The state of Pennsylvania has been the center of the political universe over the past several weeks, with both President Donald Trump and Democratic nominee Joe Biden both making numerous campaign stops in the Keystone State, which has 20 precious electoral votes.
At the moment, Trump has a 700,000 vote lead, but Nate Cohn of the New York Times notes that some 1.4 million absentee ballots remain to be counted, and those tend to skew Democratic, which could give the state to the former vice president:
“So far, Mr. Biden has won absentee voters in Pennsylvania, 78 percent to 21 percent, according to the Secretary of State’s office. The results comport with the findings of pre-election surveys and an analysis of absentee ballot requests, which all indicated that Mr. Biden held an overwhelming lead among absentee voters.”
There are also other sources of votes for Biden, including:
- Absentee ballots that arrive days after the election
- Ballots that were left in drop boxes and have not yet been retrieved or counted
Trump, on the other hand, got the majority of his votes in Pennsylvania from the same day vote, and the largest percentage of the vote yet uncounted comes from Philadelphia and it’s suburbs, according to Cohn.
Tabulating the absentee ballots in Pennsylvania will be a slow process, USA Today notes, because the state uses some of the most secure mail-in ballots in the nation:
“Counting mail-in ballots in Pennsylvania is painstaking. Ballots have two security envelopes, signatures have to match and other information is verified.”
President Trump said early Wednesday morning that he would go to the Supreme Court to stop vote counting in Pennsylvania:
“We’ll be going to the U.S. Supreme Court. We want all voting to stop.”
Biden, on the other hand, urged his supporters to “keep the faith,” adding:
“We’re going to have to be patient. It ain’t over until every vote is counted.”
For now, all we can do is wait and wonder.
Featured Image Via NBC News
