and good day, i'm andrea mitchell in philadelphia for a special edition of "andrea mitchell reports" as pennsylvania could be the state that puts joe biden over the top

and into the white house. here is where we stand at this moment. biden now just 17 electoral votes away from victory with six states left on the board. here in pennsylvania, the mail-in ballots are going for biden over trump by about 80 to 20, cutting deeply into the president's lead in the state and shrinking by the hour. we expect an update from nevada at this hour where joe biden's lead in a state hillary clinton won is still small, less than 10,000 votes at last count. in georgia officials expect to be finishing their count this hour as joe biden continues to gain ground from president trump with votes from heavily democratic counties in and around atlanta coming in. arizona's secretary of state says there are still hundreds of thousands of votes to tally there and a call may not come tomorrow, with the president's team hoping there is enough republican vote in maricopa county to jump ahead. and it could take another week

to count the remaining votes in north carolina. there are 15 electoral votes there. it's a little noisy here, you can hear the helicopters, security around the city as well. we're seeing a roller coaster from the candidates as the battle continues. mr. trump is staying behind closed doors, unleashing his legal team with a string of lawsuits in battleground states including especially pennsylvania and a demand for a recount in wisconsin. and an optimistic joe biden is expected to speak publicly again today as the candidate and his campaign express confidence ahead of a final result. msnbc has this election covered all across the country coast-to-coast. msnbc's jacob soboroff is in las vegas with the latest on nevada. nbc's blayne alexander is in georgia where of course more vote counts came in minutes ago. blayne -- i guess first to jacob in nevada, sorry, jacob, let's

talk about nevada, where i know the trump campaign, rick grenell, former director of national intelligence and ambassador to georgia and others, have been leading their challenges, not legal challenges but challenges on the ground. what can you tell us? >> reporter: andrea, i don't know if you were able to see the moment in the last hour but former acting dni grenell left here in a black van with matt schlapp, a republican, a familiar face to those who watch cable news as well as republican party officials here. they made serious allegations that thousands of examples of ballots mailed across the county and ending up in garbage cans. they were saying they were filing a lawsuit in federal district court looking for a temporary restraining order to stop the counting of what they call improper ballots. and i have to say, andrea, we pressed both former acting dni

grenell and matt schlapp about leveling these accusations without a shred of evidence and in a place where the difference between former vice president biden and donald trump, the president of the united states, is 7,647 votes, the remaining votes, and we expect to get a big dump of votes in nevada in just a little bit, are going to be extraordinarily consequential. one thing i just want to reiterate is they're presenting these allegations with no evidence. they directed us here to the clark county election center to ask questions of them about fraudulent election activity. what i can tell you based on my conversations with folks from this department here, where i think it's fair to say the six electoral votes coming out of nevada will ultimately come from, literally inside this building, there are democratic and republican poll workers inside. joe gloria, the registrar here, extensively outlined the voting process, vote checkers who check

the signatures, the manualized process and how checking ballots has worked. the trump campaign has already leveled several lawsuits in nevada to stop universal mail-in voting, those lawsuits have not been successful, other lawsuits about the monitoring and counting of the ballots. in summary, andrea, some very serious allegations from the trump campaign without any serious evidence, i think it's fair to say. >> thanks so much to jacob. of course we know how important nevada is. we're waiting on nevada and arizona. and if nevada and arizona go to biden, arizona, where trump was ahead for a while, it obviously would be the end of the trump campaign effort. barring any legal challenges. nbc's blayne alexander is in georgia, of course a critical state there, where more votes came in just a few minutes ago. blayne, what can you tell us? >> reporter: i just want to put into context for you, andrea,

how close this thing is. as of right now our latest nbc numbers show that the difference between trump's lead over biden is only about 14,000 votes. that's 14,765, to be specific. so very, very razor thin margin. but we learned from state officials there are about 60,000, that's six zero thousand ballots left statewide that are left to be counted. that shows you right there how critical, how crucial every single vote is and how quickly things can turn based on what those ballots show when they come in. another thing we're focusing on very closely is where the ballots are coming from. we're right here in fulton county. you've seen us either inside of or in front of state farm arena for the last 48 hours. this is the place where the absentee ballots are being diligently counted. officials inside that building are literally expecting to finish up any moment now. they've been going through the night scanning ballots and they expect to wrap up any minute in

scanning those ballots. this is a heavily democratic area. as we've seen those numbers come in, we've also seen that lead from president trump over joe biden get progressively smaller. and it's not just here in metro atlanta, andrea. we know that chatham county, for example, has 17,000 ballots they still need to count, that's a heavily democratic area that includes savannah. as we watch those numbers come in from fulton, from chad ham, from different places around the state, we're also going to closely be watching that margin between the two candidates to see what and how that impacts the lead that president trump, the very narrow lead he has over joe biden. i will say quickly, andrea, i've texted with a couple of my democratic sources here in georgia, and by and large they're very optimistic. one told me they are certainly optimistic that they can chip away at that lead and make up that difference and ultimately see joe biden emerge victorious, is what they're saying, andrea. >> blayne alexander. and thanks to jacob soboroff.

let's go to the big board and nbc national political correspondent steve kornacki. steve, how much closer are we in these big states? >> we'll start in nevada, andrea, because that's the one we are expecting imminently, hopefully, to be getting another update. biden now leads by 7,600 votes over donald trump in nevada. we're told that the votes that are yet to come, they're mail ballots, they're provisional ballots, they were delivered on election day in some cases. there is some expectation here that when these ballots start coming in, they may favor biden. but you have to see, you have to wait and see. that is the waiting game, obviously, right now in nevada. again, at this hour we're expecting potentially to get an update. did we just get the update? we just got an update in nevada. let me just -- it's gone up to 12,000. there it is. okay.

i'm going to do some math right here to give you a quick look at this. it's a small update that we just got here. this is the first one in like a day in nevada. before we got this, biden was at 588,252. he's gained 9,000. trump's gained about 5,000, a little bit less than 5,000. we'll get you the percentages. but that seems to be about two-thirds going to biden of the vote we got in. was this in clark county? this is in clark county. and this is where a lot of the votes are still out in nevada. let's get that off the screen. clark county is where a lot of the outstanding votes are. we just got a very small batch. but there you go. biden builds his lead a little bit in that small batch. if that is an indication, if that is any indication -- were those provisional ballots? do we have a sense? because there are some different categories of ballots here. again, we've been saying the expectation has been that as these votes, these final votes are counted out in nevada,

because of the nature of the early ballot, it may favor biden. and the democrats, we just got about 15,000 there, did favor biden and the democrats. that did boost biden's lead from 7,600 to over 12,000 statewide in nevada. we're going to continue to keep an eye on that. i'll show you what we're looking at in other states here. in pennsylvania right now, donald trump is sitting at 116,000 votes. that's his lead right now. that's come down in the last few minutes because we just got updates from erie county. erie county you see is red here, trump is leading overall, but the update we got was mail ballots, absentee ballots from erie county. and biden actually made gains there because, again, biden's been doing very well with the absentee vote, the mail vote. they didn't count that on election day in a lot of places, they're counting it now. so biden just made gains in erie county. we just got votes from delaware county outside philadelphia,

some of their absentee, big gain for biden there, we got another 10,000 votes out of philadelphia that were reported and that was another big gain for biden. you see he's knocked down trump's lead to 116,000. what's left to come in pennsylvania? the biggest single source of outstanding votes is philadelphia. there is probably a range here of possibilities. maybe from about 90,000 to 110,000 votes or so, it would appear, to come out of philadelphia still. biden is winning these votes overwhelmingly in philadelphia. if you look at a 116,000-vote lead statewide for donald trump and you've got somewhere around, say, 90,000 votes to come in philadelphia, and biden is winning those votes at like a 9-to-1 clip, those philadelphia ballots, if they continue at that pace, could erase most, much, of that trump lead. then there are other places here we're also waiting on.

we're waiting on lehigh county's absentee vote. this is allentown. again, you can see it's close overall but the expectation is the absentee ballots will favor biden there. again, more to come in delaware county, some other places around the state. in other words, there are on paper opportunities there for joe biden to get the votes he needs to overtake trump. and then finally, just in georgia here, we had another update too. you were talking to blayne, fulton county, we got another update from fulton county. it knocked trump's lead to 14,000. it had been sitting at around 18,000. from fulton county, we now have fewer outstanding votes in georgia. there's probably now i would say 50 to 54,000, give or take, probably about 50 or 54,000 total ballots left to be counted in georgia. again, with trump's lead sitting there at 14,000 right now. so i'm just going to check in

nevada while we're here and see if we got anything else. no. so we got an update there, we added 15,000 votes from clark county where las vegas is. looks like biden won about two-thirds of them. he's moved his statewide lead now over 12,000. and i'm going to see if i can get more information about exactly what those ballots were and how indicative they were or not of the ballots yet to come out there because that becomes the key question, if biden is winning the remaining ballots by an overwhelming margin than you can see where it's going. so let me check in on that. >> steve kornacki, you'll get back with us with anything out of nevada or anybody else elpla. what democrats are looking at here in philadelphia is better than obama, not only better than clinton, but better than obama. let me show you the headline of "the philadelphia inquirer"

today, the race shifting to biden clearly happening as they're counting those mail-in ballots. philadelphia democrats saying that joe biden is winning that mail-in balloting by 16-to-1 here. we'll send up with a bigger margin out of philly than either clinton or obama. let's head out west to allegheny county, pittsburgh. nbc news reporter maura barrett joining us, maura, what are you hearing? officials are almost finished with the counting. >> reporter: that's right, andrea, overnight election officials finished counting their portion of those mail-in ballots, just over 300,000 of them. now there's some confusion over what's left to be done in allegheny county. there are 35,000 ballots that remain to be counted and those won't be able to be started until 9:00 a.m. tomorrow. 29,000 of these ballots were sent out, head to send replacement ballots to voters because the printing company

accidentally sent out incorrect ballots. those ballots were replaced. a court order said these ballots cannot be counted, they're being hand checked starting at 9:00 a.m. tomorrow. the other ballots were for whatever reason not scannable, didn't have the right dates on them, things that need to be reviewed by the allegheny county return board of elections. that starts at 9:00 a.m. symp m tomorrow. so we won't see any new numbers out of allegheny county until at least tomorrow morning. t allegheny county officials are holding a press conference this morning to clarify that confusion. they're not taking time off, there's a court ruling that requires them to stop. allegheny county, a democratic stronghold here in pennsylvania that the joe biden campaign has been monitoring, obviously we've been watching the margin between trump and biden shrink here as those mail-in ballots continue to come in. so we'll see exactly how the rest of them come out here tomorrow morning, andrea.

>> maura barrett, thank you so much. and joining us now, pennsylvania democratic senator bob casey. senator casey, thanks very much for being with us. all eyes on pennsylvania. obviously there's a possibility nevada could come in, if nevada comes in for joe biden, if arizona goes to trump, pennsylvania could be the state that puts joe biden over the top. we obviously don't know what's going to happen with those other states yet. but you're pretty confident about pennsylvania, certainly the mail-in vote is showing by large numbers it is going to joe biden, and if that holds up, he could very easily overtake donald trump's lead here in pennsylvania. what are your numbers? >> yeah, andrea, i think steve kornacki has reported is obviously where things are right now. we're still counting, but i think when the counting is

nearly done, i think we'll have a good indication. my assessment basically has been that the president will lose pennsylvania by somewhere around 100,000, probably, north or south. regardless of the exact margin, joe biden will win the state. the reporting on philadelphia, about the potentially really significant margin there could be historic. he could win it by a half million votes. that would be the largest margin i've ever seen there. >> i think the obama margin was 465,000. and local officials were telling me that they thought it could be upwards of 470,000. but now we're hearing an even higher number. there's been a lot of legal fighting and it's going on as we speak, a lot today, back and forth. the trump campaign did win a ruling from commonwealth court in pennsylvania, as you know, that they could go in and watch the count going on.

they were particularly concerned, the president has been making all kinds of aspersions for days if not weeks against philadelphia. we haven't seen signs of problems here. in any case, they won that. the democrats went and got a pennsylvania supreme court ruling overturning that commonwealth court ruling so that the vote count, which was temporarily suspended here in philly, is continuing just down the street here from us. so right now, are you hearing any problems, and what do you expect given all the flurry of legal challenges here by the trump people? >> no, andrea, i think the trump campaign will try virtually anything, because they're losing a race, a national race, and they're trying to prevent a loss in pennsylvania. so they will stop at nothing. i've said it over and over again, there's no law or anything that will constrain the president from trying to cheat his way to a win. but the process is going to be completed. every ballot will be counted. there will be a winner.

and we'll move forward after that. but some of these things that happened today are kind of hiccups that happen all the time, and courts have to make determinations. but the ballots will be counted. and philadelphia will be a big margin. i'm also carefully following what's happening in suburban philadelphia in terms of the margins there. montgomery county, the margin there is five points higher than last time. in chester county, it's significantly higher. we're still getting more vote, as steve was saying earlier, from bucks county and delaware county. he's going to win all four suburban counties by significant margins. >> that of course is key, because hillary clinton did not carry those by big enough margins. those are the four suburbs, and you're seeing a really different race there than what she faced four years ago with suburban women and others really going for donald trump four years ago

and not in great numbers there. i was hearing that montgomery county is really crushing trump for joe biden. let's talk about what this all means, because let's say pennsylvania does go for biden, and let's say that he ends up with 270 tonight or tomorrow, whenever this happens. what is he facing? you know, he may be facing mitch mcconnell as majority leader again, depending on what happens in those georgia races, at least one runoff, possibly two runoffs in georgia in the senate. we don't yet what's going to happen in the alaska senate race as well. but let's say he faces the same thing barack obama faced, which was obstruction from a republican, the majority leader, a republican senate, divided government. a lot of challenges, not just the pandemic. the economy and everything else that any president taking office on january 20 is going to face in this country. >> andrea, no question, i think you've outlined it well. i think were he to be elected,

joe biden would face a set of challenges that maybe no president in a century has faced. with regard to both the economic trauma that's already devastated a lot of families, a lot of communities, in addition to the worst public health crisis in a century. but i think he's ready for the moment and they'll be able to bring the country together. >> finally i just want to ask what you think about our politics right now with the president trying to undermine the vote count, the reliability of democracy across america, on twitter, at least. we haven't seen him since early yesterday morning. what about the state of politics in our country? >> well, the only good news there is it seems like members of his party aren't rushing to join him, so far. but look, no matter what the president does, no matter what

legal actions they file, no matter what he tweets, the right to vote will be protected. every ballot will be counted. the constitution will march forward. the president has to make a decision, were he to lose, and it seems likely, he's got to make a decision, does he stand in the way of the constitution or does he get out of the way and let the constitution govern how we conduct our elections and how we governor ourselves. govern ourselves. >> senator bob casey, pennsylvania, thanks so much, thanks for being with us today. we do expect to hear from joe biden later this afternoon, while president trump so far has been doing his talking on twitter, pleading in all caps to stop the count, as biden moves closer to 270 electoral votes. joining me now with the latest reporting on the candidates, nbc white house correspondent kristen welker in wilmington. and nbc correspondent carol lee outside the white house. kristen, first to you, i know there was a briefing today from the biden camp.

they're pretty confident. >> reporter: they are increasingly confident, andrea. you're absolutely right. in fact, the headline from that call, victory is imminent. i think that underscores the thinking inside the biden campaign right now. i just heard from one biden campaign official who said about nevada, the fact that you see biden's lead increasing a little bit in that state, this person says, it is in line with what we were expecting, we believe we will win the state. let me take you inside the thinking, andrea, for each of these states. again, they're feeling confident about nevada. arizona, as you know, very close race right there. one official, though, telling me ultimately they think they will prevail. they're also obviously watching pennsylvania, pennsylvania, pennsylvania, quite closely. this official telling me, look, they think ultimately they are going to win the state, they think it will be by a not insignificant margin. they think the vote count needs

to take time, needs to play out. we've been talking to, as you have, andrea, officials throughout pennsylvania, who underscore what we heard from bob casey. so if that is case, if you do have this very robust turnout in those critical suburbs of philadelphia, that could be key for biden if he does in fact overtake president trump there. i do think it's important to remind our viewers, what we're seeing happen in pennsylvania is what pennsylvania officials had always said they expected. they expected those first votes to come in to be largely for president trump. they're in areas that he carried heavily back in 2016. and they also expected that that mail-in ballot, what is being counted right now, will more heavily trend toward joe biden. and so that is why you're seeing some of biden's numbers increase. now, in terms of what we are anticipating today, andrea, here in wilmington, delaware, where biden continues to monitor these returns with his family, we expect to hear from biden at some point.

so i anticipate that we will hear him echo this confidence that we heard from his campaign offici officials, when we hear from him a little bit later on this afternoon. finally, i would just add that the biden campaign is quite defiant in the face of those legal challenges by the trump campaign, calling them nothing more than charades, andrea. >> thank you so much, kristen welker, covering the biden campaign. carol lee, we haven't seen the president since that 3:00 a.m. speech from the white house on wednesday with that false claim of victory. what are we sensing is going on in the white house behind you? >> reporter: that's right, andrea, we haven't seen the president in person. he has been very active on twitter. he just tweeted a few minutes ago "stop the fraud." so we went from "stop the count" to "stop the fraud." we've heard from a number of his campaign officials, they had a conference call with reporters similar to the biden campaign, and are doing these press conferences, or they're really speeches, they're not taking questions, in philadelphia.

then we saw in las vegas. their line, according to one of the trump campaign officials on a call earlier, is he is alive and well, the president is in this fight, according to the trump campaign, and that anyone who counts him out shouldn't because he's been counted out before and he's ultimately won. they make the case that when they look at the map, they look at arizona, they say it's closer than it appears and that ultimately they believe the president will win that. they look at georgia, north carolina, they think those are ultimately going to turn his way, specifically north carolina, earlier than georgia. and then pennsylvania, where they're mounting these legal challenges, one of the states where they're mounting these legal challenges, and they're saying they're just looking for transparency in the vote, and that they want all, quote, legal ballots to be counted. so that is their posture right now. again, similar tos, as kristen was just sighing, taying, the b campaign, and now also the trump

campaign, showing a defiant posture, trying to get foot holds in states with legal challenges. we saw a new one in nevada, that's in addition to pennsylvania, michigan, georgia, and we expect more. we don't know exactly where they plan to take this, but they have said, we haven't seen it yet, potentially there could be some sort of national lawsuit. we just don't know. and as you noted, we still haven't seen the president. >> carol lee and kristen welker, thanks to both. let's go back to the big board and msnbc national political correspondent steve kornacki. steve, any updates? >> yes, just taking a look here, no new vote in -- let me just -- oops, sorry. i apologize for this, i'm doing this in real time here. we have an 11,000-vote statewide lead for joe biden in nevada. again, we got a batch of those in clark county. this is where las vegas is. we got them earlier. biden so far leading strongly in this new batch of votes that

we're getting from clark county. there are going to be a lot more votes to come from clark county. so we expected i think something on the order of 100,000 mail ballots to be counted there still. so the question was in clark county, are these going to be what's yet to be reported, are they going to favor biden. the initial indication is yes. but again, this is a relatively small amount here. so let's see. but it is a pretty overwhelming advantage in this first report that biden has. remember, he came into this in the lead. i sma a small lead, but he came in in the lead. if you're getting an indication here that the outstanding votes will favor biden, you can see there statewide, he has a chance to hang on to the lead. nevada, we got that going on. then i think we just got a further update. i wanted to check here. i believe in georgia, trump's lead here sitting at 14,000. i think we just got a few more votes in in georgia. so again, that is continuing to

tick down slightly as we get more in. let me just check in pennsylvania. i believe we got another small update here, trump's lead sitting at 115,000. again, the big piece of this in pennsylvania, as we keep saying, philadelphia. they've been reporting in some pretty big chunks. we just had one a short while ago. we'll see if there are more that come. but yeah, and i'm also trying to get a sense -- there it is. we're getting more mail ballots, it would appear, from clark county. is that from washoe county? okay. we're getting washoe county around reno. we're getting mail ballots as well. and that's what you're seeing. that is what's updating. okay. that is what you're seeing right now. clark county, washoe county. the two biggies, this is like 90%, in nevada. we're getting mail ballots right now. i keep pressing this button by mistake. what it's doing statewide is, it

has pushed 3w50biden's lead up. the clark county mail ballots pushed joe biden's lead up from 7,600 to about 12,000, somewhere in that neighborhood. what you're seeing from washoe, it has basically stayed in that neighborhood. there remain a significant number of mail-in ballots in clark county. that was only a small chunk of them that got reported out there. about 15,000 that got reported out there about 20 minutes ago. if that is a taste of what they are going to be like out of clark county, as more and more of them come in, that would be very good news for joe biden as he tries to not just hold on to this lead in nevada, the goal there for him would be to build that lead and put the state away. in what he got out of clark county there, if you were watching about 15 minutes ago, and you saw that big jump there, 7,600 to 12,000, that was the statewide lead, that was a jump from clark county mail-in ballots. there are many more of those to come. if they look like that, that puts biden in very good

position. >> thanks so much, steve kornacki. and washoe is around reno, the proportion of mail-in ballots, the same as in clark, favoring biden, as mail-in balloting has been around the country, correct? >> you're seeing in the washoe numbers, that's what i'm going to try to get a sense of now, what you're seeing in the washoe numbers, i think was a little bit more balance. that last update looks like it was about 50/50 between the candidates. so there is a question, though, is this what's going to drive it for biden, is it going to be clark county. but let me check into that right now. >> okay. we'll be hearing back from you, thank you so much, steve kornacki, with the updates from the big board. the trump campaign is taking legal action in key battleground states, certainly a lot in pennsylvania, filing lawsuits here, as well as in michigan, georgia, nevada, as they hold

out hope the vote count will shift in the president's favor. a new lawsuit was announced in philadelphia and in nevada as well. pete williams joins me as well as pete charles, a professor at the duke law center on law, race, and politics. welcome, both. pete, break down the cases and what are you looking at that you think is more than nuisance value, what is serious and likely to progress? >> okay. well, the nevada case hasn't yet been filed. so, you know, there's an undoubted political component to announcing these lawsuits and doing this, but in terms of actually seeing what's in there, we can't see the nevada case. it doesn't seem to have been filed yet. the claim is that nevada sent -- by sending mail-in ballots to everybody, they ended up sending them to a lot of people that were not legally qualified to vote, and therefore there are some, they say, anecdotally, they claim, there are votes in there that shouldn't have been

cast. i think the real question will be, when we see the lawsuit, is what are they asking the court to do? because let's assume for a moment that this is correct, that ballot applications were sent to people who no longer live there or are no longer alive. once the process begins, once you start canvassing votes, then you take the mail ballots out of the envelope, and it's just a plain old ballot, you don't know who it came from. so let's assume that the court concludes that there were 575 ballots that were cast that shouldn't have been. what do you do about that? how do you take 575 votes away? you don't know who those people voted for. so that's going to be a question about, they may say stop the counting until we fix this, i don't know, we haven't seen the actual legal action yet. you know what's going on there right behind you, what had happened is the republicans had said they weren't being given enough closeness to watch the ballot canvassing process in

philadelphia county. a local election judge said actually, i think they're doing the best they can under covid circumstances. but today a pennsylvania court of appeals said no, you've got to do better. and based on that decision, then, as you know, the county has decided to appeal that decision and suspend the count for now. i think those are the two lawsuits that have the most potential to upset the vote. there is one in georgia where the republicans are saying, we can't watch the vote process carefully enough, we want to make sure that no ballots are improperly counted, we ask you to suspend the count until that's fixed. there's a hearing going on right now about that. and in these covid days, these telephone hearings sometimes are a technological disaster, and this one is not working out very well, so that one is still in progress, andrea. >> thanks for that. and we were told here that the pennsylvania supreme court set things back in the other

direction, overruling the commonwealth court, which is the appeals court in the state. but it remains to be seen how that is playing out. so, pete, what are you hearing now on the merits of these challenges as you look at all these cases? >> i think the problem is, as hard as one can look, it's really hard to find substantial merit in these cases and in the challenges. so at best, the best claim that the trump campaign seems to have is, we need a better opportunity to preserve the vote counting. but as you look across the states in which they're filing challenges, whether it's georgia, michigan, pennsylvania, there really is no strong merit to get the votes to stop being counted. there would have to be some argument saying you're counting illegal votes, you're doing something wrong that could

irreparably do us damage, and there's no facts to support that. courts are dismissing these charges and they're not getting anywhere. one has to think about the interplay of the political strategy with the legal strategy. it seems the purpose of the legal strategy is to at least slow things down, because if it is the case that biden gets to 270, then there's going to be a lot of pressure on the trump campaign. so the purpose of the legal strategy is to at least say, hey, there's a problem here that we need to attend to before we can continue. and so far, it's really not paying off for them. and it's not working the way they intended. this is basically throwing smoke at the wall, hoping to see something stick. we're just not seeing a lot of merit in these cases. >> thank you both very much. pete williams and pete charles, thanks very much. too close to call? that's the state of the race in arizona and north carolina.

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and so let's go back to the big board and msnbc national political correspondent steve kornacki. steve, what's the latest? anything more from nevada? >> yeah, we can give you a little bit more information here on exactly what we've been watching play out in nevada over the last few minutes. i know it seems a little confusing. it certainly confused me a little bit as it all popped up. i think we've made sense of it here. basically what's going on here, they've got a couple of types of ballots that some of these counties are releasing right now. you've got ballots that were dropped off in person on election day, they were mail ballots that folks drove in, dropped them off on election day on tuesday, or that arrived by

the mail on election day on tuesday. that's the group of ballots that's being counted, along with folks who went to the polls and did same day registration. you can do that in nevada. these are the ballots that appear to be tallied up by the counties here. what happened here, for instance in washoe county, this is where reno is, let's call up those results. we were talking about this as we saw it come in. they had said, they estimated they had about 9,000 of these late-arriving mail ballots they thought they had left to report out. and they thought they had 4,000 of those same-day registrations that they also had to process and get through. it looks like, based on this update we just got, that most if not all of those have been reported out now. and what it did, when they reported these out a few minutes ago, it was basically a split. there wasn't a clear advantage for either candidate here in washoe county. this is the second largest in nevada. so no one really making any gains out of the release of all

of that vote. same thing, same style, combination of ballot, is what's playing out in clark county. this is clark county, overwhelmingly the majority of the population in nevada. same thing is playing out there. and we did get an update there about 20 minutes ago, except there, biden was winning these votes by about a two to one margin, he was getting about two-thirds of them. the catch is this. whereas in washoe county it looks like they're pretty much out of votes there, they may be all out of votes there, they may be all reported there, in clark county there's a lot more to come. we're thinking there's probably 100,000 votes here still left to come. that update was about 15,000 of them. so the question there is, is that two to one biden advantage you're seeing, is that anywhere, anywhere near casindicative of the rest of these ballots will go? because biden is already winning

statewide in nevada. he padded his lead statewide when some of those votes were counted in clark county, we're talking 75% of the population of the state in this county. what happens here from this point forward in clark county will drive this. we've got 15,000 of those in, 15,000 of those outstanding votes. and biden is winning them by two to one. if you're joe biden and you're sitting on that lead and you want to maintain it, that's a very encouraging sign for you right now. >> thank you so much, steve kornacki. the other battleground states, arizona and north carolina, are too close to call at this hour as the counting there continues. we have reporters across those states. nbc news political reporter vaughn hillyard in phoenix and nbc's morgan radford is in north carolina. vaughn, the lead in arizona remains too close to call.

the president wants those outstanding votes to be counted in arizonas, unlike their position for other states. >> reporter: exactly, andrea. right now joe biden holds a 60,000-vote lead here. can he make it up, was our big question heading into last night. was the fact that -- i don't know, andrea, if you can still hear me, but the question was, among those ballots, there is about 150,000 that were processed last night. and among those 150,000, donald trump won about 60% of them. and so the question is can he hold and continue to maintain that sort of a margin over joe biden? because in order to do it, he has to gain exactly 60% of the vote among this land 400,000 batch in order to make up that ground. so far, ever since election night, donald trump has done exactly what he needed to do when it comes to these numbers. what are these numbers?

these are numbers from this weekend, early ballots received by the counties, as well as on monday and tuesday. in those numbers, overwhelmingly trending to donald trump. the biden campaign, an official i talked to, they believe the ballots, even that last batch of 100,000, may trend more towards democrats because they believe there is a higher rate of democrats and independents that came out to vote. whether that's answered, we're not sure. we're awaiting more results out of maricopa county later tonight, andrea. >> thanks so much, vaughn hillyard in arizona. and in north carolina, donald trump's campaign says they remain confident about their lead but the final results may not be known for another week or more. morgan radford, you're there in charlotte. what can you tell us about this with i guess the regulations that they don't finish the count until november 12? >> reporter: that's right, andrea. the tarheel state is still hanging in the balance. but the question right now is

why. and it really comes down to two things. one, president trump is leading in the state by about 77,000 votes. but number two, the number everyone is watching is those 116,000 mail-in ballots that the state says were requested but not returned. and then on top of that, just this hour, we're also learning there are now an additional 40,000 provisional ballots that have yet to be certified. but the big question, andrea, is whether or not those numbers, those outstanding ballots, will actually make a difference. the state's gop is very, very excited, they feel like this is in the bag for them. take a listen to what the chairman of the state gop told me just an hour ago. you're not concerned about those 116,000 outstanding mail-in ballots that haven't been returned yet? >> no, we know a lot of those outstanding as absentees voted in person, those would obviously be taken off that number. joe biden would have to win that

by a 90-10 margin and that's just not going to happen. >> reporter: andrea, also today we spoke to political experts here on the ground, and they also said that they do not believe those outstanding ballots will ultimately shift the lead. they said they really only expect to see about 30,000 of those ballots actually returned and in their opinion, they said that won't be enough to shift the presidential or that tight senate race. it may only affect those state races, andrea. >> thanks very much to vaughn hillyard and morgan radford. a clarification, two democratic officials told us here that the pennsylvania supreme court had overturned a commonwealth court, the appeals court here, the ruling about the trump observers being able to be inside and watch that count, and that is not correct, according to a spokesman from the supreme court, they say they have not taken action yet on that case, so a clarification there, we wanted to correct that right away. president trump, meanwhile,

ramping up his twitter attacks on joe biden's vote gains in key battleground states. he's not been seen in public since his 2:00 a.m. election into the appearance. ashley parker, white house reporter for "the washington post," peter baker, white house correspondent for "the new york times," and ben rhodes, former deputy national security adviser to president obama. ashley, what's happening behind the scenes at the white house? we haven't seen the president since 3:00 yesterday morning. >> we haven't. in talking to people just before election day, the president had in some ways come to grips with his own political mortality, as it were, the fact that he could potentially lose. you saw him talking about that on the campaign trail, "i can't believe i might lose to this guy joe biden." but in talking to people behind the scenes now, the president is very much in a fighting mode. he's not sort of thinking about what is the next step while these court fights are going on. another interesting thing is what the campaign is saying on

these calls to reporters. it's a lot of their spin, but i'm being told that's also what they're telling top people, the president's family, other key people behind the scenes. so it is either something they may actually believe, or they are at least trying to will oth believe that this could still work out for the president. but the last thing i'll say is there is some bullishness he might be able to pull off arizona. but in his orbit over the past 48 hours or so, the mood has become increasingly nervous, and i think they understand that it feels like it is leaning at least towards joe biden. >> peter, what about the tweets about stop the count and stop the fraud? is that all from him? is that the larger strategy? >> look, he told us what he was going to do months ago. this is exactly what he told us. he told us in the sum knmersumm outcome other than him would be

k considered to be stolen or rigged. he's playing it out exactly the game plan as he laid it out. anything that doesn't favor him is automatically suspect. when he says stop the count, he doesn't seem to understand, of course, he stopped the count orders right now, he would lose because joe biden is ahead. so stopping the count wouldn't help the president in that case. of course, it's contradictory. in some states he wants to stop the count. other in states he wants to continue the count because maybe in arizona he can still get those votes to overtake joe biden like joe biden is trying to overtake him in georgia. so, you know, they are throwing out a lot of legal chaff. most lawyers don't think it has a lot of bearing on who will win in the end but it muddies the waters and gives his followers and supporters something to hang on to for the moment. >> and you have seen them in states after state. ben rhodes, yesterday the

president's son eric and his personal attorney rudy giuliani were here accusing joe biden of trying to cheapen pennsylvania. the former dni out there in nevada, as well as others. what is the bigger strategy? >> well, yeah, the reality right now -- donald trump isn't fighting against joe biden. he's fighting against reality itself and against the american voters. and i think the bigger strategy here seems to not be succeeding in changing the outcome of this election which overwhelmingly looks like it's trending to joe biden. it's to delegitimize the election itself. we have consider how dangerous that is. there's a large chunk of the country that's going to believe what donald trump says and what his surrogates say. and january 20th, somebody is going to be the next president. most likely joe biden. to deal with the pandemic, an economic crisis. and it's incredibly dangerous at a time when the country should be thinking about how to heal after an election and move forward you have a deliberate

strategy to spread conspiracy theories and misinformation and essentially fire up and even radicalize supporters to go out and confront people who are counting the votes. this could have a long tale. the story may not end when the election itself is certified if president trump is able to cede into his supporters the idea this is illegitimate. that's incredibly dangerous. >> peter, your paper is reporting that jared kushner is looking for what he described as a james baker-like figure who could lead a legal effort to dispute the tabulations in a number of states. you wrote the book on james baker and his whole life but also what happened in bush v. gore where he led the legal team for george w. bush. it's hard to imagine rudy giuliani as a james baker figure, but what are you hearing as to what jared is looking for? >> you know, they are desperate for somebody that can lead them in the way jim baker led the

bush 43 effort. with the combination of legal and political savvy. this is a huge difference here. what jim baker did in representing george w. bush in florida, he never actually threw out these baseless claims of fraud and stealing election without any basis whatsoever. he did not try to stop the first count of the votes. we're still in the first count of these votes. that's not what happened in florida. what happened was the first count was completed and the democrats sought to recount and re-evaluate some ballots that have been thrown out because of various procedural flaws. the made the argument these ballots should still be counted because they are clear the voters' intent. republicans said stick to the standards you already had. but they didn't try to -- the original count and that's what president trump is trying to do here when he says stop the count. >> that is the big difference. thank you, peter baker and ashley parker and ben rhodes. let's go back to the big board

and national political correspondent steve kornacki. what's going on in georgia with the sonny perdue case? >> we keep watching this presidential race tighten in georgia as more of those votes come in. 13,000 trump's lead over biden, but the senate race also is tightening. not in a way -- it's not about is ossoff going to catch perdue here. it's about this perdue number which we have at 50.0 right now. if that drops anywhere below 50.0, 49.9, then there's a runoff election. you have to get 50% to win the election outright for a senate race in georgia. otherwise, perdue versus ossoff becomes a runoff. just the situation here in. we keep talking about biden drawing closer and closer to trump in the presidential race with these votes being counted in georgia. we're not sure if biden is going to overtake trump and win the state, but it does seem likely he's going to get a little

closer. and if this goes any closer, we've got to work out the decimal points to see if you work it out enough, this could be under 50 right now. anything under 50, this is a runoff. keeping an eye here. every time we get an update on the presidential, i've been checking this. the minute it says 49.9 if it, does i'll let you know because then you know where this is going. january runoff. >> two runoffs in georgia. amazing. thanks so much, steve kornacki. that does it for this special edition of "andrea mitchell reports" live from philadelphia. ari melber is up next with "mtp daily" only on msnbc. we're all finding ways to keep moving.

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good day to you. i'm ari melber with continuing msnbc special election coverage. we're expecting more results to come in this hour. we have a presidential race that as you know has come all the way down to the wire. let me go through what's happening. it's a lot right now. at the moment, the biden campaign telling reporters they see a path to victory as, quote, imminent. the trump campaign continuing an aggressive intervention strategy in the courts. here's the numbers. nbc projecting biden has won 253 electoral votes on this map. six states remain uncalled. biden has a nbe