump out into the lead here. he certainly has. this is double digits at this point with what's been counted in george. i'll give you a sense of the atlanta metro area. we've got absentee vote that's been counted here. that will be very favorable to biden. this county will be very favorable to biden. you're looking at 467,000 votes still to come. it's this entire area that will make -- in dekalb there's not much reported yet. gi net, i think you're looking at early vote here. biden by 28. this is one of those counties, clinton -- it's been moving and moving and moving in the democrats' direction. we've been talking about this in metro areas all over the place tonight. let's see how much that snaps back.

for the democrats i think you're seeing the dynamic here where they're going to need something massive out of the atlanta metro area because if you go to rural georgia, let's go to north george. these are small counties. these are numberswise, the percentagewise, trump's best in 2016, they are there for him again in big numbers. these add up around the state. rural georgia strongly for trump. they add up and they can overwhelm the metro area. that's why it's going to be so important for democrats to drive up the numbers there in atlanta metro because there's no slippage we're really seeing so far for trump at least in those rural areas. >> i want to look both at georgia and north carolina in terms of the presidential race as we have. let's look at those two states in terms of the senate races. between those two states, unusually there are three senate races between them. let's talk about the george senate first if we can. this is the regular georgia senate race. david perdue, we've got just over a quarter of the vote in.

democratic challenger jon ossoff with about 40% of the vote. this is too early to call in terms of nbc news projections. then there is a second senate race in georgia which is a special election. at this point, again, we've just got over a quarter of the vote in. and this is too early to call in terms of nbc's projection. but you see democrat rafael warnak there with the highest number of votes. kelly loeffler in the middle and doug collins, republican congressman also in the 20% range. both of these senate races in george, somebody's got to get 50% or they each could go to a run off on january 5th. let's look at north carolina. we've been talking about the north carolina senate race. a lot of democratic hopes on cal cunningham. thom tillis with over 70% of the vote in in north carolina, still perceived as too early to call in terms of the nbc news

projection here of cunningham up by just under 4 points over thom tillis at this point. thom tillis along with cory gardner in colorado thought of as being probably the most endangered incumbent republican senator in this cycle. let's bring into the conversation now our friend reverend al sharpton, founder of the national founder networks. talk to us about your overall impregs tonight. obviously the most important senate races and the most important state races that we're watching are all still uncalled at this point. but we are starting to get some sense of the contours in some of the first swing states. >> well, when we look at the fact that we still don't know where a lot of metro atlanta is, which is going to be a lot of votes for the democrats. it's a large concentration of black voters. i think that that could help tilt the scales more toward biden, being that you have

smaller counties who don't have a lot of numbers. however, we're hearing that there was not a huge turnout in the atlanta metro area today in terms of today voting or same-day voting. but in the early voting, there was huge turnout. so, when those numbers come in, that could be effective. i think that when you look at north carolina, you see the same thing in the metro areas that are dominated. this is where we're seeing the democrat is holding his own. and tillis could be in trouble. we don't is are the same dynamics that we have in florida where you have like in miami-dade. i think as george pointed out a large cuban influence in terms of cuban voters who look more to the propaganda that we're dealing with socialism and all that offset a large black turnout. so, georgia and north carolina, i think a lot of the investment, barack obama going to metro atlanta. i think we could see something

in terms of the presidential level. i think in both cases though in georgia in terms of the senate races, we may be looking at runoffs. >> reverend al sharpton. thank you for being with us tonight. i'm sure we will be back with you shortly. we are less than four minutes now from the top of the hour. at 9:00 there's going to be a lot of action on the map, especially in terms of highly anticipated swing states. arizona, michigan, minnesota and the four western counties in texas. wisconsin of course is a 9:00 closing. speaking of texas we do have most of the state closed already. and i think steve, as we're getting close to the top of the hour here, can we squeeze more new data out of texas. >> two-thirds of the vote has been counted in texas. biden continues to hold the lead here. it's fallen under 100,000 votes and again just take a look here. there's still over 4 million votes to be counted here. but there are a couple of things we're seeing here. draw your attention to a couple of places.

austin core democratic area. travis county overwhelmingly for biden with 91%. we've got about 58,000 votes to come. that looks very impressive and 48 points certainly is. but keep in mind in 2018 when bet o'rourke came close to beating ted cruz statewide in texas, he was winning travis county by 49 points. so t name of the game here for biden is to get north even of that. let's look outside austin. this is one of the areas where democrats have been doing better and better. he hayes county, extraordinary turnout in the early voting. 6,500 votes to come, biden leading this. what was the margin for beto o'rourke? 15 points. you're looking at 12 here. i think the other thing that is worth pointing out here. if you go down along the border here -- and remember kamala harris, the democrats sent her there. and some people say that's an

interesting decision. take a look what we're seeing in these returns. most of the vote, for instance in starr county right on the border, this is an example of what i'm see egg, biden leading by 8 points. what was this in 2016? holy cow. that's a big change. and we're seeing that in a number of these counties down on the border area. i think i showed you cameron before. 30,000 votes to come. biden is leading it. but again 12 versus 33. so, you know, we're going to look at this. but we talked about south florida. we talked about miami-dade and clearly trump making inroads with hispanic voters there, cuban-american voters there. i want to see if something similar is happening in texas because these counties are showing with not a ton of vote left in these places potentially substantial movement here. >> that is one of the dynamics we talked about coming into tonight, that the biden campaign was worried about its expected underperformance with latino voters, lack of enthusiasm, lack

of turnout compared to what they wanted and what previous democratic candidate versus been able to get specifically among latinos. in some states, the other side of that coin was that biden seemed to be doing better than previous democratic candidates, especially hillary clinton when it came to older voters and older white voters. well, in a state like texas, which has been majority minority for nearly a decade now which has such an incredibly young population, the two sides oof that coin aren't going to land with equal weight, right? so, biden is sliding with latinos is going to have a huge impact with those counties. we're coming up on the 9:00 poll closings. lots and lots and lots of states about to close. >> we're inside 15 seconds coming up on the 9:00 p.m. hour here in the east. there is the list of states with poll closings right now. three seconds away from the top of the hour. and here we go.

nbc news is projecting -- let's start with a big one. a big northeast state with 29 electoral votes. nbc news projecting as expected joe biden will win in new york. we move on to texas. we've been talking about texas. we have it too early to call. michigan, hugely critical state tonight, too early to call. wisconsin, ditto, too early to call. minnesota, too early to call. to the vital southwest state of arizona, too early to call. colorado, too early, though biden, we know is in the lead. louisiana, too early, though trump, we note is in the lead. in kansas, too early to call. let's go through the midwest. nebraska, too early to call. southwest to new mexico, too early to call.

on up to north dakota, too early to call. slightly south to south dakota, too early though we know trump leading in south dakota as expected. and wyoming, too early to call. donald trump is in the lead in wyoming. let's check out the bar graph from the outback view of our building. the road to 270 electoral votes awarded thus far, 80-48 at this hour. one more round of the battlegrounds. florida, too close to call. pennsylvania, too early to call in the 9:00 hour. ohio, too early to call. georgia, too early to call. north carolina, too early to call. and in new hampshire, again, too early to call with its four electoral votes. let's look at the color map of the states awarded thus far.

are you picking up a trend here at all? let's also review some of the major senate races people have been watching and following for months now. john cornyn is heading back to the u.s. senate from the state of texas. in arizona, the mcsally-kelly race, too early to call. in colorado, talk about a closely watched race, cory gardner, john hickenlooper, too early to call. and in michigan, the senate race, too early to call. that's going to do our review with the seats democrats need in the senate. steve kornacki, what have we been looking at in the intervening moments? steve's in ohio. hey. >> hi, i'm -- oh, hey there. i was just trying to get an update here. let's take a look at ohio. again, it looks like about half the vote here in. we're expecting still remaining

vote here. little under 3 million left in the state. again, biden with this advantage that we see right now. at least most of the early vote in here. take a look. for instance cuyahoga county, biden running substantially above the hillary clinton level in 2016. hillary clinton, the margin she lost the state by in 2016 was 8 points. when you go across the map, biden needs to be improving on that margin, wherever it is, give or take by about 8 points. let's take a look here. couple of sampling different counties. we've been mentioning this one. outside of columbus. i don't think they've counted many more since the last time we checked in here. but just a reminder this looking like substantial progress for joe biden at 17-point loss for hillary clinton. here's joe biden leading by nearly 9. that could come down as more votes are counted. it's not going to come down to a

17-point trump victory here. take a look here in franklin county, the state capital of columbus. a little bit more than half the vote in. this was 27 points. that was the margin for hillary clinton in 2016. 27 points. right now 52 is the margin here, again, with vote to come in that could knock this down some. but he wants to be -- biden does 27 for clinton, 8 points statewide, 34 or more. probably in a county like this, he's at 52. let's take a look at lucas county where toledo is with 150,000 votes to come there. again, 18 points was the clinton margin. it's close to 50 now. let's see what happens where that comes down. we're looking over in the mahonning valley. clinton won this by just 3. biden still way up here. again, let's see how that changes with the same-day vote. you're looking for places on this map. we could even go through a bunch

of very small counties here where donald trump -- i'm looking through these for the first time along with you at home and i'm comparing donald trump's showing right now with donald trump's showing in 2016. a lot of the counties i'm going through in ohio, the appalachian region in ohio, these are places he really surged in 2016 in terms of his level of support. and i'm just seeing is he hitting that level? and a little bit lower there. but again that could change with the same day. a little bit lowerment i. i'm just seeing if there's a trend there. these are very small counties here, holding his own relative to '16. not big slippage there. here's another big county though. cincinnati. half the vote here, biden by 40. what was the clinton margin? it was 10. as this comes down, does it come down and level off in the 20s somewhere? that would be substantial improvement, again in a state where hillary clinton lost by 8 points. let's go right outside

cincinnati. butler county, less than 100,000 votes to come. trump had won this by 28 in 2016. he's leading it by 7.5 points right -- excuse me, by 8.5 points right now. let's see where that lands here. 28, can biden shave 8 to 10 points off that right now? you are seeing at least right now -- this is -- we have to caveat this by saying we want to see as this vote comes in is there a late trend to trump here. we are seeing in a lot of these places a substantial biden improvement from 2016. i think it's clear he's going to do better in this state than hillary clinton did in 2016. the question is the votes come in, let's refresh and look at statewide. will he do eight points better statewide, enough to carry it? >> i was going to say what the biden campaign will tell you is they added a trip to ohio. >> oh, yeah. >> they made a last-minute change to their schedule to go campaign there. and what they would say, i think, is that to be doing well with these voters, these voters

have a lot in common with the kinds of suburban voters they were targeting with their closing messages about the soul of the country, the speeches they billed as big speeches. this is the kind of state where i think they would look to expand their appeal to the same kinds of voters they're counting on in states like wisconsin, pennsylvania and michigan. this is a state they are cautiously optimistic of and a state that seemed to move in their direction so much so they added a stop to the state. i think near cleveland for joe biden himself. this is a state our friend tim burton from politico is reporting on the kinds of voters that would make up these gaps that steve was talking about in the last 30 or 40 minutes would be of great interest and there would be a through line of the issues that would turn them toward biden in the closing days. >> this is the reason a lot of older black voters wanted biden to be the nominee. he is the kind of candidate who could do the best with white working class voters that a

democrat can do, which is not that great, but obviously better than hillary clinton. and obama was able to win there. so, he's got a white working class sensibility, but he's also appealing to what we're calling the wine moms. and it is interesting -- >> we're calling them the wine moms? >> we're called the wine moms. >> i missed this. >> did you miss this? these are college educated white women who are -- who voted in huge numbers in 2018 who flipped the house back to the democrats and who are still mad. they haven't expended all of their energy and anger. >> they're also the women that trump is calling out to when he's bellowing about suburban women, like me, want me. >> ep why. yep. >> those are the voters. >> forgive the interruption, another state call and that is as expected donald trump the winner in south dakota. and while it hasn't come up a lot tonight, there is that

stretch of coronavirus that is raging through the dakotas right now, just part of the backdrop of the vote in 2020 during an uncontrolled pandemic. but that's our projection that when all is said and done looks to be about 70/30 split in south dakota. here is another red state on the national map. sorry. back to the conversation. >> looking at the map is actually helpful to have that at this point. we are -- nothing has changed from '16 in terms of what we have seen. trump has won states trump previously won and biden won states dloin previously won. and any effort to encroach on one another's territory has thus far been rebuffed or at least delayed. while it's been fascinating to watch all this stuff come in, the way that you calibrate your expectations in terms of what's possible for the next election is by looking at the last election, particularly when its an incumbent running for a second term. but this is where we stand right

now is nobody's gained ground anywhere. steve, in terms of what you're looking at right now, we've been talking about ohio. we've been talking over here a lot about pennsylvania. we haven't heard a lot from you in terms of what's in in pennsylvania. is there anything in pennsylvania that is worth talking about yet? >> not much. but i just want to give you a sense of how confusing pennsylvania is going to be. i mean, you see red in pittsburgh right now. what you're seeing here, this is same day vote basically in pittsburgh. and that's why donald trump -- remember he was going to win the same day vote big. there's a little bit of mail vote that's mixed in there. but this is basically one of those places where the mail is expected to come in. this is pittsburgh. this is what a normal sort of democratic margin would look like in pittsburgh. so, you know, you see trump at 69. you've got to remember there is a ton of mail in a place like pittsburgh. take a look at philadelphia where, again, it looks like what they've actually released here

early in philadelphia, there are some places in pennsylvania that are going to do this. there are some places that are going to release some mail vote tonight in pennsylvania. and i believe they've released a little bit of it early here in pennsylvania. they're expecting north of 800,000 votes here. you've got a quick dump of this shortly after the polls close in philadelphia here. joe biden just over 90%. this is core democratic territory here. i think we are going to see some mail-in voting here. this -- this -- i am going to encourage people to disregard this and i'm going to look into this because that doesn't make sense -- >> 95%. >> what i'm seeing in lehigh county. sometimes there are errors moving around in the system and the wrong thing pops up at the wrong time. but basically in pennsylvania tonight there are going to be some counties, philadelphia is an example, allegheny is an example where they are going to end up reporting out some of their mail-in vote by the time we get to midnight. later in the night, there are

other counties too, smaller ones. they will report out some of it. over the next couple of days you'll get the rest of it. there are some countys in pennsylvania where you're not going to get -- folks in beaver county say they're going to report their same day vote tonight. that's expected to favor trump. he's supposed to do well in the same-day vote here in pennsylvania. and tomorrow they're going to begin processing and reporting out their mail-in vote. that's something a number of counties in pennsylvania have also said. there are going to be some very, very jarring movements here depending on the method that the county is using in pennsylvania. so, the overall picture when you're looking at pennsylvania numbers right now is not much is in. some counties are only going to report the votes that were cast today, which could be a small fraction of all the votes that end up getting cast in that county. some counties are going to report the votes that were cast today plus some of the mail that was cast today. so, there's going to be a range of possibilities here. and in pennsylvania, more than in other states we are looking

at just dramatic shifts between those two buckets of votes where democrats look like they are going to absolutely clean up in the mail vote in pennsylvania and republicans really going to clean up in the same-day vote. there's going to be huge disparities. it's all dependent when you're getting results coming in, whatever county you're looking at in enapproximate ppennsylvan what bucket a vote is coming from. allegheny county you're looking at same-day vote, how much mail, when does that get reported out. pennsylvania, i think we can expect this a little bit too in michigan and wisconsin. it's going to be slow and very inconsistent in that state just in terms of the reporting and trying to interpret it. >> to that end i think the statewide officials in pennsylvania have been trying to prepare the rest of the country for that as pennsylvania has

emerged as such a pivotal state in terms of the electoral college and the path to 270 here. for example, the governor of pennsylvania, tom wolf, did a tv ad in which he literally said it's going to take a few days to have the results, imploring pennsylvanians to be patient. of course it's the rest of us outside of pennsylvania who are just as impatient for those results. but the secretary of state as well has been totally equivocal saying no way pennsylvania will be announcing winner on election night given multiple counties are choosing multiple methods that will produce very different results in terms of partisan lines. some counties not counting any early vote until tomorrow no matter how many votes they got day of. >> and you had the two most important interviews last night on your show on this point. you had the person in charge of all legal challenges in every state or in any county. and that's mr. bauer of the biden campaign. and you had the attorney general

for the state saying that everything -- or the secretary of state. >> the attorney general. >> that every vote will be counted. and i think that we have talked about an election season, an election week. people still expect an election night. that is still what people are down for tonight. but i think your deep dive last night, that is the real story about pennsylvania. >> there's no fuzziness about it. in pennsylvania, literally in lots of counties, they are not even going to try to produce enough of a count to produce a result tonight. they are not going to aim at having a result tonight. so, expectations of that should be adjust. >> just to pull the curtain back on the trump strategy there, the trump strategy is to make a political gain for himself out of that. >> yep. >> to try to make something of the fact he could be in a stronger position tonight than he is once all that happens, that every vote is counted. >> i want to go back quickly to steve in north carolina which we have been watching closely. we're close to 80% in now, steve.

>> we're close to 80% in now, and north carolina a lot like florida. you get all the early vote, all the mail-in vote. just to give you a sense of what's left to come here, about 1.2 million votes to come. i drew attention to this earlier. you're starting to get the same-day vote, that sort of meter of the same-day votes getting bigger. the other thing that's happening as that meter gets bigger, this number right here, which represents joe biden's lead statewide, that is starting to fall. again we say because biden doing so well with the early vote, so well with the mail vote, trump doing so well with the same-day vote. we're at 74% in. what's come in since then is same-day. 74% in, the biden advantage statewide was about 170,000. it's come down to about 115,000 with same-day vote coming in.

this is resembling florida a bit in that the gravity in a lot of these counties is shifting here. you've gotten the best vote out for joe biden just in terms of the margin he's going to get or percentage he's going to get. and now you're going to get trump's best shot at these counties. that doesn't mean trump is winning every county here but biden may not be getting the margins he got with the same-day vote. so, 115,000 now. let's watch that number. 112,000. let's watch that number and see what happens. >> steve, i got one you may be interested in. here is a flip for the democrats. colorado, joe biden -- not a flip. excuse me. joe biden. take back what i said about a

flip. the first blue state west of the mississippi for the democrats on the road to 270. and again, electoral votes awarded by our projections were 89-51. steve. >> yes, let's take a look here. we're starting to fill in big picture here. we're zoomed in on these counties. let's take a look at the road to 270 here. these are the states filled in so far. no surprises so far. we said at the start of the night that look, wisconsin, michigan and pennsylvania were joe biden's most direct route to get to 270. if he wins all three of those and trump isn't flipping any blue states, that's going to put biden over 270. those are the states that are going to take the longest. we were just in pennsylvania and you see what a confusing mishmash pennsylvania is. we talked about florida at the start of the night, georgia at the start of the night, ohio and texas at the start of the night. these are states, these are opportunities, we said, for

democrats to really put trump on the ropes by putting a win on the board. you've seen the direction florida is taking for democrats right now. make it fair to say they are not encouraged by what's going on in florida right now. north carolina you see biden doing well in the early vote. now there's erosion there. let's see if it erodes all the way and trump is able to get the lead. north carolina continues to dwindle for joe biden. in georgia, again, looking at -- we want to see the atlanta metro area. democrats are going to have to do. this is a lot like we were talking about in texas. it's not enough for democrats in george to do better than hillary clinton did in 2016. biden has to do better than stacey abrams did in 2018. so, the burden is really going to be on him from what we're seeing in georgia right now which is trump country, rural parts of georgia really holding its own there. so, that puts really a burden on biden to do even better than stacey abrams did in places like the atlanta metro area.

otherwise, they won't get georgia. and then texas, again, you're seeing democrats. they're certainly outperforming hillary clinton in those me toe areas, but are they outperforming beto o'rourke? i'm seeing in a couple of counties, but it's not a consistent pattern. i'm seeing them fall short by a can youal of points. and then again down by the border there, substantial slippage, not talking about huge counties populationwise but i think you're looking at substantial slippage there. they are scrapping for every vote trying to get over the hump there. fair to say they have their challenges at this hour. that leaves -- i'm trying to go into ohio too look at the result. i started exactly playing with the road to 270 board. let's take a look at ohio then because this becomes crucial here. biden's lead in terms of did democrats get one of those first five. biden's lead now sitting close to 150,000, a little bit under 150,000 statewide with about 60% of the vote in. now, in some of these counties

in ohio right now, you're looking primarily at early vote. some of them you're looking more at same-day vote. it's not a totally consistent pattern. so, i can tell you what we're trying to do right now in ohio is figure out what is the trend for the early and really what is the trend for the same-day vote, the vote that was cast today in ohio. what's the trend? is it trump by x, biden by -- what is that and how much of the vote that's left to come in this state is same day? that will go a long way. this is dropping down to 136 here. that will go a long way to telling us where this is going to land in ohio right now. you see biden up 136,000 right now with about 60% in in ohio. but that right now might be the democrats best shot at one of those first five. >> here we go again. a matching dakota has been

projected for donald trump, as expected north dakota to go along with south dakota. sharp-eyed viewers saw we had quietly added that bit of red in the northern plains. that's our projection with its three electoral votes. that's how the map fills in. rachel back to you. >> sorry i stepped on you for a second there. i was going to say since we have the nbc news projection of a democratic win on the presidential race in colorado, that raises the question about a potential democratic flip there as you alluded to, brian, with that senate seat. we're going to take a quick break now. but when we come back we're going to talk about the colorado senate seat. we're going to talk about the hard fought north carolina senate seat where thom tillis is trying to fend off a challenge from cal cunningham. we're going to take a look at the senate overall as we continue to watch the swing states fill in. stay with us. h the swing states fill in stay with us (birds chirping)

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. my friend rachel alluded to this before the break. this is the alabama call. donald trump has -- that's unchanged -- republican status. let's go to senate, colorado, sorry. here's the map of electoral states awarded so far. a lot of this is loaded into our computer. this is the race we were alluding to. i knew we were on the cusp of a call. that indeed is a flip for the democrats in the senate. john john hickenlooper over cory gardner. for the republicans, john cornyn

is returning to the senate. in alabama, this widely watched senate race to early to call. in arizona, the mark kelly, martha mcsally race too early to call. kansas senate, additionally too early to call. let's go up to the state of maine, talk about widely watched, too early to call. let's go out to michigan. too early to call between james and peters. arkansas, tom brady cotton's going back to the u.s. senate. in fact we have a list of incumbents that are going right back to the u.s. senate starting with chris coons, democratic side, delaware. ed mark key up in massachusetts, his biggest challenge was a democrat named kennedy. new hampshire, shaheen is going back to the senate. new jersey, cory booker is going back to the senate. oklahoma, senator inhofe going back to the senate. mike rounds is going back from

south dakota. and tennessee senate seat will remain in republican hands with bill haggerty, the projected winner tonight. at this hour, u.s. senate make up, this is a lot. 40 dems, 37 republicans. net gain of one for the democrats. that's the hickenlooper victory in colorado. cory gardner was about as heavily targeted as any republican incumbent going into this cycle. rachel and colleagues, over to you. >> thank you, brian. what we were talking about the senate, i want to go to our friends lawrence o'donnell and former u.s. senator claire mccaskill who have been paying particular attention to the senate races tonight. lawrence, let me start with you. i know you've been watching senate races in preparation for tonight in the weeks leading up to this. what have you been watching for tonight most closely, and let me also get your reflection on that first democratic flip that was just called.

john hickenlooper taking republican cory gardner's seat out in colorado? >> well, that first one, john hickenlooper was by far the surest bet that the democrats had going into this. they expected this. it was a recruitment issue. it was a matter of convincing john hickenlooper to run for senate after he started off running for president last year. once they convinced him to do that, they were pretty confident ant it. the next three that they're looking for to get that magic four number are arizona, north carolina and maine. north carolina is -- looks like something we might be able to call later tonight. who knows? maine is going to be tricky. even though it's an east coast state, there are four candidates running. they are using ranked choice voting which means you vote for your first choice and your second choice. and there's a candidate up there, lisa savage who is running against susan collins. and sara gideon, who is the

leading democrat running against susan collins, they've kind of teamed up. lisa savage is the preferred number two choice for people who are voting for the democrat. and when you combine lisa savage's number in the last poll with sara gideon's fun in the last poll, you get to 51% of the vote. so, it might take us a while to get the second choice sorted out on those ballots in maine if no one crosses the 50% mark at the first count of these votes. once we get through that, we of course will be keeping an eye on other east coast senate races. the two in georgia are big. south carolina is still something we're going to be watching. but the john hickenlooper win was the necessary first one that all the democrats expected to pick up. >> before i go to claire mccaskill on this first question, i believe we have a call. >> no net change.

this was expected. donald trump hangs on to the state of south carolina. 9 electoral votes. back to you and your conversation in the studio, rachel. >> speaking of the senate, the drama in that south carolina race was not expected to be the presidential race. it was among democrat's biggest blue dreams tonight, the idea of knocking off lindsey graham with the democratic candidate jaime harrison who has attracted so many accolades for the way he's ran that campaign in south carolina, not to mention a lot of dollars. this harrison-graham race we're keeping an eye on. it is red state south carolina and nbc news has just called south carolina for donald trump in terms of the presidential race. but what are you watching in terms of these senate races, in terms of a potential flip for

democrats and where democrats have their best hopes now? >> well, i've been talking to people, and it looks like that north carolina is going to be a real nail biter. it's going to be very tough as these numbers come in from same-day voting. cal cunningham's lead seems to be shrinking as steve kornacki has pointed out. you start out with a big lead with the early vote and the same-day voting makes it a little tougher. i think we're going to start looking towards iowa to see there has been polling all over the place. one candidate up four, the next candidate up four, all with high quality polls. iowa may end up being that and a potential run off in georgia may be the races that tell the tale about control of the senate. >> wow, it is -- i will point out there is a little bit of media bias in favor of there being georgia run offs just because everybody's looking forward to spending christmas

and new years in georgia in our respective recreational vehicles as we were previously discussing. we will all have them. we will all move to georgia. we will all become weird very close friends if that has to happen. in georgia the presidential race is playing out tonight. steve is keeping an eye on the georgia presidential numbers as they're coming in. how much of the statewide vote do we have in georgia? >> you see about 40% right here and donald trump has 15 point advantage in the state. we've been talking about these are the counties here. these are the counties the democrats depend on. here's a way of looking at georgia right now. where is the remaining vote? the bigger the bubble you see bubble after bubble after bubble. this is -- the democrats right now, as i said, they have to drive up numbers here as these bubbles get filled in with votes, they have to drive up numbers in these counties north of where stacey abrams got in

2016. again, these counties right here collectively, when you added all the vote in them together in 2016 when hillary clinton lost the state, she won these counties by 29. when stacey abrams lost by a whisker in 2018, she won these counties by 36. and i think just what you're seeing in the rest of georgia tonight -- and again, i could take you through just so many small counties here, small rural counties. you just see the ocean of red here, whether it's north georgia, anywhere here. i can take you through them individually but you would see trump is holding his own relative to 2016, improving in some places as well. so, it means that as we get the vote here and this disproportionally the mising vote is coming from the atlanta metro area, biden's going to need something higher, maybe substantially higher than stacey abrams got out of the these counties. we just don't have a ton of vote in them right now, so we can't tell you at this point. but that's the challenge he

faces in georgia right now. it comes down to those atlanta metro counties. again, let's call up the results board here. the other thing i want to check in on while we're here is north carolina, see where that margin stands. 84,000. one thing that's not accounted for in north carolina, biden leading by 84,000. there's a big county here just to the east of charlotte. you can call that up. union county. we're not reporting, we're not seeing any vote in the county. the republicans in 2016, trump won this by 30,000 votes. so, anything on that order right away when you get the vote from union could substantially cut into that. and, again, the other thing that biden's up against here is that even in the blue counties now in a lot of cases, as the same-day vote is coming in, it's either not as biden, as pro-biden as the early vote was or in some cases trump winning the same-day vote even as he wins the county.

there you go, down to 84,000 here. so, the votes continue -- the margin there continues to shrink. there are opportunities for biden to still add some votes. raleigh, durham, that area. let's see. it's a close one in north carolina, but biden's going to need to get a lot of votes out of those remaining democratic areas. >> steve, this is a little bit of me going out on a limb, but would you mind looking at wisconsin, presidential, to see if we've got any wisconsin voting yet? >> we do. we have a little bit here and i'm just seeing -- the state capital. this is the capital of democratic politics in wisconsin. you see biden with what's been reported here so far, you know, not surprisingly ahead. this is what you would expect. 71-23, hillary clinton. this is a key one here, brown county, green bay. just a few votes in here. you can't really tell anything from this. but this was a place that donald trump did very well in 2016. mitt romney was basically almost a tie between romney and obama.

this is one of those counties where green bay is, where donald trump surged, got a double digit margin in 2016. very, very few votes in there right now. and we're just seeing milwaukee. i'm just going to see if we have milwaukee county, if we have much again. very little. we'll go out to waukesha out here. this is a lot like -- 35%. let's see what's left here. 200,000 left to come. waukesha is one of these when you get to suburban counties outside milwaukee, they have continued to be strongly republican counties. trump didn't do as good as romney in 2012 as republicans do. but you see the movement in places like waukesha away from the trump republican parties that you i don't see in the metro areas and other states. that's a thing to keep on eye on tonight. in wisconsin the vote issing gob mixed here by the way. remember the vote method.

there's going to be wide variety, mail and same-day. we expect in wisconsin a lot of cities and towns reporting their votes in. they're going to mix them together. it's going to be a little bit smoother here and hard to tell if we're looking at same day or early vote. >> we've got a bit of a problem in the milwaukee area. we want to bring in correspondent cal perry. this year, depending on where we're concentrating, there's straight up shenanigans going on. there's u.s. mail slowdowns going on. there's voter suppression going on. and what you have to report on is a slow count, apparently tonight, correct? >> reporter: yes. election officials want to make it clear that does not mean that anything is wrong here. they had planned for this. here in milwaukee county, they separate out the early voting. they separate out those early votes and count them on their own. we're told by election officials we should not expect complete results until 5:00 a.m. local time here, 6:00 a.m. eastern. another thing to keep in mind

here, there was a tremendously bad primary here in april that the democratic party is telling us that they learned from. they went from five polling locations in milwaukee to over 170 which is why they tell us no news is good news. that is the reason there were no lines. the state party telling us they put together a campaign for 2020 based on the pandemic. they told us on the phone that the trump campaign is still running a ground operation like the one that obama ran. they think they have a major advantage here. also want to throw in i think the other thing we saw here that played out smoothly is because of the thousands of election volunteers who came out in a pandemic, made sure that people were socially distanced. >> good to hear that because you can go several minutes of our coverage and manage to forget we're carrying off this election in the middle of an uncontrolled pandemic. after all, that would account for the record breaking early vote. we have so many important battleground states still

outstanding. we have yet another list of closings coming up within 20 minutes. we're going to take a break. our live decision 2020 coverage continues right after this. age continues right after this trelegy for copd. ♪ birds flyin' high, you know how i feel. ♪ ♪ breeze drifting on by you know how i feel. ♪ ♪ it's a new dawn... if you've been taking copd sitting down,

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just to reassure folks in new england, we're watching. too early to call we have it for new hampshire and its four electoral votes. simply too early to call. speaking of which, steve kornacki is at the board continuing to go over the state of ohio. steve. >> yeah, brian, let's take a look here at the latest. and you can see joe biden's advantage here. it's continued to dwindle now. a fraction of a point in ohio. we've got vote in from every county in the state right now. the difference you can see it, a little fine print, 13,000 votes. joe biden has the lead right now

and the tally over trump. again what we're trying to get a sense from here and our decision desk is trying to get a sense here of completed counties have enough completed counties to establish here that difference between the early vote and the same-day vote because this is a thing i think we are seeing in a lot of different states right now, wide, wide gaps here. i think we talked about this in the run-up to the election. democrats much more of a propensity to vote by mail when they had the option. early voting, democrats in particular were running up big numbers there. republicans coming out voting today. we're trying to establish what exactly the difference is there in ohio between the vote that was cast same day and the vote that was cast early and exactly how much of the vote that's remaining is early -- is same-day. you can see obviously cleveland, columbus, cincinnati, toledo, places joe biden is doing good right now. big population centers. how much of that vote is going

to be the most pro-biden of the types of vote that you have there. i'm looking around to see mahoning county. this is where youngstown is. this is where donald trump got a big swing here in 2016. biden was over 60% a little while ago. it's fallen under 60. a little bit there. more will come in that is expected to favor trump. how dramatically does that favor trump? how much does that get him back in here? that's the question in a place like mahoning. some have a lot more same-day, some have a lot more mail-in. we'll check in on the numbers in north carolina right now. sitting at about 80,000 in north carolina. >> steve kornacki, thank you. we're going to bring into the

conversation mike nunley. this biden campaign is not prone to a lot of mood swings. they went 0 for 3 in the first three democratic primaries, not turning in stunning finishes in new hampshire, nevada or iowa. my sense is they were keeping the eye on the prize for them which was always wisconsin, michigan and pennsylvania. what do you hear they're looking at at this hour? >> this is a campaign from the very beginning has been playing the long game. for anybody to look to florida to look for a quick result that would trend in biden's direction, that's not happening. the biden campaign is conceding that state is trending in the wrong direction. they see it as a unique problem of cuban american vote for president trump is too strong for biden to carry the statewide vote. the good news that they see in florida though is they like the

indications of the suburban vote. the non-cuban lat know vote is also strong. they also like what we're seeing in ohio, a state that a lot of us thought was going to be out of reach for the biden campaign. they still see positive indications in the suburban vote in the cincinnati area especially. they're outperforming both hillary clinton and barack obama in those counties. so, for the biden campaign, they've always said that florida was going b to close. they say obviously it is. but they've also said we didn't need to win florida. they've had multiple paths. the one that budiden focused himself on, still for biden is the path to 270 electoral votes. >> can i ask a question. can we ask about philadelphia? so, i'm getting texts just about concerns about suppression tactics in places in some of these, you know, urban parts of, you know, important, important states, specifically targeting african-american voters.

how is the campaign feeling regarding election protection efforts in places like philly and do they think that these kind of suppression tactics there and in places like wisconsin are going to impact the result? >> reporter: well, the issue that's of particular concern of pennsylvania is that the early vote there was not as strong as we saw in a number of these other states. most of the midwest especially was 50% or more of the early vote compared to four years ago. pennsylvania was the outlier. so when you have concern about voter suppression, it's an acute concern for pennsylvania, but the biden campaign feels that they actually were pleasantly surprised in what they were seeing in terms of same-day turnout. also in terms of the lack of suppression tactics by and large. they didn't see as much concern as they were expecting, but clearly they have their allies working closely to make sure that they were getting their voters to the polls at the very end. >> mike memoli, thank you for being with us.

we will be back with you as we continue to watch the results roll in from swing states around the country. at this point, again, what we have seen thus far is no change from 2016. democrats haven't taken any states that republicans took. republicans haven't taken any states that democrats took. the only change would be one flip in the united states senate, where a republican senate seat held by -- held now by cory gardner will go to democrat john hickenlooper instead. that senate flip is the one change we have seen since 2016. other than that, we're looking at static results from the last four years. which just feels remarkable, given what has happened over the last four years. let's bring into the conversation now robert gibbs, obama administration and obama campaign veteran. robert, what are you seeing tonight? what do you think is important? >> well, look, i think some of the numbers that you're seeing out of ohio are a bit of a surprise. and i think if you're the biden campaign, you know, you like what the -- how that bodes for a lot of those upper midwestern

states. suburban strength there could mean good news in places in pennsylvania as well as michigan. and if you think about it, the clinton campaign lost ohio by eight points. but only lost michigan and pennsylvania by much, much, much smaller margins. so if this campaign and those states are moving six, seven and eight points, even if biden doesn't win a place like ohio, it may bode really well for those other upper midwestern states, and i think, you know, across the sunbelt it's going to be really interesting to look at arizona. that could be the first place we see something switch. and it's all going to be focused on maricopa county, the county that phoenix is in. democrats haven't won that for a really long time, but if you win that county, you're almost certain to win the statewide race there. so i think that's going to be a big thing for people to watch. >> yeah, arizona is interesting because arizona has had some weird stuff, right? trump won in 2016 by about three points. in 2018 we had some weird stuff

in arizona where it took, like, six days to find out the winner of that senate race. >> right. >> we are expecting to get a big dump of ballots in arizona an hour after their polls close, but then after that we don't know much about how that vote is going to go. so the sunbelt states, i mean, new mexico, nevada, arizona, the dynamics there are sort of unlike anywhere else in the country. if biden is able to get close but not pull something out in texas, do we still think about texas as it being its own country electorally that it can't be compared to anything or do we start seeing it as contiguous to those other southwestern states? >> well, that's a good question. i think arizona might be something that sits in a little different place because we know there is a contested senate race where the democrats run a really strong campaign, and even republicans talk about mcsally trailing trump. so it may be that a lot of attention got paid to a place like georgia, which i still think is very early.

a lot of attention got paid to that early vote in texas. it may be that just the spotlight that would normally have been on an arizona is actually going to matriculate back there as we get closer to watching those polls close. i still think north carolina is going to be within a point either way. i think it's, again, i think it's early yet in georgia. but i think arizona could be the first place that changes a little bit on what we saw in 2016. >> robert, given what we have seen tonight, and, again, early days. this night is going to be a long one and this week may be a long one. do you feel like the biden campaign looking at these results tonight wishes they'd done anything differently? do you feel like the trump campaign wishes they'd done anything differently? does anything feel like it was within reach for these campaigns had they done a little more, but they may end up falling short tonight? >> no, my guess is that if you talk to both campaigns they'd feel pretty good about what they left on the field. look, i'd caution everybody, i know it feels late in this campaign season because we're

all exhausted. it's really early in the night. i would be very careful drawing sweeping generalizations about what we think we're going to see because it may be it takes six days to figure out who wins this race. so i think we have to be very careful. just drawing a lot of big conclusions out of a place like florida, which we saw in 2018, you know, democrats felt great about 2018. still lost the governor's race and still lost the u.s. senate race in florida. florida's a tough, tough place. but that doesn't necessarily mean that that's indicative of either the rest of the sunbelt or certainly the rest of the country. >> nicolle wallace, you're making noises that sound like you agree. >> yeah, i mean, robert gibbs, i also want to say or ask you -- i mean, the polls in wisconsin and michigan and even pennsylvania looked a lot different than the polls in florida. the polls in florida, some of them had trump up. some of them had biden up. >> right. >> we're also not seeing a wild departure from the last round of polling. >> that's true. >> are you seeing anything --

>> yeah. >> -- that contradicts that? >> no. and, look, the statistic i use all the time in a place like florida, right, in the last seven presidential campaigns, 51 million votes have been cast and 26,000 votes separated the two parties before tonight. it's a really, really close state. and tonight, quite frankly, biden did -- might have done what he needed to do in places like duval county and jacksonville and pinellas county in that swing part of the state, but just got crushed in a place in miami-dade in which they expected probably not to do as well. this has been a problem for a couple of months, but democrats have traditionally done better in. it is florida. it is a very interesting and unique place. and we know the hispanic vote is very interesting and unique in a place like florida. again, i would be very careful drawing some sweeping generalizations about what it means for every place else this -- just at this moment. >> robert gibbs, let me ask you, too, about sort of the final conversations. i mean, there was such

enthusiasm around flipping a big, you know, big prized state like texas. that sent a couple republican presidents. and there was so much excitement for the real granular understanding that beto o'rourke had of the state and of the way that was moving. but do you think some of that may have given the expectations game -- and, again, i don't think the biden campaign is guilty of any of this. >> yes. >> but just some of the conversationalizing around this final week pull away from -- which i think was always their path, wisconsin, michigan and pennsylvania. what do you think about the phycological impact. we talk about people being exhausted. people are exhausted by the pandemic, the economic despair that has ensued. people were looking for something dramatic. people were looking landslides. you don't need a landslide to win, you need to get to 270. >> exactly. exactly. i mean, look, i do think the

expectation of maybe this will be all over at 9:30, florida will be a big biden win, and florida's not a biden win and then all of a sudden everybody goes into being depressed because they think we've reverted to 2016 all over again. we've barely seen anything out of the upper midwestern states. >> right, nothing. right. >> so i think a place like texas, i mean, if i would have told you at any point in the last four years that texas would be a state we'd be having a serious discussion about, in a presidential campaign year, democrats would be drinking champagne and maybe -- and maybe now they're not because we may -- we may lose that state by two points. again, i think you're absolutely right. the expectation of -- or maybe the hope of this early knockout has made everybody feel like, oh, gosh, maybe things have really, really gone awry and i just -- again, at this point -- this point four years ago, i hadn't even gotten the tequila

out, so it's early. [ laughter ] >> but think that's so important, robert gibbs, because i think if you look at social media and look at sort of the conversation -- and, again, i don't want to lump biden campaign into this because they are not guilty of that. they have always sort of been the tortoise in this -- >> right. >> not the hare. putting one foot in front of the other. >> robert gibbs, thank you for being with us tonight. we will be back with you, with or without tequila, throughout the course of this evening. closing in on 10:00 p.m. eastern time where we're expecting poll closings in the great state of iowa and montana and in nevada and in utah. iowa and nevada, of course, have closely-watched -- excuse me, iowa and montana have closely-watched senate races in addition to their presidential status. lots coming up. i'm glad you mentioned those closely-watched races and we may not have a whole lot of developing news here at the top of this next hour. exactly to robert gibbs' point,

it's early yet, 10:00 p.m. in the east, but those are the states closing at this hour. and so in we go. in iowa, too early to call. in nevada, too early to call. in utah, too early to call. in montana, too early to call. let's go back through some battlegrounds. in florida, too close to call. we have it as a slight trump lead. in texas, too early to call.