Lets dig in with pennsylvania right now. Joe biden has taken the lead right now. He has about a 6,000vote lead, just under 6,000 votes. Theres still 130,000 ballots that still need to be counted. If youre saying this race is very close, were talking about a 6,000vote lead. Theres 130,000 ballots that can be counted. President trump can catch up, maybe. Heres the problem for President Trump. At least 60 60,000 of those 130,000 ballots that have yet to be counted are coming from philadelphia, the surrounding suburbs up through the Lehigh Valley and joe biden is making eastern pennsylvania even more blue. Tom, let me stop you there. Through the night joe biden has been winning. Hes been winning the deep blue areas by 70, 80 . Yes. Because of the mailin vote, when we look at pennsylvania, look at the ratio right here, this is pretty much the breakdown. 80 are going to joe biden. I want to say 30,000 of that 130,000 still to be counted is coming from pittsburgh, a very deep blue county. Also overnight, joe biden pulled ahead in georgia. Right. At this hour right now, joe biden is on top with 1,000 votes. Still very, very tight. Theres about 8,000 votes still to be counted in georgia. The reason joe biden is on top is the vote is coming from places like gwinnett county. Hes up 58. 3 to 40. 4. Other counties are bigger for democrats, fulton and clayton. 80 of the vote going 0 joe biden. When the votes are coming from there, thats why joe biden is taking the lead. Lets go to georgia. Steve osunsami is there. This could still take some time in georgia, steve. Reporter it could. We expect to hear more from the secretary of state today. Hes holding a News Conference later today. George, i want to underline, there are a lot of georgians waking up this morning, democrats and republicans, wondering what georgia did they wake up in. Thats how significant this lead that joe biden has taken is. If hes able to hold on to it, he will accomplish something in georgia that president obama wasnt able to do twice. It is really breaking the conventional wisdom were seeing here. There are people on the left who are celibaebrating and saying people like Stacey Abrams had a lot to do with this lead and john lewis, part of his district is responsible for a number of these votes for joe biden. About the vote itself, the secretary of state who i will underline is a republican. Well get more to that later. He points out there are about 8 to 9,000 outstanding votes. Were going to be counting military and overseas votes today. About 17,000 of those i think or so have laalready 18,000 of those have come in and are already counted. The secretary of state believes there may be about 9,000 potential more of those ballots that have to be in by the end of the day to day. Thats where this lead could be adjusted and where the president could gain a few more votes. The other thing ill point out is theres a huge effort theres a new ground war taking place on the left and right with both democrats and republicans encouraging voters who may have had issues with their absentee ballots that can be fixed to do so by the end of Business Today. They called those cured ballots. Those ballots could make a difference. Tom mentioned gwinnett county. They finished counting most of their votes last night. Theyre planning to submit them today. We expect those votes to count. Thats a blue county. The latino vote there is big. That number could shift again. Steve, were within a margin for an automatic recount . Reporter we are. The secretary of state is already prepared for that. He has said that a recount this is what he said yesterday. A recount shouldnt change the numbers much. He got new equipment. He said it would take a week for a recount. Either candidate can order one. Something about the secretary of state that i keep saying and want to say again, for all these allegations about democrats stealing elections and some of these this notion that the election is being stolen, thats not going to play as well in this state where republicans control the legislature, the Governors Office and where the secretary of state who runs the elections here is not only a republican, but also a supporter of the president. Steve, thanks. Lets go to pennsylvania. Eva pilgrim is there. Joe biden in the lead with many more votes to come. Reporter it was that big ballot drop from philadelphia that put him in the lead. It was about 30,000 ballots that were counted. The people in this city celebrated that moment. You have to remember that donald trump pointed out philadelphia multiple times saying bad things happen in philadelphia. This city is really proud. Its a proud city. Proud of their history, proud of their people. They view joe biden as one of them. Dr. Jill biden is from this area. They are celebrating that this count from philadelphia is what put him over the top at this point. Jer george, were still watching to see as the ballots come in. Were looking for the magic number of about 34,000. That would put biden ahead of a possible recount here in pennsylvania. Hes not at that point yet. Eva, thanks. Lets go to pat toomey. Senator toomey, thanks for joining us. Joe biden has pulled ahead. Do you think the president still has a chance in your state . He does, george. Theres certainly still a path for the president. Its an extremely narrow lead. We have to remember this process goes beyond the first vote count. For instance, in pennsylvania we know there are some minor irregularities. Those will have to be litigated. Theres been a terrible lack of transparency in the philadelphia vote counting process. We have a rogue state Supreme Court that unilaterally decided to rewrite election law to allow ballots without a postmark to be counted days after the election. The Supreme Court ratified that, didnt they . They did not ratify that. They said by a 44 decision they would not impose an injunction at that time leaving the door open to adjudicate that. I think thats likely to happen. If it turns out its that category of ballots that create the margin of victory for Vice President biden i have no idea whether thats the case. That has to be litigated. I think weve got a long way to go. We have to finish the counting and all legal ballots have to be counted. That takes as long as it takes. Theres probably going to be a legitimate recount and then there will be legitimate litigation. I think thats the way its going to go. We need to let this process play out. The president said we should stop the counting. Number one, the ballots that have come in do not include anything received after november 3rd. Hold on, george. Im not away thats the case. I dont know how we could know that in philadelphia since observers have not been given the opportunity to get close enough to observe. The Supreme Court ordered those observers to come in. Weve been watching the count on television. I was talking to the Lieutenant Governor this morning. He said theres not been any widespread irregularities or fraud. George, i have acknowledged that. Im not aware of any widespread or systemic fraud. However, nobody can say with confidence that the ballots that are supposed to be segregated in philadelphia are in fact being properly segregated because, even this morning, i spoke with the republican whos responsible for overseeing that process and he continues to be denied access to the point where you can see whats happening. Theyre in the room. The room is the size of a small town. He cant get close enough to see whats going on. All im saying is there are some unnecessary problems and well have to get this resolved. One of the reasons its taking so long is because the state legislature in pennsylvania said you couldnt start processing the absentee ballots until election day. I do take your point. Lets say we go tlhrough the process, are you prepared to say once thats happened this has been a fair and free election . George, look, i voted for donald trump. I endorse donald trump. The person i want to be the next president is the person who wins the Electoral College legitimately. I think our system is absolutely going to enable us to do that. Im going to accept the results. Senator toomey, thank you for your time. Thank you for having me. Lets go to mary bruce. Shes with the Biden Campaign in delaware. Mary, i know that the biden camp has been having increasing confidence through the night. They believe they have this . Reporter george, they did. They believe this is inevitable and imminent. We heard joe biden come out yesterday and all but declare the race is over. Theyre extremely encouraged by what they see in georgia and all eyes are in pennsylvania. Theyre continuing to urge patience and urging everyone to remain calm. You heard joe biden keep the faith, democracy is messing and urging americans despite what the president is saying this is the process playing out as it should. That stark contrast with the white house is one that has been extremely notable, despite the president s remarks last night. Joe biden not responding directly to those. His team feels the more the president comes out and makes baseless accusations about voter fraud, they feel it underscores their argument theyre winning. Cecilia vega, are we getting a statement from the white house . Reporter its a statement from the campaign. The strategy is being laid out and theyre starting to carry what the president has been saying for the last few weeks which is raising questions about the integrity of the election. This statement comes from the general counsel for the campaign, matt morgan. Hes not someone we heard from. Let me read you some of the lines of it. Quote, this election is not over. The false projection of joe biden as the winner is based on results in four states that are far from final. Then they tick off each of the states. Georgia is headed for a recount. Were confident well find ballots improperly harvested. Theres no evidence of that yet. We have not seen any evidence. Weve been saying if thats the fact we would report that. Weve not seen any evidence of improperly harvested ballots in georgia. They say in pennsylvania there were irregularities. Volunteer observers were not allowed meaningful access. We heard from pennsylvania Election Officials who said the election has run smoothly. Campaign says in nevada there appear to be thousands of individuals who improperly cast mail ballots. This campaign has offered no evidence of that. The president mentioned that last night. Weve heard this from campaign officials. They offered zero evidence. Then they say the president is on course to win arizona out right and they are blasting the news organizations that called the results of that election there. The president said he wants to see this go all the way to the Supreme Court. Weve seen the Campaign File multiple this blitz of legal challenges, three of which have been tossed out by the courts. The strategy right now, george, appears to be one where theyre focussed more on influencing public opinion, rather than changing law or changing the case against them in the courts. Were starting to see cracks in the ranks, people are not coming out and saying this publicly, but privately folks are starting to question this legal strategy as to whether this is the way to go for the president. Well be keeping an eye on that. I want to go to nate silver from fivethiryeight. Nate, lets look at pennsylvania and georgia. Whats your read first in the state of pennsylvania, 130,000 votes out there . Joe bidens lead has climbed to about 5,800 hundred. How solid is that . Its very solid. I dont think theres a path back for trump. So far these are all mail votes. Theyve got 41, 31 to biden. If it continues, hell be up by 70,000 votes, 1 . There are provisional ballots in pennsylvania. If you ask for a mailin ballot and you say you dont trust that, im going to go and vote. Those have not been counted in the count so far and that will go for joe biden. Georgia much closer now. Still have votes out there, provisional and military ballots out there. Georgia is in the margin of surprise. It doesnt look like theres enough votes for trump to come back. You dont know how the military votes will go. There can be tabulation errors. It would be surprising if trump won georgia. Its reasonably to leave georgia uncalled. Its a very close race. Right now we have the secretary of state of georgia on the phone. Secretary, thank you for joining us. Can you tell us how your count is going . Have you seen any irregularities . When do you expect to finish . Right now at 9 00 a. M. We had 8,000 votes left in four counties. We have 8,890 military ballots outstanding that will be counted if theyre returned by the close of Business Today. Have you seen any widespread irregularities, any strong evidence of fraud in your state so far, any counting of illegal ballots . We are investigating every report we receive. We also have an open process to make sure we allow monitors into all elections so were open and transparent. How would you describe how your counting process has gone so far . We dont count. The counties do that. Theyre working diligently to get that done as soon as we can today. Obviously we understand the National Significance of georgia and we want to make sure we defend the integrity of our election. Has there been an election with integrity so far . Thats what we fight for every day. If we hear about any situations, we investigate them. Have you come upon anything in that investigation that concerns you so far . I would say its too premature to give a defined answer on that. Were so close. We understand because its so close that the candidate that comes up within a half percent can asks for a full recount. Well have a full recount if it goes the way we think. How long would that take . Its putting all the paper ballots together and running them through the scanners. Theres about 5 million votes cast and they have to all be tabulated. Do recounts change the recount . Whats the margin of error . Weve never done a full statewide recount. This is the first time in 18 years because we have the verifiable paper ballots. We brought that in in 2019. Secretary, thank you for your time this morning. Thanks, george. Let me go back to nate. We talked about georgia, thats likely to go to a recount. Lets more to arizona and nevada. In nevada joe bidens lead fairly solid at this time . Yeah. We have mailin ballots from clark county. Those have been very blue so far. I would expect joe bidens lead to grow there. Arizona . Arizona there has been decent news for President Trump. He has been almost at the pace he needs in the late counted ballots to catch up. Theres some evidence the remaining ballots wont be quite as friendly to him. Arizona is the most in doubt i think actually. If you put it altogether, youre seeing joe bidens the ceiling on electoral votes, 306, thats if he wins all these states. And theres also aska which uncalled technically. It is technically. Ive been reading some analysis suggesting that alaska may be a bit closer because so much of the mailin ballot hasnt been counted. The democratic senator made a bold snamt that he will catch up when the mailin votes are counted. Weve seen these gigantic splits between the mailin vote and in person vote. We cant say for sure. Its more important for the senate. If al gross won that race, democrats would have 49 senators going to the runoffs in georgia. Thats salien tt there. Your bottom line is joe biden will get the votes he needs in nevada and pennsylvania . Thats the problem, if we woke up and see that joe biden has failed to win in georgia and arizona, i wouldnt be surprised. Pennsylvania and nevada are problems for the president. Let me bring in chris christie. Chris, i was listening closely to senator toomey just a few moem moments ago. He was taking a different line from the white house. Yes, well use every legitimate challenge we have. We want more transparency in the process. Well go through the recounts, but not suggesting he has evidence that illegal ballots have been cast. No, because there is no evidence yet. It was what i was saying last night and throughout the night and this morning to people calling me. If there is evidence, we need to see it. If there isnt, we have to stop indicting the system. Thats my issue. I brought lots of indictments as a prosecutor. I didnt lose any of them and the reason is because i looked at the evidence first and convinced it was beyond a reasonable doubt and then brought charges. One of the things youre seeing is the absence of don mcgahn. This race was just as close in 2016 as it is now. There were recounts in 2016. You never saw any of this mayhem because there was a legal strategy. One of the ironies is if joe biden wins those four states, hell get 306 electoral votes. What youre seeing is the scrambling of the complaints being dismissed and not showing success, it doesnt appear that prior to election day they had somebody quarterbacking the legal approach, laying out a plan and having people on the ground to execute that. I know in 2016 don mcgahn had that plan and executed it. Hes one of the most qualified election lawyers in the country. He wasnt there this time. He left the white house and was distanced by people in the white house away from the campaign and the president. One of the things youre missing here the reason folks like me dont have confidence in whats happening is because we dont have anybody in charge of the Legal Process. Who is running the show . The answer is i dont know. U. S. History for 200. I dont know, george. What i will say is the absence of don mcgahn is being felt by that campaign starkly in the last couple days and underestimated over the course of time. Hes handled the Supreme Court nominations. He handled some of the difficult legal issues through the years. What we need to know is is there evidence . We have the democratic senator from pennsylvania bob casey. Senator casey, thank you for joining us. How do you see this vote going during the day . George, good to be with you. I think the lead will grow. I dont know exactly where it will end up. Ive been saying for a few days now i thought in the official count, which could be two weeks down the road, which is very typical, that i think hell be ahead by somewhere north or south of 100,000. That would be outside the scope of a rekouncount, or an automatic recount. On the issue of irregularities, what have you seen . Senator toomey was talking about transparency. Do you have any evidence that ballots that came in after election day have been counted . The allegations of fraud are just a big lie. We know that. We know that there are ballots that will be counted that came in after election day, the ones postmarked on election day. I think its a rather small numb number though. I cant say i know the exact number. From one credible source that is very close to these numbers, the estimate was somewhere around the 10,000 range. Youre confident, even as the votes come in today and the recount is completed in two weeks, that joe biden will have won the state of pennsylvania and is the next president of the United States . Yes. Senator casey, thanks for your time. I want to go to sara fagen. Pat toomey seemed to be walking the same line that Mitch Mcconnell came out with. Every ballot must be counted. If there are illegal ballots, well investigate it. Thats all you can do as a republican. There is not evidence of widespread faraud. It doesnt help any political leaders who want Bright Futures to say theres fraud when theres no evidence of it. I agree whole heartedly with governor christie. This Campaign Lacks a legal strategy. It would have been smarter to focus solely on pennsylvania, the fact that perhaps as senator toomey just said, republicans are not being allowed to witness the ballots. I heard the same thing from somebody in clark county last night who i talked to on the phone. No republican has been allowed in the counting center. It doesnt mean theres fraud. That does lay concern. You have to lay groundwork before you come out with a sledge hammer and allege widespread fraud. The campaign has failed to do that. Jon karl, we saw the president trying to spark outrage among republicans last night. Some of his Senate Allies have responded. Reporter some have. They responded really after being basically dared or maybe threatened by the president s sons. You had both eric trump and donald trump junior go to twitter to demand to know where the gop is on this, where republicans are and saying they would remember. Anybody thinking about running for president in don jr. s tweet needs to be heard from. After that almost on cue you saw a few go on fox news in prime time, josh holly of missouri, ted cruz of texas. We saw Lindsey Graham come out and suggested that maybe the Pennsylvania Legislature which is controlled by republicans would vote to select its own al electors to the Electoral College. By and large, Republican Leadership has been quiet. Mitch mcconnell put out a statement overnight. He said every legal vote should be counted. Any illegally submitted ballots must not. The courts are here to apply the laws and the voting will go on. Ive been talking to republicans behind the scenes on this, outside of the president s inner, inner circle who are saying the president is going to sound off. Hes going to do his thing, but its not going to matter. The counting will go on. The Electoral College will determine the winner echoing what pat toomey was saying. Terry moran, in the last couple days you spoke to the attorney general of nevada, state officials in georgia, pennsylvania, arizona, to a person they say no evidence of widespread fraud. This isnt likely to go very far in the courts. Its not. One of the things thats developing is the judges are looking at the cases and literally laughing them out of court. The federal judge in pennsylvania heard them say theyre blocking them out and then with the evidence he find out they were in the room. He said whats your problem . Pat toomey said its a big room and they want to go closer. The judge said go figure it out like grownups. They went from 20 feet to 6 feet. Theyre still complaining. The problem theyve got with the madcap legal situation, if you can call it that, really the law is not your friend at this point. The source of law in this country and every judge knows it are the votes of the american people. Thats a force that donald trump has to deal with. He better come up with better legal arguments. Right now judges are saying theres no evidence here. Get out of the court until you come back with something better. Matthew dowd, youre a veteran of the recount of 2000. The place where politics and law intersect, the candidate with the lead has the advantage going into the courts. Reporter 100 and in many ways the politics is more important than what the legal arguments are that his president and allies might want to be making. This is a profoundly more better situation for joe biden than what was going on in florida in 2000. In florida when the official count was done, it was 900 votes. It was the process of the recount that started to diminish that from 900 to 600 and it ended up 500 to 600. Were talking now about thousands of votes. We know the margin now. My back of the envelope math, when i look at whats remaining, is joe biden will have upwards of a 60 to 70,000 vote lead when its all done. Thats a much different situation when youre dealing with 900 votes in florida and thousands and thousands of votes that joe biden has an advantage of this year. Across several states. Yvette simpson when you look at this now at friday it turns out the Africanamerican Community in detroit, philadelphia, atlanta and las vegas all came out for joe biden. They did. That was not without a lot of work. Were talking about Stacey Abrams and her work, also lots of organizing efforts from organizations across the states. There are a lot of organizations that are black focussed who were doing the work to get people to come out. They came out overwhelmingly. I love that. The real question is what does that look like now . How do we serve those people . Rahm and i were talking about the importance of delivering for black persons in this moment who really showed up. Its not that surprising. Africanamericans are deeply impacted by this pandemic. The racial unrest thats happening, the war that trump has caused siding with white supremacists, emboldening white supremacist has really motivated africanamerican voters. That good old organizing that still works in communities, bringing out new voters. Its not just shifting the demographics. Its expanding the electorate and getting those folks engaged and bringing them into the fold. Great effort in all these cities. Rahm emanuel, what does joe biden do now . If this keeps going in the same direction, looks like hell have between 279 to 306 electoral votes. Unlikely to have control of the senate at least until january. Lay out how he should behave in the next months. I decided to work out today to Midnight Train to georgia. If you know a song for arizona or nevada, im open. 45 minutes of Midnight Train to georgia. You saw this yesterday. Youll go from the politics to the policy of governing. Youll see his rhetoric move that way from the assumption to the assertion hell be the next president. You have to take stock. Democrats and bidens team will be away of this bill clinton wins and the republicans take over the house. You have gains with barack obama and you lose control in 2010. How do you avoid the boom and bust of the Democratic Party . If you step back not trying to be an advocate trump did better with minority communities and stole some votes. Lets use better language. He got votes typically republicans dont get. Same with what joe biden did, he did better in areas that democrats typically dont get. You have to look at the race and learn lessons. The other thing he has to look at you have a Campaign Still going on in georgia. What youre communicating nationally has a direct impact on those senate races. He will govern in the tradition remember after 2012 he went to negotiate with Mitch Mcconnell the tax bill after the election. He has a working relationship of trust, not just with Mitch Mcconnell, but other leaders. Hes saying im offering my hand. He will be cognizant of where his votes came from and what the country needs to implement smart, progressive policies. Heidi heitkamp, joe biden if he becomes president , has to bri bridge your wing of the party with progressives and moderates, how does he do it . Hell focus on todays challenges, which is the pandemic. As much as joe has the relationship with the Senate Republicans, i think his base of bringing the country together is with the governors. Theyre experiencing this huge pandemic, this huge problem. Theyre in it with this president. I think theres a great way to build the kind of relationship they need to build to go into infrastructure and go into economic work. I think all of those actually fit within the progressive moderate. What we need to do doesnt have a label there. It has to be done to bring this country back to semblance of governing. I want to go back the georgia. Gabriel sterling is holding a press conference now. Well go over the details in the vote counts. There have been changes overnight and even changes from the time we walked into the front door of the office to the podium today. Good to see everybody here this morning. We close in on a final tally. The secretary Just Announced a particular set of numbers that went down from the time we walked from the door to here. Our new total is 4,169. They are in a handful of counties. In cherokee county, 150 ballots they did not upload. Theyre uploading those today. There are 75 now in cobb. Theres 444 in floyd. Theres approximately 3,500 in gwinnett as we went through what they reported as opposed to what they have left to scan. Thats it. Lawrence county the 1,769 votes we had yesterday, were basing those on the absentee ballot differences. When they did their reconciliation process, they discovered they had accidentally uploaded those into their election day totals. Their totals will not change. The vote type will change. Outside of that we dont have any other numbers were aware of. I want to remind everybody we have ballot curing processes today, verification process for provisional ballots and we can still get military ballots in by close of Business Today if they were postmarked on tuesday. Theres an unknowable amount of ballots available to be counted. They are in the hands of the Election Officials now, other than the military ones. I can assure you there are teams of 20 somethings around the state, republicans and democrats, finding those ballots to cure and theyre going through that process county by county. To preempt a question, are we seeing any widespread fraud . Were not seeing widespread irregularities. Were investigating any credible accusation. Let me tell you one thing, when you have a narrow margin, little small things can make a difference. So everything is going to have to be investigated to protect the integrity of the vote. Our office intends to do that. Looking at a wide margin, doesnt matter as much. Wide narrow, it does. We understand it and our investigators are aware of that. Its important to protect the integrity of the election from all sides. Ill take any questions you have. Reporter with the margin we have and the certainty of a recount will we know by the end of november . With the timeline we have laid out, essentially lets go through the timeline again. We should know by the end of november. We have a mid december deadline. The one things that always going to be unknowable is lawsuits that affect what we have to do. Were a country and nation of laws. If the judge items us to do something, we have to do that and let the Legal Process work. Thats the situation in georgia. I want to go to arizona. Whit johnson is there. Were expecting more votes from Maricopa County . Reporter george, thats right. Keep your eye on arizona. Within the next 30 minutes were expecting the next dump of results. Because the race is so close here, it could give us a clear picture of what were looking at. Let me break down the numbers. Joe biden still leading donald trump by about 47,000 votes. Outstanding, roughly 260,000 ballots across the state. If you do some rough math, donald trump would have to get in the ballpark of 60 , maybe more of the remaining votes to be able to overtake joe biden. Democrats this morning are telling us theyre very confident. When you look throughout the state you have pima county, it leans democrat, there are a number of outstanding ballots there. The republicans talk about pinal county, where they have ballots outstanding. Both sides are looking at the numbers closely. Once again, it all comes down to maricopa, the most populated county in the state, shifting demographics. One of the Fastest Growing latino populations in the country. So far its been leaning towards joe biden. Thats what were waiting to see in the next 30 minutes. Matt gutman, were expecting more votes in nevada. Reporter about 50,000 mailin ballots in about an hour 20 minutes. The Biden Campaign is theyre hoping this gives them a bigger cushion. This is not where they expected to be, with only 11,000 votes separating biden and trump. Hillary clinton and president obama handedly won this state. Theyre hoping for some breathing room. They really need nevada right now in general for the election. One thing weve been talking a lot about is fraud. People have been showing up at the election headquarters where weve been for a couple days. There was one woman who had a death certificate of her father who died of covid in august. She had a ballot sent to her house in october. She said this is fraud. A lot of people are seizing on bure bure bureaucratic mistakes. There is a federal referral sent to bill barr saying by the trump camp alleging there are thousands of fraudulent ballots here. Theres no evidence of that. The Las Vegas Sun said the former attorney general who filed that is trying to set fire to the election process. Tom llamas, start out by giving joe biden the two states, nevada and pennsylvania. Nevada and pennsylvania, he doesnt need both. If he gets both, hes at 279. Hes on his way to the white house, george. We have at least two more states hanging out. You have georgia. If you give him georgia, his number goes up. The problem here for the president is that if he doesnt win pennsylvania, theres not enough the math doesnt add up. He gets to 259. There are still lots of votes out there. Biden hasnt put the president in checkmate, but the president is running out of moves. He has to hold on to georgia, turn around arizona where biden has a lead right now and turn around pennsylvania. He needs pennsylvania. Its really hard to do this math without pennsylvania unless he gets nevada as well. Like i said hes not in checkmate, but theres not a lot of moves left. Lets go to rick clean. We think theres about 130,000 votes out in pennsylvania. We heard senator bob casey say hes confident biden is going to win. Walk us through where the numbers are. Our decision desk at abc news is looking at the universe of two different types of votes. You mentioned 130,000. About a third are probably from republican leaning counties, counties in the western part of the state. Crawford, beaver, armstrong, blair. Joe biden has been winning consistently in the mailin vote. Those are republican leaning counties. Its possible donald trump makes up some portion of the narrow lead. The lions share of the votes are from democratic leaning counties. Theres an unknown quantity of provisional ballots. This is when a voter goes to the polls and theres some question of eligibility. That number is larger because some people out there asked for mailin votes. If you asked for a mailin ballot and you dont use it, you fill out a provisional ballot. Thats another universe of votes lingering out there. The Biden Campaign had been extremely confident starting tuesday evening. They have a pretty good idea sometimes down to the individual who got these ab concesentee ba where they are and whether they need to get to the polls. Theyve been modelling this from the start. They have felt good about their numbers throughout. This is basically progressing as they said it would, which is to say after election day you saw that large lead that looked on paper to belong to donald trump begin to evaporate. Not because votes came in late, but because they came in erm ar and the county wing was delayed until election day. Mary bruce, there was hang wringing among democrats that joe biden was running a lackadaisical campaign. The one lesson joe biden took from the Hillary Clinton campaign was he is not going to ignore that blue wall. That will get his first, second, third and tenth priority. Reporter that was learned loud and clear. Look at where joe biden spent time. He was also in those states they were hoping to flip, the trump states they could get, they never were letting their eye off the key battle grounds, michigan, wisconsin, pennsylvania, the blue wall theyre still keeping an eye on. They were keenly aware of the Lessons Learned four years ago. While they had their teamed fanned out they were not going to let go of those states. It was also the message joe biden has been hammering this entire campaign, digging in especially in the last few weeks as he began to ramp up his campaigning, telling his personal story over and over because he thinks that scranton versus wall street message resonates, especially in the upper mid western states as he tried to regain those blue collar voters. Jon karl, the president paid attention to those states and did turn out his vote. Reporter he did. He speeded his vote total in many places he was targeting over 2016. He targeted minnesota as well. Minnesota, wisconsin, michigan, pennsylvania, spent much of his time there. It has to be said, george, he also even as he is losing these states, we dont know pennsylvania yet, even as hes losing michigan, wisconsin, even minnesota, he exceeded expectations in each of them. The margin is much tighter than a lot of people anticipated. Much of the public polling suggested it would be. Nate, we talked about this in the past. There will be talk about this in the future. As the days go on, the popular vote will be closer to the public polling. Most of the pup liblic polling greater margins for joe biden than hell end up with. Weve had two elections in a row where there was an error in the polling, maybe not as bad as it appeared tuesday night, but an error in the polling favoring joe biden and it turns out that donald trump was getting more votes than pollsters were picking up. We should wait for all those to be counted. It could be a 3point margin for joe biden which is not far from the public polls. In minnesota, new hampshire, the polls did fairly well. Im not sure about wisconsin. You had an 8 or 9point lead for joe biden. Hell win by 1 or 2 points. Iowa polls showed a closer race there. Its a regional problem. In the south, georgia the polls spot on. North carolina close. Arizona pretty good, colorado. In the midwest theres something pollsters are not picking up on. Rahm, you want in on this . We have to think about this. The blue wall because of what happened in 2016, but theres three other pieces. Theres a Rocky Mountain blue wall if arizona and nevada happen. Colorado. Colorado and new mexico. When you look at North Carolina and georgia, theyre trending more like virginia and less like mississippi, alabama, arkansas and louisiana. Youre getting regional breaks that i think tell you something if you actually are the right message with the right candidate that give you a different map. Fdr, ronald reagan, bill clinton knocked off an incumbent president. This is significant. He got to it at the end which is candidate dependent. These walls we talk about only exist if the candidates execute. You said theres a blue wall here and there. When you were listening to the Midnight Train in georgia im sure that was the fantasy in your head. Actually not. Just staying awake was. Those blue walls were supposed to exist. Hillary clinton couldnt keep the blue wall. It was candidate specific. Donald trump appealed to them. Hillary clinton didnt. I said to the president a year and a half ago the toughest person in this field is joe biden. Joe biden will appeal to White College educated suburban voters in the blue wall. You dont want biden. You want anybody but biden. I want to bring in yvette simpson. You were a fan of Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders. Are you prepared to accept the democratic voters in the primaries made the right choice that joe biden was the right candidate . You win what you organize for. I think these wins were seeing, particularly with bralack and brown voters, is because we organized voters. With Hillary Clinton there was not an organizing effort. We didnt organize the way we did here. Part of the Democratic Party strategy is talk about issues. You dont have to use words or phrasing thats polarizing. Talk about health care. Talk about race, equality. Theyre Kitchen Table issues that cross many boundaries. Actually organize your voters. Dont talk about likely voters. We expanded the electorate because we went out. If we do that, we win every time regardless of the candidate. Mary alice parks . Im just not convinced folks like Bernie Sanders are going to see these results the same way. Theres a lot of data here. You can pick apart a story that works for your narrative. I think that part of what progressives are going to cling to is that the urban centers delivered in the end. Does that mean that actually joe biden spent a lot of time tlryig to reach out to an obama, trump voter that didnt come home . Well talk the next few years about some romney, mccain, biden voter. Like governor christie said thats probably College Educated wealthier suburb and balanced out with diverse urban sercente. Im not sure progressives will view this the same way that rahm is talking about. Democrats will have an incredible struggle with young voters from coastal cities. Theyll look at some of this gap in the representation. Theyll look at the popular vote. Theyll cling to that and say 4 million votes isnt something that should be sneezed at. Thats a third of states in this country fewer than 4 Million People in it. Theres going to be a growing conversation about whether california and new york are under represented in this process. I think Bernie Sanders look, bernie and i dont agree. I think he and Elizabeth Warren deserve a tremendous amount of credit. They were focused on a singular goal, winning. Our differences well deal with that later. They were incredibly pragmatic where the 2016 bernie didnt do that for hillary. They understood well work out progressive policy after we win. The election is the key. Sara fagen, the same can be said for the republicans. Absolutely. If youre the Trump Campaign and youre serious about running in 2024 theyre already making those moves. You have to do some real soul searching. In wisconsin donald trump underperformed congressional candidates. We want to bring in nancy pelosi. Shes starting to speak now at the capitol. Are we going to be able to hear this . Weve heard nancy pelosi and Mitch Mcconnell at the same time. Thats the last time thats probably going to happen. I wanted to bring in heidi heitkamp. Whats interesting is were talking a lot about progressives and the moderate wing. I think the soul searching that the Democratic Party needs to do is we really believe that donald trump was the worst president in this century, but yet millions and millions of americans voted for him. What was that . How do we begin to develop a National Party persona . We cant win senate seats and we cant win swing districts and house seats unless we develop that kind of dialogue with these voters. Yes, its a great victory for Vice President biden, but we absolutely need to dig into these numbers and figure out how we bring this country together regionally in places like north and south dakota where we elected democratic candidates. Terry moran, im looking at the map, seeing all that blue the red in the middle and the pockets and cells of blue and reflecting on before we got into the election. It was clear if you asked the people supporting donald trump who is going to win the election, they said donald trump of course. They would be shocked if joe biden. Democrats might have been fearful that donald trump would win. They couldnt believe they were living in a country that could elect donald trump. Thats a problem for whoever is elect elected. Absolutely. If you ask republicans to describe democrats, they describe someone way further to the left than most democrats are. If you ask democrats to describe the political positions of republicans, they describe extreme republicans. Most arent that way. That goes to the great sort that it may be while were divided on important issues, were less divided than distant. We dont know each other. One of the things we heard joe biden say is well see each other once again. This distance between us is really a big problem. Its geographical as well as cultural. Thats a hard thing for a president. Well be talking about that more in the days and weeks. Coming up on 11 00 on the east coast. Look at the electoral votes right now. Joe biden has 253 electoral votes in the states weve projected so far. Donald trump 214 electoral votes. Over the course of the evening joe biden has parking lotted ahe pulled ahead in pennsylvania, georgia. Hes still ahead in nevada and arizona. Thats where things stand in this hour. Still not enough vote in to project the outstanding states. Joe biden is ahead right now. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi we have her. Lets listen in. Good morning, everyone. I wish we werent Wearing Masks so you could see how exciting it is to come before you today with joe biden having the mandate that he has and pretty soon the hyphen will be gone from Vice President to president elect joe biden. Its a happy day for our country because joe biden is a unifier, because he is determined to bring people together, because he respects all points of view and, as he has said, i ran as a democrat, but ill govern for president of all the people, whether they voted for me or not. Im so officially pleased with the outcome that is imminent and also personally delighted because of the quality and caliber of leadership that joe biden will provide. This morning it is clear that the biden harris ticket will win the white house. His election is historic, propelled by the biggest vote ever in the history of country. 73. 8 million and counting americans, is most votes ever received by any president ial ticket in history. President elect biden has a strong mandate to lead and hell have a strong Democratic House with him and Many Democrats in the senate. This has been a life or death fight for the fate of our democracy, as he said, the soul of our country. We did not win every battle in the house, but we won the war. In 2018 we won 40 seats. 30 or 31 of them in districts where trump had won before. They were in trump districts. In preparation for the 2020 election, i said to people you have to help us they said youve won. Lets do the senate and white house. No. We won in districts, trump districts, with trump not on the ballot. In the next election he will be on the ballot and that makes winning those districts a steeper climb. Im pleased we overwhelmingly won those districts, not all of them. Not all of them, but next time he wont be on the ballot. One of the reasons we were able to win so many seats was because of the caliber of leadership of our members. Some of them won. A few did not. All of them excellent. I hope that some of them will reconsider will consider going at it again. As you know, the right to vote is a sacred right in our country. Having that vote counted as cast its the foundation of our democracy. We must be patient. We said to people be calm. This monday, tuesday sunday, monday, tuesday be calm. Be confident. Be patient and the votes are tallying and the races are called. We look forward to continued victory in house races and we look forward to progress for people which was our agenda and continues to be for the people. Lower health care costs, bigger paychecks by building infrastructure, america in a clean way, cleaner government, hr1 which will be the first on the agenda in january. While we prepare for the new biden administration, we must also move swiftly for a new Coronavirus Relief bill. We can do that. We want the republicans to come back to the table, the white house. For two days in a row over 100,000 cases were reported. The imperative to act could not be greater. Over 9. 5 Million People infected. Nearly 250,000 deaths and tens of millions on unemployment. Again, im calling on the administration to come back to the table. Congress is also committed to passing an omnibus bill. This is imperative. Its our responsibility to keep government open and have an omnibus bill. We intend to do that, not a cr. We want to do that in a way that gives confidence that well have government open and continue to be. Rather than having a cr. So, sadly instead of crushing the virus, it appears the Trump Administration will use its final moments in office in a desperate last step to destroy every possible protection for Americas Health and wellbeing. So many people have said to me and perhaps there we have house speak nancy pelosi saying a coronavirus bill is still a top priority for the House Democrats in the wake of what she says is a joe biden victory. We want to bring that to mary bruce. You cover capitol hill. The politics so dicey there. We saw in the negotiations between nancy pelosi and Steven Mnuchin that Senate Republicans were not going to go along with anything they were negotiating. Any sense that could change now . Reporter theyre still fundamentally completely apart on what they want. The two sides cant agree on how much money to spend and what to spend it on. Mitch mcconnell just spoke to reporters and he still seems to be eyeing a smaller deal. Mitch mcconnell has in many ways taken a back seat letting house speak pelosi work this out with Steven Mnuchin. Mcconnell has made clear he wants to get this done by the end of the year. You hear Speaker Pelosi saying thats going to be the top priority. The two parties agree they need to do something. We cant lose sight of the fact that there are millions of americans desperately looking to washington for some kind of economic help, some kind of life line. The life lines they passed in the spring have run dry. They agree they have to do something. They have not been able to bridge the gap for months. Its going to be the top priority when they get back to washington. They do also have a lot of other big item things they need to accomplish. You heard Speaker Pelosi mentioning the funding deadline. Thats december 11th. They have until then to avoid a government shutdown. Both parties have a vested interest in that. They would be tackling a transition, possibly cabinet appointments and theres always a question about what would happen with the Supreme Court, george, which is headed to what could be a sieismic decision. I want to bring in cecilia vega. Even if joe biden is the president elect, donald trump will be president until january 20th. I wonder how engaged over a covid relief bill. Reporter its been head spinning up to this point where he stands on that. He sent his party into a freefall with twitter mixed messages. If i were to predict what the next couple months will look like in terms of President Trumps engagement and messaging, i think for the foreseeable future well continue to hear him sow discord in terms of the vote results coming in or when a decision is declared hell be sticking to the legal arguments and the fight his team is waging right now. I would imagine well see a lot of twitter activity over the next few weeks from the president himself. George, i want to go back to something that nancy pelosi just said. She said that were in a life or death fight for the fate of our democracy. Were not just talking opponents on both sides at this time. Were talking about two extreme like ive never seen in my lifetime. You have the democrats who think its a life or death fight. You have Trump Supporters listening to the words hes saying and think the election is being ripped out from underneath him and stolen, despite the fact theres no evidence to support that. These are not two sides who see different politically right now. These are two sides who think the other are fundamentally evil. I was looking at a poll of virginia voters. 31 of biden voters wouldnt have accepted a trump victory. 26 of trump voters said they wouldnt accept a biden victory. The first order of Business Needs to be to figure out a way to start this dialogue of bringing this country back together. So much easier said than done. The votes are still being counted. Lets take another look of where things stand. I want to show the state of the race. This gives a pretty good idea of what has to happened. Biden needs to win two states there and donald trump needs three, plus pennsylvania. Tom llamas, go back to the board. We can just show viewers. Youre hearing a lot of numbers. Youre hearing about tight margins. When you look at the board it puts it into perspective. If joe biden wins pennsylvania, where he currently has a very small lead, around 6,000, its game over. He gets to 273. All he needs is 270. If we talk about the president , he has to win pennsylvania, North Carolina, georgia and he has to come out west and win either arizona or nevada. The problem is right now where the vote stands it doesnt look like hell have that path. To talk about joe biden, joe biden can do it with nevada and arizona. The president is at 268, joe biden at 270. George, weve been doing this for three days now. It tells the story. Joe biden has more paths. The president has a very narrow path to victory. As more votes are coming in, that path gets narrower. More votes are coming in from the state of arizona. Lets get those from whit johnson. Reporter george, were looking at the numbers from Maricopa County, the most populated county in the state. Donald trump is chipping away at joe bidens lead. Biden statewide up by about 43,000 votes. He was at 47,000 votes 20 minutes ago. Statewide biden is leading 50 to 48. 6 . Theres still resultis tricklin in. Around 200,000 outstanding ballots still statewide. Once again, the margin shrinking, but just a little bit. If you look at whats left of the remaining ballots, President Trump needs about 60 , maybe even more, to be able to overtake joe biden down this final stretch. Were still trying to look and see whats outstanding in pima county, it generally leans democrat and pinal county. If theres some balance shift there, that could make the difference. I can tell you the clock is ticking here on President Donald Trump in the state of arizona. Regardless of what happens, if you look at big picture, this was a solidly red republican state for years. A democrat has not won here since 1996. Before that all the way back to 1948. Now with the increasing latino population, people moving here from other states like california, this state is becoming solidly purple. Not just for this election, but the foreseeable future. If you look at the senate race, mark kelly is trending higher than joe biden. Potentially we could have two senators from arizona going for the senate for the First Time Since 1953. Nate, if you look at the five states still outstanding, you gave North Carolina to donald trump. You thought arizona was second. What is this telling you . This is bad news for donald trump. He needed a 20point margin. Its a lot of votes. I was an optimist for trump in arizona. I think biden is the more likely winner in arizona. You think hes the likely winner for arizona, nevada, pennsylvania and georgia. That arizona batch was bad news for trump. Which brings him to 306 electoral votes, exactly what donald trump got in 216. North carolina we wont know for a while, same for alaska. We might land right on 306. David muir, basically taking the 2016 map and flipping it. And going in, if elected, with more of a mandate. The story if joe biden is declared the president elect will be his own coalition. So much talk about the obama coalition. Youll have to take a look at who joe biden was able to bring into the fold here. There are some through lines, through all the battle grounds. No matter what region you talk about, we look at the map, wisconsin, michigan, in the lead in pennsylvania, georgia, what hes been able to go in georgia, as we heard from whit, the possibility of arizona and nevada. Look at the numbers out of pennsylvania. They mirror what weve been talking about. Independent voters are a huge part of the election when all is said and done. 51 of independent voeters in pennsylvania went with joe biden, 43 to donald trump. The dividing line in the country about whether to deal with the pandemic before the economy, in pennsylvania, 54 said we had to contain covid. When you break it down, 85 of people this we saw over and over who thought we must deal with the virus first went with joe biden. In the suburbs, still very strong support for donald trump in the suburbs, but joe biden was able to peel away some of the suburban support. He brought some republicans over to his side. Suburban women, 53 went with joe biden. He made up ground with suburban women in the country. There are a lot of things on social media this morning. Hillary clinton tweeted a thank you to Stacie Abrams for what youre seeing in georgia. There was some softness in the latino vote and the africanamerican vote in this country. Given what happened to georgia you have to give joe biden credit and certainly Stacie Abrams. Joe biden is going to get a lot of credit for bringing people from the other side, talking about his working class roots from the beginning, scrappy joe from scranton, thats how he was able to rebuild the blue wall and bring people into the fold. Martha raddatz, you spent a lot of time going across the country during the campaign. Covid was on evers mind, but different reactions depending on the part of the country. Reporter exactly. You could cross into a typically red state and the masks were gone. There was an arrogance about that. You could cross into a blue state and the masks were on. Its on everyones mind. Honestly, george, i was surprised how many people were out especially in the cities, crowded, very crowded, as if were going on with our lives covid or not. That was definitely on peoples minds. What im so interested in now and to davids point about joe bidens and his roots, especially in pennsylvania, is healing the country if joe biden does, indeed, becomes the next president. I think probably that Republican Senate will help those who supported trump, see that joe biden has to reach across the lines. He has to work with republicans. I think probably if it was a democratic sweep, it would be more difficult for joe biden to heal the country. Ive already got lots of texts from people who are hugely disappointed, Trump Supporters hugely disappointed. I dont see any real outrage. Yes, there are some people talking about conspiracies and they should count every vote and they believe what the president said yesterday and some of them dont seem outraged by those baseless accusations the president made. At the same time they sort of turned down the heat and said, look, if they get this done and joe bidens the president i may not like it, but ill do the best i can. I was going to say, martha, even the sporadic protests weve seen in nevada and arizona didnt seem to have a tremendous amount of Energy Behind them. Reporter they really didnt. Thats the absolute hard core. Youre going to have the hard core. I think youll see some malicious go to ground about this and pop up later. I think Law Enforcement will be tracking that very, very carefully. Generally all of the people i i talked about this before. To me the moment about how the country will move forward is the man in ohio who told me he thought donald trump walked on water and there was nothing he could do to dissuade him and he was really upset that donald trump talked about fraud in the election. That to me indicated what a lot of that base might think. Fight hard up to the election and when its over, let the votes be counted and declare the winner. Reporter exactly. Thats what ive seen from voters who see that joe biden is the likely next president. Martha, thank you. The votes are still being counted. I want to go to eva pilgrim in pennsylvania. Reporter joe biden is up by about 9,000 votes. Still about 120,000 ballots that still need to be counted. George, i want to talk about whats going on inside the room where the ballots are being counted here in philadelphia. Thats something that we keep hearing people talk about, those barricades separating the observers from watching the ballot counters. This is what i have been told. There were about 15 republican ballot watchers that have been in that room. The barricades were setback about ten feet from where all the activity was going on. That was in accordance with state law. They went to court. Trumps campaign and the gop went to court. Argued to move those forward. They moved them forward to six feet because thats the current covid regulation. Were aware thats the regulation that people stay six feet apart because this country is in a pandemic. We reached out to city officials. One of the city commissioners confirming for us that the ballots are being segregated that arrived after election day. Theyve not been counted and george, i want to point out the commissioner that confirmed that for us is a republican, al smith. Hes the vice chairman of the commission. He says those ballots have not been counted and they are segregated here in philadelphia. Thats just really important for people to understand. You know, this is a blue strong hold. Its a democratic strong hold in the state. There are republicans and democrats working on counting those ballots inside that room. Those people have been counting around the clock. They just want to get the votes counted so theres a total that people can look at, george. Glad you clarified that. Senator toomey suggested some of those votes werent being counted. Lets go to Steve Osunsami in georgia where joe biden has the lead as well. Reporter yes, george. One of the discussions happening right now is all about the recount. The recount in georgia is not automatic. One of the candidates has to request a recount. That recount can take place if theres less than 1 of votes between the two. The secretary of state, who is a republican, talked about yesterday he had already ordered equipment to process the rekounr recount. The recount cant be requested until after they certify the electi election. Thats where they think this is going to end up going, to a recount. The tone from the secretary of States Office is different today. Yesterday when he talked about this he shared that he didnt believe that the numbers would change that greatly based on the way that elections are run here in georgia. Ill also underline again the points that he has made over and over about the security measures taken in this election which seems to contradict any allegations of fraud. We want to bring in the mayor of atlanta, keisha lance bottoms. Mayor, you just recovered from covid. You feeling better now . Yes, thank you. Youre feeling better with the numbers youve seen overnight . This is incredible. I knew we were here, but to see it happen in georgia we lost john lewis and c. T. Vivian, to see people lineup and make their voices heard, its what they fought for. Im grateful were here in this state and im grateful for joe biden for believing that georgia could go blue. How confident are you that that lead is going to survive the counting of the provisional ballots, the military ballots and the recount . The military ballots traditionally go to the Republican Party. This is an interesting year with donald trump and the military. I dont believe the numbers will be as high as we formalnormally them. Im confident the numbers will stand. Its going to be a thin margin. Were used to tight elections in this state. Three years ago i won by 852 votes. Im confident it will stand, but it will be a close one. So far, as mayor, have you seen any indication of fraud, any irregularities in the ballot counting . I have not. The challenges we had were early on in early voting, what we saw with the long lines and the glitches. After that, it was a very smooth process. Ive not seen any irregularities as it relates to the vote count. Ive not heard of any concerns regarding that, any credible concerns. I think that a recount is appropriate and if that gives people the confidence thats what we need to do. If Vice President biden survi survivin survives the recount, it looks like theres no rest for you in georgia. Youre going to have two Senate Runoffs . Yes. Its going to be a tough firefightfight. Traditionally republicans out vote us in runoffs. Im confident that people will be motivated to turn out in january and well keep reminding people its not over. For joe biden to truly be successful as president hes going to have to have the senate with him. Usually you have a lot of fatigue after a president ial election. Weve got energy in this state. So many people didnt think we would be here. To see that we are here, i believe is really going to motivate people to continue to press forward through january. Were celebrating and it may be a bit premature obviously because the state has not been called for biden. The fact that were even having this conversation about georgia is something to celebrate. Mayor bottoms, thank you for joining us. We have news out of arizona. Mark kelly will win the special election out of the state of arizona defeating martha mcsally. There you see democrats have picked up two seats on the republicans, arizona and colorado. Republicans picked up a seat in alabama. That means the two Senate Runoffs in the state of georgia are all important. They are critical. I agree with mayor bottoms. The effort and Energy Continuing in georgia will happen. People in georgia know, not only could they be credited with winning the presidency in this way, they can also be credited with winning the senate which is so critical. I dont know whether georgians are more upset with trump or Mitch Mcconnell. Once we start to spin the messaging and say we can take Mitch Mcconnell out of the power seat, well get people fired up. Mitch mcconnell will be all in on those elections. Hes going to have to be because the majority is at stake. Well see a replay of the campaign that just occurred. Democrats if they control the senate, theyre going to pack the court. Theyre going to move to a more aggressive climate policies, more spending. Joe biden said he wants 4 trillion of tax increases. If Mitch Mcconnell is removed as the senate leader, that will likely happen. Rahm, joe biden is going to have to deploy a lot of resources. Those two seats could make all the difference. Without a doubt. Two points. One in 1992 in the transition when gays in the military were coming up, there was the debate around bill clintons policy affected the runoff. Yesterday, in the house a number of moderates were saying why do i have to defend charges about socialism, Green New Deal . You have a race thats going to continue joe biden is going to look to the administration. Theres a lot of stake for his agenda and progressive politics in those two races in georgia. Therefore, conscious of history, conscious of what just happened, they have to look forward there and keep one eye on the periphery of how to run the race in georgia, create an environment more conducive for democratic candidates. Chris, what role does President Trump play in these races . It depends on whether the president decides he wants to play a role or doesnt. Nobody can predict that. On the two georgia races, Mitch Mcconnell, to save Susan Collins in maine and to save thom tillis, no one thought that would happen. Everyone thought that hickenlooper and kelly would win. Thats not a surprise. Hes got two good candidates in georgia. Mitch mcconnell typically doesnt lose these. It will be very interesting to watch. Hell be in charge. Jon karl . Reporter republicans are confident in both of those races. They think they perform better in georgia in runoffs. They also think if joe biden is the president elect that helps them. It helps them make the argument to elect a republican to be a check on the power of the democrats, to keep a republican check against all the things that sara was talking about, big tax increases, Green New Deal, environmental movements. You know, who knows . That will be the Center Georgia will be the center of the political universe. Those two seats will determine control of the senate. Republicans like their chances in that. I would say to counter rahms point, double down on what worked in georgia. Rafael warknack is a progressive candidate. Hes got a good chance. Well have a moderate and progressive running races. Well come together and do this work and let the georgia folks lead. Continue to organize the same voter. Ive seen the warknack add showing himself eating pizza with a fork. He said get prepared. I want to bring in mary alice on this. We saw the role that Stacey Abrams played in the president ial election. Shell be engaged in the senate races as well. Absolutely. Shell be getting a lot of credit for whats happened in georgia. She comes back to this idea that the easiest way to suppress the vote is to tell people their vote doesnt matter. Shes been working on programs that give people confidence in their own vote. Systems like letting folks track their ballot if they mail it in. Letting folks cure their ballot. I said isnt that asking a lot of a voter to go through all those steps. She said its about something bigger. Its about telling people they can trust the system and that their destiny is in their own hands. With warknack there was another ad that went viral. He talked about racial inequity personally. He said he was accused of shoplifting as a kid because he was walking with his hands in his pocket through a grocery store. Well see that at the forefront in the race in georgia. David muir, the turnout in the special elections and whether the composition of the electoral is the same, its interesting. Its encouraging for democrats. We knew the demographics were changing in georgia for sometime. If joe biden is declared the winner in georgia, its the First Time Since bill clinton in 92. In addition to Stacey Abrams, she didnt win, but she almost did and joe biden looks like hes on his way to victory. Heres some of the numbers. White voters made up fewer than 35 votes in georgia. More latinos, more asian voters cast in early voting than in all of 2016 in georgia. New voters, 800,000 georgia voters were not eligible to vote in the last president ial election voted. 49 are people of color. 45 are younger than 30. 50 of its voting eligibility, the population under the age of 45. Weve seen that huge migration to atlanta and the suburbs surrounding atlanta. Democrats are very pleased if they can keep this machine up and running and they believe they have a chance to sweep both. Tom, you wanted in on this. Stacey abrams, i wonder if democrats in georgia are regretting not pushing her harder to run in the senate. Shes the superstar of the Democratic Party in georgia. If its going to come down to one or two of these elections, you wonder if democrats regret shes not on the ballot. I know she wants to run for governor again. Its up to her. Imagine if she was a democrat running for senate. Would she be ahead . Would she need a runoff . You know her pretty well. What do you think . Do you think she has second thoughts . I dont think she thinks that way. Shes very particular. Shes got a plan. Shes going to run for president by 2040. I know she loves executive leadership over legislative leadership. I think she makes the run for governor again in two years. One thing we havent mentioned because hes not going away is donald trump. Thats the question i was going to ask. I talked a little about joe biden. We talked about what mcconnell is doing. Donald trump is not going to go away quietly. Thats going to be a great organizing tool for the democrats. I want to go to matt gutman in nevada. Joe biden increasing his lead. Reporter yeah, apparently 22,000. He was just under 1 , now hes under 2 . This is close to where Hillary Clinton was at 2. 5 in 2016. This will make the biden camp feel good. Still 190,000 outstanding ballots left to be tabulated. The vast majority mailin ballots and the vast majority of that almost 90 coming from right here in clark county which is a democratic stronghold. Theyre feeling good right now. Its quite likely in fact theyll do better than Hillary Clinton did in 2016 here in nevada. Again, you cant underestimate the covid factor and unemployment factor here, especially in las vegas and in clark county. It has a near 15 unemployment rate. George, thats more than twice the national rate. Tom llamas, the map is getting smaller by the minute for donald trump. It is. This is the what if scenario. If you take out nevada now, just because the lead has changed there and joe biden is more on top, lets see. Were still waiting on alaska. Well give that to President Trump. If nevada is not his, he has to win pennsylvania where hes no longer in the lead. North carolina, georgia, where hes no longer in the lead, and arizona. He needs four states. It just gets very hard for the president. Weve made this point throughout the morning and over the last few days. Joe biden is on top in pennsylvania. If it stay that is way, he gets to 273 and its game over. Theres still a lot of votes out there. Well cover every twist and turn as it comes. The path for joe biden looks easier than for President Trump. Chris christie, can his legal team and his Political Team if hes behind in georgia, pennsylvania, arizona, nevada, can they really fight a fourfront war in the challenges and recounts . They can. I dont know if theyll win. They can. Its up to the client. You know, one thing you learn as a lawyer early on, you can advise your client, you can attempt to influence your client, but in the end your client makes the decisions about how to proceed. If youre uncomfortable as a lawyer, you get out. Youre not the president s lawyer. You are his friend. What do you need to see to be able to tell him this is a fight worth waging . You know, george, i think those are really kind of personal judgments to have to make. I think the president needs a little bit of time before anybody is going to have that kind of conversation with him, including me. You know, if you want to influence someone in one direction or another, you have to engage whether theyre receptive to hearing it. I think given what we saw last night from the president , hes still in fight mode and not what do you think i should do mode. Everybody takes different time in that. For al gore, he fought for 37 days. Im sure there was some people who thought he should and some thought he shouldnt. Some wanted him to fight longer. Sure. When you know someone well, you gauge whether theyre receptive to your advice unless you think it absolutely must be given, whether theyre receptive or not. Were not at that moment quite yet. He has to think about what the map looks like for him. Sara, you wanted in on this . If the president overtook biden in arizona, if all of a sudden there were overseas military ballots that came in in georgia and it was close he pulls into the lead again hes got a fight . Yes. Then theres a real legal fight over these ballots that arrived after election day in pennsylvania. Thats a nightmare scenario for the country, but there would likely be legal standing based on the constitution. Thats when you get into a math issue. If he had a 100,000vote lead and 20,000 votes have been segregated, doesnt matter. I agree. Theres some estimates it could be 200,000 or more. Youre right, its a math issue. If its close, it will be a dog fight and more republicans will come out to defend the president. That looks increasingly unlikely. Mary bruce, if the states get projected today, joe biden will speak to the nation tonight. He wont wait for a concession call from President Trump. Reporter no. I dont think hell be holding his breath for that call. Theyre waiting for the states to be called. Once hes comfortable theyve reached the 270 mark, hell come out. Weve heard the growing buzz at the stage. Were learning more about the mood today inside the biden camp. Theyve had their daily staff call and were told there is a real recognition among the campaign that this is really happening, that they will be declared winners. Thats their sense now. Theres been a more reserved stance. Staffers are being told to keep their head down, but now theres a sense that they did it. Take a moment, take it all in and enjoy it. Mary, the speech is not going to be a somber oval office type things. Its going to be celebrating a victory. Reporter i think thats right. Youll hear joe biden continue to hit upon the themes we heard him hit upon in the campaign, talking about the road forward, talking about the massive challenge of trying to unite the country, outlining his priorities which we know is trying to tackle this virus, to lead the country out of the pandemic. Joe biden, it will be a moment if it does happen is something hes been waiting for, fighting for for more than 30 years. I think there will be a moment for victory and also a moment to recognize the real very serious challenges ahead of him. He was elected to his first office 50 years ago, New Castle County council, two years later the senate. I want to bring in matthew dowd. You were with george w. Bush in 2000, mid december, not early november when he was going into the white house. What was your advice to him . It was a question i asked rahm earlier. About how to handle the days and weeks between now and the inauguration, the message he sends the country, how does that apply to joe biden . There was two pieces of advice we all gave george bush. One, be humble. Two, seek to heal and unify the country. I think its so telling today 160 years ago, Abraham Lincoln was elected in 1860, today. 160 years ago today. Joe biden reflecting on what Abraham Lincoln said which is we are friends, not enemies. Lets not let the strains of passion break the bonds of affection that we have and appeal to our better angels to unify the country. My guess is joe bidens be talking about that for a long time. Look at the address he gave in gettysbu gettysburg. Joe biden knows this moment isnt a time to stick your fork in the other guys eye. Its to begin to unify the country and be president of all america, not just blue america. Do you think the country is ready to hear that despite the polarization we see on that map . Reporter i think the country is incredibly ready to hear that. On both sides of the aisle people are tired. Theyve been anxious, frustrated, angry. They havent liked the chaos, including Trump Supporters, as well as biden supporters. The country just wants to settle down, go about their business. They want to know somebody is doing whats in their best interest. Theyre tired of the want to ge. They want to talk to their neighbors again that theyve been arguing with because this election highlighted that. I think almost everybody in america is ready to calm down, get past the chaos and go back to the way we could govern the country in a much more unified fashion. Heidi heitkamp, what do you think your constituents what to hear . Exactly what matt said. They dont like the drama. They dont like the tweets. Its time to talk about policy and bring the country together. I sound like a broken record. Go to omaha, nebraska and have a big meeting with all the governors of this country. That sends a message to red america. I see you, im here. It sends a message to the governors that we can Work Together and build momentum. Youre not going to do this in the beltway. He needs to get out into the country and start governing the country in the outside in. That will build power and ability to move things in washington, d. C. Terry moran, its a great challenge for joe biden if hes elected. Great challenges lead to great opportunities for incoming president s. Thats how leaders thing, no question about it. Donald trump has been such a dominant penalty dominant personality in our politics. He didnt talk about deficits and didnt want anything to do with reforming medicare or social security, that whole paul ryan gospel. All that was gone. He talked a game of economic populism. There may be majority support for that program. One of the most popular things he talked about and never did, infrastructure. Never happened. That is something, rebuilding an america that needs it for the 21st century that you get pretty good numbers on. Had he followed through on that he might have had a chance to unify the country. David, you asked joe biden how he would unify the country. Yes. I asked him about the line he began using at the convention saying he might be the democratic candidate, but he would be an american president. He said the president s job is to heal, to heal the country that needs healing. Ill be a president that tells the truth, takes responsibility, invites the opposition to the oval office. He talked about how democrats and republicans hadnt been to the oval office and figured out how to help americans during covid. He said its time to unite the country, bring us together. Its going to take time to heal. Matt dowd says he thinks the country is ready for it. I wouldnt be surprised if we hear that language from joe biden tonight. Its likely. Rhetoric is one thing. Words do matter. No question about it. You also have to have the policy behind it. Little harder to see policies that unite democrats and republicans in washington. Couple things. The fact is this is true to joe bidens hes authentic. Its not just words. Communication, rhetoric is important. Its authentic to his being. Its one of the things he was attacked for, you dont understand the real world. He held on to this belief, no, i do. In every period of time whether it was jefferson, lincoln, franklin roosevelt, youve had a person that has smoothed things over and found a new path forward. Joe really believes that. In the policy area, i think hell be the first to reach out. This is slightly beyond policy. Its more of kind of a decency of i keep getting back to the picture in minnesota where he elbowed the protester there and said ill be your president. I think the policies get changed. Doesnt mean you walk away from health care. Do you try to hit a home run or build on something that achieves the goal of more Health Care Coverage and better cost control . Those are things that find people a seat at the table. Thats on the legislation, chris. I wonder if a big ger opportuniy for joe biden will this issue of covid governors care about money and if you can give us the money to do what we need to do, well execute. Vice President Biden has said he wants to give more money to the governors for covid. The governors can say ill use this money to help solve some of the problems covid has caused in my state. I have no doubt knowing joe biden that what rahm said is true, that is who joe is. He wants to bring people together. He believes that in his heart. He believes hes the guy that can do it. The real challenge for him is what i said the other night when we were on the program. Hes going to try to unify the country and the Democratic Party at the same time. I think thats going to be an enormous challenge and one that will prevent him from having the time of relationship with republicans he wants to have. Hes going to have to show the republicans early on he wants to take on fights with his own party. If hes not willing to do that, republicans will see him as just another democrat. One of the things i think if youre joe biden, sure, you would probably like to win the senate. Theres a part of you that recognizes that a Republican Senate is probably ultimately better for the vision that rahm laid out. If thats where he wants to take the country, a Republican Senate allows him some foil with the democrats and progressives who are going to demand more on climate and taxes. He has a natural break where hes just not going to be able to do those things. He has somebody to blame for it. He can find a more centrist position and make some incremental change, which the country, the typical independent voter, likes. Yvette, youre shaking your head, but thats factual. If the Republican Senate is there, it will be harder to implement those ideas. Were envisioning the Republican Party of a decade ago. Mitch mcconnell has held over 400 bills that the House Majority has sent over. Lets remember the way that Mitch Mcconnell dropped obama. Thats the Mitch Mcconnell i expect to see. If youre joe biden, you want that majority. The senate is still overwhelmingly moderate. Youll have the moderate house which can tussle with the senate. I cant imagine a president that doesnt want the trifecta. The idea is if he can get that, we can talk as a party how to deliver. Rahm and then heidi. Two quick things. The Vice President is going to reach out to republicans and bring them to table. You always want the majority if you can get it. Yeah, you want the majority, exactly. Its a fact. Hes going to deal with reality, not what he wants, but what he has. I think Mitch Mcconnell has to make a big choice. The other thing is, this is on all of us. Joe biden has talked about all of america. Ive made this mistake. We talk about red and blue america. Our language has to contribute to an environment where we see each other. Fair point. Heidi heitkamp, weigh in here. George, i think that everybody has underestimated a Pivotal Moment in the debate when the president went after the Vice President and said, look, youre a communist, youre a socialist. Joe biden said i am the Democratic Party. What i say is what the Democratic Party believes. Hes identified what he wants to do with health care. Its not medicare for all. When they talked about the Green New Deal, he said i have the biden deal. He laid out a tax plan that does not roll back all the Corporate Income tax. Look at his plans. Theyre not theyre clearly defined. I think he believes this is a mandate for his plans. Hes going to promote those, but hes going to listen. Hes going to bring people together. I have great optimism about whats going to happen in this country. If in fact he doesnt just deal with the beltway and get in the swamp and he gets out into the country where people are willing to listen and engage and want to see this country move forward. Thank you, heidi. Martha, i want you to switch gears. One of the other challenges for the Vice President is healing relationships with our allies as well. The president has had a fractured relationship with nato. Clearly the relationship with china is going to be front and center. It seemed like leading up to the election everyone overseas was holder their breath. Reporter thats exactly what was happening and what ive been talking to people about. They were simply waiting, holding their breath. If donald trump is thats a long shot now reelected, they were nervous about that. They knew they could wait out four years, but not eight years. What theyve seen in the last 48 hours has only made them more certain that a joe biden presidency would end this sort of chaos, especially our allies. You absolutely need allies and you need allies to face those adversaries. Some of those adversaries are laughing when they see the president make statements like he did last night. They want to see chaos in this country. I think joe biden will try to heal that if elected president. One of the first things he will do is reassure our nato allies. Also, this does tie in to healing our country. I think hell go slowly and methodically as a president. Heal our relationships with allies, reengage with china. Dont be adversary or send love letters to kim jongun. I dont think youll see him slashing the 700 billion budget. I think hell go slowly in places like afghanistan where the president suggested all the troops should be out of there. Biden is no fans of leaving troops there forever. I think he wanted them out, but things like that hell do methodically. I want to talk about that kind of outside the beltway that heidi talked about. You just have to remember the 68 Million People who voted for donald trump. Many of those people voted for donald trump because they disenfranchised. This is a shared space, a shared country. We all have to do this together and hopefully people who feel disenfranchised and feel forgotten can be part of that shared space. Can he get that message out on the number one issue the u. S. Is facing, the world is facing, its a Global Pandemic . Perhaps demanding a different approach. Reporter its going to be tough, george. People are dug in. Across the country people want to move on and this is not the time to move on. Its a very, very serious time for covid and david was talking about that as well. We are in the middle of second, third wave. A lot of deaths. A lot more cases. If he does it with compassion and leadership and everyone i talked to about who they want as president talks about leadership. If he can show that leadership and the reason we have to do that to protect others, so we can get the economy back if donald trump had done that, if donald trump said to the nation well fight this together, put your masks on, this may have been a different outcome in the president ial race. Joe biden needs to pick up that ball and in some way where he understands that he has to reverse what a lot of people are saying and do it with compassion and power and leadership that people hopefully will listen. It is the single most important thing we have to get through right now. Terry moran . The damage is done around the world. The World Leaders looked at america, the World Population looks at america differently. Its not just the personality of donald trump which is a bull in the china shop around the world. Its the tens of millions of people who voted for him. In part a rejection of the global consensus of both parties. If youre the president of france or Prime Minister of denmark, you have to think they might do that again and my Strategic Planning for my country the voters in this country as well we cant count on the United States in the same way. Angela merkel said it. Europe has to recognize were alone. Nato will be cobbled together and hell focus together. Were a different country in the eyes of the world, in some ways, a lesser one. Pierre thomas, one of the relationships the Vice President has to tend to is his relationship with the intelligence community. President trump had been talking about firing the fbi director and put his own people in the intelligence community. What do we expect from joe biden there . Reporter george, this much i can tell you. In all the years i covered the justice
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