Joe Biden and President Trump have each carried numerous Eastern states they were expected to win. Votes are being counted in swing states including Florida and Georgia. In Kentucky, Senator Mitch McConnell prevailed.
Trump was overperforming his 2016 vote totals in the populous Miami-Dade County, with 472,000-plus votes in early counting in 2020 compared with about 334,000 total four years ago. The Biden campaign had sent former President Barack Obama to Miami on the eve of the election to try to rally supporters to the polls.
Trump was overperforming his 2016 vote totals in the populous Miami-Dade County, with 472,000-plus votes in early counting in 2020 compared with about 334,000 total four years ago. The Biden campaign had sent former President Barack Obama to Miami on the eve of the election to try to rally supporters to the polls.
But Mr. Biden was showing strength in other parts of the state, and the margins were too narrow to declare a winner. Mr. Biden, for instance, was leading in Duval County, home of the city of Jacksonville, which Mr. Trump carried in 2016.
Florida is a critical part of almost any Electoral College pathway for Mr. Trump to hit the 270 votes needed to secure re-election. Mr. Biden is seen to have multiple paths without the state.
Three other states that are critical to Mr. Trump’s electoral math, Ohio, Georgia and North Carolina, were also too close to call as turnout across the nation appeared on track to set a modern record.
Polls had also closed in Michigan and Pennsylvania, two of the previous Democratic “blue wall” states that Mr. Trump flipped in 2016, but that Mr. Biden was aiming to win back in 2020.
Most polls in Florida and Georgia are now closed, and Florida, a must-win battleground for President Trump with 29 electoral votes, appeared to be edging toward the president on the strength of his support among Latinos in the Miami area.
With Georgia’s tally slowed by technical problems in Atlanta, all eyes were on Florida, a perennial battleground Mr. Trump won narrowly four years ago.
A major surge by Mr. Trump among the Cuban-American voters in the Miami-Dade County area seems to have offset gains by Mr. Biden in Tampa and Jacksonville — and two Democratic incumbents in the Miami area were having difficulty fending off sharp challenges from Republicans.
Other key counties are Pinellas, in the Tampa Bay area; Seminole, near Orlando, and Duval, home to Jacksonville. Also keep an eye on St. Lucie, which went for former President Barack Obama twice and then swung to Mr. Trump in 2016. And for a look at Republican base turnout, there is Sumter County, home to The Villages retirement community.
The most competitive congressional race in the state is in the 26th District, which stretches from the western Miami suburbs to Key West. But there is also an open seat north of Tampa worth monitoring.
Georgia, a light-red state in 2016 that has become a 2020 tossup, is also the site of two hard-fought Senate contests: the incumbent Republican senator, David Perdue, is fending off a stout challenge from Jon Ossoff, a Democrat, and Senator Kelly Loeffler, who was appointed to fill a vacant seat, is facing challenges from Representative Doug Collins, a Republican, and the Rev. Dr. Raphael G. Warnock, a Democrat.
Both races could result in runoffs next year if the winner does not reach the 50 percent threshold.
In a call with reporters late Tuesday, Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s campaign described Florida as a “coin flip,” a description that has fit the state for decades. But Georgia, with its rapidly expanding suburbs, is considered a new test of Mr. Biden’s claim he can expand Hillary Clinton’s 2016 map.
Both candidates and their surrogates blanketed the state during the closing two weeks of the campaign, with trips there from Mr. Biden, Mr. Obama and Senator Kamala Harris, Mr. Biden’s running mate. Mr. Trump staged a big rally in Rome, Ga., over the weekend.
“We win Georgia, we win everything,” Biden said at a drive-in rally in Atlanta last week.
0 Comments