HOUSTON — As of late Wednesday morning, no major national media outlet (including the Associated Press) had called the 2020 presidential race yet because neither of the candidates had secured the needed 270 electoral votes.
So when will we know who won election 2020?
As of noon Central time, the Associated Press is still waiting for more results to come in from these states: Georgia (16 electoral votes), Nevada (10), North Carolina (15) and Pennsylvania (20).
The Associated Press called the races in Wisconsin (10) and Michigan (16) adding 26 electoral votes to Joe Biden's tally. However, the Trump campaign has already said they will demand a recount in Wisconsin and will file a lawsuit in Michigan to halt counting.
ELECTION 2020 MAP: See how many electoral votes Biden and Trump currently have
Overall, Biden currently has 264 electoral votes and President Donald Trump has 214.
The AP's Brian Slodysko notes that in some states, Trump had an early lead that is now being threatened by "outstanding ballots left to be counted in counties where Joe Biden has performed well."
Among those states with newly-counted ballots performing well for Biden is Georgia, where Trump is still ahead by two points as of the time of this publication with about 95% of the votes in. The folks at FiveThirtyEight point out that the state's outstanding votes tend to come from areas where Biden already has a lead, however, it's unknown if there's enough Democratic votes left to put Biden over the top.
The race in Pennsylvania, which has more electoral votes up for grabs, is not as close, however. Trump is up by 8 points but with less than 70% of the vote in and more than a million ballots still needing to be counted, the state secretary said this morning.
Meanwhile in Nevada, officials there have said they will not release any further election results until Thursday.
In Wisconsin, the AP has called the race but Biden only has a 1-point advantage with 95% of the votes in. This means the Trump team will "immediately" request a recount there.
That brings us to those words you've already heard time and time again: it's still too close to call. Yes, we potentially could learn later today that one of the candidates has secured the 270 electoral votes needed or is very close, but it's going to be a close one and it will apparently have to happen without the help of Nevada.
Because the race is so close, all major media outlets are being very careful to call any of these remaining states for either candidate much less the entire race for the White House.
And let's not forget there is also the process of states certifying their votes (some states have up to seven days to certify while others have more than three weeks, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures) and the likely legal battles and those demands for recounts.
Very early this morning, with several states still counting votes, Trump already vowed to go to court after declaring himself the winner over Biden.
"We will win this and as far as I'm concerned we already have won it," Trump told supporters at The White House. “Frankly, we did win this election," he added:
Biden also spoke to supporters overnight, telling them to be patient: