More than 24 hours after polls closed in Pennsylvania on Election Day 2020, several key races remain undeclared. Neither President Donald Trump nor Democratic nominee Joe Biden have secured 270 electoral votes to win the presidency.
The following vote counts are based on data either from the Pennsylvania Department of State or the Northampton County Office of Elections.
Unofficial: Presidential race
The race for the presidency is still ongoing. In Pennsylvania, mail-in ballots are still being counted.
The Pennsylvania State Department shows Trump with a 200,000-vote lead in the Keystone State. Trump narrowly won Pennsylvania by about 40,000 votes four years ago.
But there are still more than 500,000 uncounted mail-in ballots out of a total 2.5 million that were returned. Biden maintains a significant advantage over Trump in mail-in ballots, winning 3.5 times more votes by mail compared to Trump. Trump has won more than double the votes cast in person on Election Day compared to Biden statewide.
Pennsylvania’s delay in counting mail-in ballots is due in large part to a state law that prohibited individual counties from tabulating mail-in ballots until polls open Nov. 3, leaving election officials no advanced time to begin to record an unprecedented level of mail-in ballots due to the pandemic. Ballots postmarked by Nov. 3 can be counted so long as they arrive to the county election office by Nov. 6.
Now, the Trump campaign is suing Pennsylvania for alleged lack of transparency in its counting procedures.
To further complicate matters, though it is their legal right, seven Pa. counties decided to entirely wait until Nov. 4 to even begin to count mail-in ballots — much to the ire of Pennsylvania Secretary of State Kathy Boockvar. She said, however, those counties are still expected to finish counting their ballots in a timely manner.
“The top priority is to count every ballot accurately and securely,” Boockvar said in a press conference after polls closed Nov. 3.
Locally, with all ballots counted and all precincts reporting, Biden won Northampton County by about 700 votes. The victory there is crucial for the Democratic nominee in a battleground county with 20 electoral votes in Pennsylvania on the line. Northampton County is only of just three of Pennsylvania’s 67 counties to have supported President Barack Obama both in 2008 and 2012 before turning red in 2016 to back Trump.
Unofficial: Congressional race
The race to represent the Lehigh Valley in Congress is also too close to call. Democratic Rep. Susan Wild is facing Republican challenger Lisa Scheller to represent the 7th Congressional District.
With 84 percent of the vote in, Scheller holds a narrow 1.5-point lead over Wild. Mail-in ballots in Lehigh and Monroe counties are still being counted. In Northampton County, Scheller finished with about 950 more votes than Wild with all ballots counted. The 7th Congressional District includes all of Northampton and Lehigh counties and parts of Monroe County.
The same trends are showing in the congressional race as in the presidential race. The Democratic candidate, Wild, has more than double the mail-in votes compared to Scheller, while Scheller, the Republican, has won more than double the votes cast in person on Election Day.
Official: State representative
Longtime State Rep. Steve Samuelson, a Democrat, has survived his first Republican challenger since 2012. Samuelson beat Scott Hough to represent Bethlehem in Harrisburg by about 9,000 votes.
Unofficial: State races
With outstanding mail-in ballots still to be counted, there are three statewide races up for grabs.
Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro, a Democrat, is up narrowly in his re-election bid against Republican challenger Heather Heidelbaugh. The margin is about 0.6 percentage points.
Republican Timothy DeFoor is up by about seven percentage points on Democrat Nina Ahmad in the race for Pa.’s auditor general.
Stacy Garrity is up about five percentage points in her bid to unseat Democrat Joseph Torsella for the state treasurer.
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