Its a muchanticipated vote count in the largest county in georgia that could go a long way to closing that gap between donald trump and joe biden in that state where donald trump maintains a small lead. Over to pennsylvania, we could know a winner by the end of the day or night. Pennsylvanias secretary of state saying the final 500,000 votes are being counted right now as we speak. Arizona releases numbers tonight out of Maricopa County that could signal whether joe biden will hold on to his slim lead. Were still waiting on nevada and its 6 electoral votes. State Officials Say we could be waiting for days before we have a declared winner there. Donald trump doesnt appear to like the direction this race is going for him. This morning he tweeted stop the count, even though if the count stops now and its over joe biden wins. Trumps lawsuits, some of them over just a few dozen ballots, now out number his pathways to an electoral victory. His completely baseless accusations of fraud remain unproven without any credible evidence to speak of. Joe bidens team is dismissing Donald Trumps legal avenue out of hand, calling that strategy meritless and doomed to fail as the campaign projects confidence. Joe bidens Campaign Manager says, quote, our data shows that joe biden will be the next president of the United States. Lets go straight to Msnbcs Steve Kornacki at the big board. Steve, you put the whole thing on your back and youre carrying it more than just one long night. Its becoming a long week. Take me through when youre done talking to all of us, you pour over pages and get on the phone with your producer, what are you doing when youre off camera right now . Were looking at the pennsylvania secretary of state websites and county websites. Were trying to find out from people in some of these key counties that everyone knows that names of, were trying to find out this is the hardest part. When are they going to release the next votes . Thats the biggest part of this. I think we have a sense generally of the places to look and a sense of how we think the places are going to go. Having that sense and seeing it, thats the thing. Were trying to find out the when of it right now. What is the latest . My understanding from the Biden Campaign is they dont expect anything until much later tonight. Are you expecting anything possibly earlier than that . This is sort of the fools gold of all sort of protracted election periods. You get the county or city that tells you, guess what, in an hour well release our votes. Then the hour comes and goes and then its 12 hours later. When they tell you theyre going to release a lot in an hour, it means youll get a little six hours from now, maybe. Thats the reality of how these things go. Temper your expectations. That said, if you look at pennsylvania here right now since we came on the air we got an update. That trump lead came down about 5,000 votes. If my producer could say where they came from, ill show it to you. A 101,000 vote advantage there for trump over biden. Everybody knows this by now, just to show you on the map where are we waiting for vote in pennsylvania, the bigger the circle, the more votes were waiting on. The biggest circle philadelphia, right here. If you look in philadelphia, biden is winning overall 80 of the vote in philadelphia. Were counting specifically here the absentee ballots, the mailin ballots. Those are the ones people sent them in days and weeks ahead of the election and they couldnt do anything with them until after the election. Thats whats being tallied now. The mail ballots are going for biden at like 90 . We think theres 90,000, 100,000 mailin ballots just in philadelphia. You can kind of do the math a little bit. If biden is winning these at a 90 clip, the number is elusive. If hes down 100,000, once theyre counted that goes a long way. Theres delaware county, right outside philadelphia. Biden doing very well there overall. Even better among the mailin ballots. Bucks county, very competitive overall, but biden doing better when it comes to the mail ballots. Ill give you a dramatic example. Check out carbon county, trump county. He wins this 21. We just got in the last couple hours a mail ballot update from carbon county. 4,000 votes released to us. Biden got 2,800 of them. Deep red county. Thats what im trying to say. When i drive home this idea that theres the mail ballots and same day ballots. The same day ballots favored trump. They were counted on Election Night. Theyll give him the win in the county overwhelmingly. The mail portion here, even in a red county, biden is winning them. Bidens got philadelphia and these other dots and even red counties like carbon counties, biden is doing well in the mail ballots. Bidens challenge is hes got to win ill show you statewide. Hes got to be winning of the remaining votes in the state were down to 97,000. We just got another update. Again, this is a needle in a haystack. 97,000 statewide. Biden has to be winning 63, 64, 65 of the remaining ballots. So far hes been doing that and more with the mail ballots. We have a sense of where that trend is going. We just got to keep seeing it. You know, steve, i am you are my guide through numbers. The two campaigns where their reads intersect, ive found that credible. The two campaigns have a similar read on where the outstanding vote is in pennsylvania. To the degree that they are focusing all their efforts on their legal shenanigans in pennsylvania, does it bear out in terms of what youre seeing and expecting to see based on the patterns and data . Taking you through what im looking at, youre in a situation where there are no great trump areas for mail ballots in pennsylvania. In some other states this pattern has held across the cro country. Mailin voting has been a stronger source for biden and sameday voting a stronger source for trump. I think pennsylvania is the most extreme difference between the two types that weve seen of all the states. Its just a state where democrats they offer mailin voting for the first time this year. Its not been a widespread thing in pennsylvania before. The issue of do you want to vote by mail became a political issue. It became something democrats were encouraging their voters to do. The president was telling his supporters not to do it. The president was saying i want you to vote on election day. Thats what were seeing in pennsylvania. Election day so favorable to trump and the mail vote so favorable to democrats. Thats the message. Again, when you look at whats left there, its not in a normal election map i would say heres the trump county. He could offset a loss here or there. Even in the trump counties overall the mail vote is biden. Yeah. So interesting. It just sort of pulls the curtain right off of their legal strategy. Clearly a hail mary political strategy. Steve, i could do this the whole two hours. Do me this favor, if something changes dramatically for you wave your arms and well zoom right back to you. You got it. Thank you, Steve Kornacki. Lets bring in mike memally live in wilmington, delaware. John ralston also joining us and former florida congressman david jolly. Mike, obviously Steve Kornacki has a county by county understanding of where the vote is. Its my sense that boast campaigns are watching pennsylvania. If theres a call tonight, that could be the whole ball game for joe biden. Reporter yeah, thats right, nicolle. Every time Steve Kornacki shows that gap shrinking joe biden taking a step closer to speak as the president elect. Just a few minutes ago we heard a sound check. Short of final results, the Biden Campaign is operating on two tracks. Were hearing from them what theyre seeing of the data and theyre confident hell win in one big state or a combination of those states to put him over 270. Also talking about the legal strategy, dismissing what were seeing from the president. Then were seeing joe biden really begin to act as if hes somebody who is going to be taking over as the president of the United States. Yesterday you saw in this hour the former Vice President speaking to the country hailing the Election Results, talking about the need to bring the country together after what has been a long and Decisive Campaign in four years. Today hes finishing up a briefing in downtown women ming t wilmington with his economic advisers and Public Health advisers. Also, we saw the transition website being launched. This is a campaign projecting nothing but confidence and a former Vice President showing hes ready to become president. Those moves that you make in the first days after an election, whether its known yet or not, are so important. Theyre the earliest signals youre sending to the whole country that youre about to lead. I know thats something that seems to be important to joe biden. How is this team holding up . Weve talked a lot about their stoicness. We talked able thout them being to withstand the early setbacks. This is one of the most brutal tests. How are they holding up . Reporter nicolle, this has been a trust the process Campaign Even in the darkest of times. I can tell you having spoken with a number of aides, last night a lot of them got caught up on sleep. There wasnt much to expect about the vote counts. Many of them put the sleepless nights behind them and get ready for what they expect will be a celebration. Whats been interesting is this is a team thats fairly well separated from the work ahead. Theres the campaign and then the Transition Team being assembled. Theres been a lot of seamless cooperation in anticipation of this moment, nicolle. Mike, im sure you have to leave us. I just heard in my ear that joe biden is getting ready to speak this hour. Any sense of what those remarks are ability . Are they about the covid briefi briefing . Is that separate and distinct from the sound test behind you . Reporter thats right. I mentioned the briefings he was getting from his team of advisers on the economy and covid crisis. I would expect thats the tone and tenor of what he speaks. Hes not speaking here. We expect that will be at the queen theater in downtown wilmington. Remember, we talked about his schedule over the last few weeks, nicolle. The days he wasnt on the campaign trail, but here in delaware. Its a place thats going to be familiar when we see him speak here perhaps in the next few minutes. Mike, ill let you go back to your reporting keeping us informed of this most extraordinary phase of the president ial campaign of joe biden and kamala harris. Let me bring into our conversation john ralston. We were talking about pennsylvania. Theres some expectation there might be counted votes and a better sense of the vote count that Steve Kornacki was talking about which have the potential to close the gap between joe biden and donald trump in that state. Equally of interest and i think anxiety inducing is the great state of nevada. What is going on there . Thanks for equating us with pennsylvania. Our little state will be happy, nicolle. Listen, you know, theres a lot of ballots in nevada. Theres been some conflicting reports which i managed to clarify. There are a little under 200,000 ballots left in the state. Most of them, almost all of them, maybe as many as 175,000 are from clark county, which is a democratic strong hold here in nevada and where joe biden has done very well. Those mail ballots up until the election day, nicolle, went more than 21 for the democrat. Its almost impossible to see anyway for trump to make up even the relatively small deficit of 11,400 votes with those mail ballots. There was a batch released this morning about 14,000 and biden won those 21. Theres no reason to believe that trend is going to change that much with the other 150, 160,000 or whatever is left. I understand that there are some top political figures from trump world who are in your time zone in your state. What would they be doing . Is there any it seems so cut and dry in terms of ballots that have been cast, where those ballots are. Do you think theyre just wanting to have their presence serve as an intimidation factor . What could you do in nevada at this point on the ground . You hit on half of it there, nicolle. Intimidation is part of it. Much more important what theyre trying to do this is the insidious thing theyre trying to do, which is try to undermine the process, to try to sow distrust in the system. There was a remarkable press conference this morning in las vegas. Jacob soboroff was there and he got a sense of it with the former attorney general who was the cochairman of the Trump Campaign here and rick grinell, the former trump cabinet official, now on the campaign. They made all kinds of claims about potential voter fraud. Said theyre filing a federal lawsuit. Nicolle, this was the key part of it. They refused to present any evidence and refused to take any questions. So, as we poker players like to say, thats the tell. If theyre not going to present evidence or take questions, this is designed for public relations, designed to cast out on the Election Results because they know what i just told you earlier, nicolle, that the election is going against them here in clark county and biden is likely to widen his lead by tomorrow morning. Ill add to that. I know both men well. Neither known for their legal acumen. Both known as political bulld s bulldogs. Both having made the full leap into trumps version of reality which is nothing to do with any republican reality anymore. I appreciate jacobs reporting on their activities. I know youll be covering it. If you need to jump and do some reporting i dont want to keep you. I would love to bring you around while i bring in other folks. I think the questions about what the Trump Campaign is doing, the fact that no one can answer it in a reasonable way, other than intimidate, other than try to delegitimize the result seems to be a national strategy. John, if you could stay with us, i would love to keep you around. Alexi, let me bring you in on this. Ive been hearing similar takes on where things stand from both sides. Donald trump is driving this legal strategy because hes the client, that there isnt a thoughtful approach to asking any legitimate questions and that this fact that its matt ss schlapp and rick grenell sort of bears that out. What are you making of this . Donald trump has spent his entire adult life in the court in litigation. The big picture or strategy that is very clear, the way in which the president is speaking and tweeting and sending out statements, its to cast doubt on the legitimacy of a potential Biden Victory. Its ironic when you think about the legitimate victory that President Trump had after he lost the popular vote. We saw how that inspired on his crowd size during his inauguration. Its really to cast doubt and make people alexi, let me interrupt you. Lets watch joe biden together. Were reminded again of the severity of this pandemic. Cases are on the rise nationwide and were nearing 240,000 deaths due to covid. Our hearts go out to each and every family thats lost a loved one to this terrible disease. In america the vote is sacred. Its how people of this nation express their will and it is the will of the voters, not anything else, that chooses the president of the United States of america. So, each ballot must be counted and thats what were going to see were going through now. Thats how it should be. Democracy is sometimes messy. It sometimes requires a little patience. That patience has been rewarded for more than 240 years with a system of governance thats been the envy of the world. We continue to feel the senator and i continue to feel very good about where things stand. We have no doubt that when the count is finished senator harris and i will be declared the winners. I ask everyone to stay calm, all people to stay calm. The process is working. The count is being completed and well know very soon. Thank you all for your patience, but we have to count the votes. God bless you all. May god protect our troops. Thank you very much. That was joe biden in wilmington, delaware doing what mike described as an abundance of optimism and prudence i have to say. All signs point to a very likely victory for joe biden at the end of all the counting. Alexi, joe biden already getting to work on the two biggest problems vexing this country. A pandemic raging out of control. We were waiting for vote counts all night and this country broke our own record for the most cases in a single day, surpassing 100,000 which with tony faucis nightmare scenario and obviously he didnt need the Election Results and the polar views on how to deal with the pandemic to understand that economic anxiety courses through every corner of this country. What do you make of his approach . What is so interesting, nicolle, is that mike was talking about how the Biden Campaign has been slow and steady and methodical, and youre seeing that reflected that over the last several months no matter what was going on in the election and no matter what President Trump was trying to lob at him he consistently talked about the covid19 pandemic and the economy. That shows hes showing the American People hes focussed on the issues affecting their lives. Joe biden isnt president. He doesnt have a hand in how the country is handling the coronavirus, yet the polls show the American People trust him to handle this better compared to what theyre seeing from the sitting president. Donald trump isnt talking about new single day cases. Over 100,000 new coronavirus cases for the first time. Thats a big deal. Hes not talking about were entering the winter season. Businesses are going to be slammed and shut down for months or permanently. Our entire way of life in the winter is going to change. Joe biden between the transition website yesterday, the way hes getting out and giving brief remarks to talk about the issues affecting people at home in spite of the lawsuit and legal process, hes showing hes focussed on leading the American People forward.