New York: We know that Joe Biden is on the cusp of presidency after massive gains in Pennsylvania, but when exactly will the race be called?
There isn’t a straight answer in terms of clock time but networks’ ‘decision desks’, which have been making these calls, are saying they want to ensure the confidence intervals that they’re seeing in Penn State data align with that best practice, and they can actually say that yes, the pattern is repetitive and solid enough to confirm.
There still remain about 100,000 ballots to be called in Pennsylvania. So far, for at least 15 hours straight, Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden has been steadily cutting into Donald Trump’s initial lead there and is now ahead by over 9,000 votes.
That trend is being powered by Philadelphia, the state’s biggest city. Much of the mail ballots are going for Biden at a rate of 75 per cent and this is being repeated in county after county, and it’s not an isolated pattern in Philly alone, where the rate is ticking higher.
Democratic voters went all in on using the mail vote, while Republicans turned out on election day. That’s what we’re seeing in the numbers coming out on Friday. Pennsylvania had just two ways to vote: Mail or in person. There was no in-person early voting possible here. So, it figures that votes getting counted on Friday are skewing blue and adding more to Biden’s total rather than Trump’s tally.
The Biden campaign believes it has crossed the Pennsylvania challenge and is “joyous”, according to reporters on the ground in Delaware, the Biden headquarters.
Millions of votes are still to be counted but even before we have the final tally, Biden has already 73 million votes nationally, the most in American political history.
Trump is fuming, he remains defiant and continues to allege “fraud” in Pennsylvania. His children have chimed into the overall White House meltdown, in terms that generally occupy the wide arc between what’s “legal” and “illegal”.
Biden leads Trump 253 to 214 in the electoral vote tally. A victory in Pennsylvania means it is game over for Trump, who ran a wild campaign in 2016 and has transformed the White House in the strangest of ways in the last four years.
Biden is a sharp contrast to Trump, both in the personal and political realm.
The last three days have shown Americans glimpses of that very contrast.
Biden spent every day since the election trying to ease tensions and delivering his messages with little outward show of anxiety.
“I ask everyone to stay calm. The process is working,” Biden has said repeatedly. “It is the will of the voters. No one, not anyone else who chooses the president of the United States of America.”
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