U.S. Elections: Biden Ahead with Almost 240 Electoral Votes but Needs to Deliver Key States

Partial results from the ongoing United States presidential election show a tight contest, with incumbent Donald Trump and Democrat nominee Joe Biden nip and tuck in the handful of states that are likely to decide the outcome.

Washington operates a voting system known as the electoral college, where each state gets a certain number of votes partly based on its population. A candidate has to win at least 270 from a total of 538 electoral votes to be elected president. So it is possible to win the most public votes – like Hillary Clinton in 2016 – but still lose the election if swing states go the other way.

Projections show Trump has secured the must-win state of Florida, a major boost to his re-election bid, as well as the critical swing states of Ohio, Iowa and Texas, a conservative state that was expected to flip to the Democrats in an upset victory. He also has slight leads in North Carolina, Georgia and Michigan, according to the Associated Press.

But Biden, who so far has the majority of the vote count (50% to Trump’s 48%) and electoral votes (238 to 213), has won in New Hampshire and Arizona (after over 80% of the votes in). A win in the former, a once strongly conservative state, boosts his presidential bid after disappointments in Florida, Georgia, and Texas while Trump faces a potentially major setback. The Democrat is also narrowly ahead in Wisconsin and Nevada.

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The election is still too close to call with several swing states – the Rust Belt states of Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Michigan that helped Trump to the White House in 2016 – undecided and could tip either way.

Pennsylvania, just like Florida, is considered a must-win for Trump if he is to avoid defeat. The mostly white battleground state was one of those he won in 2016 albeit narrowly – by less than one percentage point. Before then, it had consistently voted Democrat for president since 1988.

Going into election day, analysts tipped Biden to win the election largely by capturing the state. “Some of these states – and Pennsylvania’s going to be one of them – are going to be so close right now (but) in the end, I am still expecting Joe Biden to win Pennsylvania,” sealing the election for him, Republican political analyst Frank Luntz said in a Bloomberg interview.

But Trump currently has a strong lead there (55.7% to Biden’s 43.1%), delivered by a strong Republican loyalty in its rural center, but with just 64% of the total votes in.

It is still possible for Biden to pull it off with there still more than a million votes to be counted as of early Wednesday. “You’re just going to have to get through all the votes before you’ll be able to make a conclusion,” Luntz said about the state.

Banking on a resurgent Democratic Party in its urban and suburban areas, Biden will be hoping to turn things around and win back Pennsylvania’s 20 electoral college votes, avoiding another unexpected Trump victory there.

That may prove to be hard given Pennsylvania is economically and demographically similar to other vital swing states such as Florida and North Carolina, where Trump is leading as well.

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To win the presidential race, Biden needs a mix of these states including those in the Rust Belt area, and he could really use Pennsylvania. Without a win there, the road to the Oval Office gets narrower.

The U.S. is on course to record the highest turnout of voters in a century with more than 100 million people casting ballots in early voting before election day Tuesday, the BBC reported.

It can take several days to count every vote and even weeks to certify the final election results. But it is usually clear who the winner is early on before official confirmation based on projections by the American media.

In addition to the White House, control of Congress is being contested. Republicans are looking to retain Senate majority while Democrats should hang on to the House of Representatives.