Joe Biden has won absentee ballots counted in Pennsylvania by an overwhelming margin so far, according to data from the secretary of state early Wednesday. If he carried the remaining absentee ballots by a similar margin, he would win the state.
President Donald Trump leads by nearly 700,000 votes in Pennsylvania as of 5 a.m. ET Wednesday, and Biden’s chances depend on whether he can win a large percentage of the more than 1.4 million absentee ballots that remain to be counted.
So far, Biden has won absentee voters in Pennsylvania, 78% to 21%, according to the secretary of state’s office. The results comport with the findings of preelection surveys and an analysis of absentee ballot requests, which all indicated that Biden held an overwhelming lead among absentee voters.
If Biden won the more than 1.4 million absentee votes by such a large margin, he would net around 800,000 votes — enough to overcome his deficit statewide.
Of course, there’s no guarantee that Biden will win the remaining absentee vote by quite so much. But so far, his standing in the tabulated absentee vote has almost exactly matched our preelection projections for the absentee vote by county, based on New York Times/Siena polling and data from L2, a political data vendor.
If anything, the preelection estimates suggest that Biden might be expected to do better, because the areas with remaining absentee votes are ever so slightly more Democratic than the state as a whole.
And there are possible if still uncertain sources of additional strength for Biden, like absentee ballots that arrive in the days after the election — or the possibility that the count is not yet including ballots that were left in drop boxes on the day of the election.
Trump has few places to turn for votes. His strength in the Election Day vote, which he carried by a wide margin, is all but exhausted, according to our estimates of the vote remaining. Most of the Election Day vote that remains is in Philadelphia and its suburbs.
Nate Cohn c.2020 The New York Times Company
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