Joe Biden declared the winner of Michigan by CNN and NBC News
As the vote-counting continued in Pennsylvania and CNN and the Associated Press declared former Vice President Joe Biden to the winner in Wisconsin, the Democrat was likewise declared the winner of Michigan by both CNN and NBC News, inching him closer to securing the needed 270 electoral votes needed for victory.
President Donald Trump's campaign claimed it filed a lawsuit to stop the vote-counting in Michigan, but no actual filing has yet been made public.
The Rust Belt states of Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania turned out to be real nail-biters in the 2020 election. With Trump having won battleground states that included Florida, Ohio and Iowa on Election Night, parts of the Rust Belt became Biden's best chance for a victory.
On Wednesday afternoon, CNN projected that Biden was the winner in Wisconsin — and not long after that, AP called Wisconsin for Biden. Trump's campaign is saying that he will request a recount in the Badger State, though it's highly unlikely to change the outcome.
Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania were among the greatest surprises in the 2016 election. Although those states had been going Democratic in presidential races, Trump won all of them. But Biden had hopes of flipping them back this year.
Meanwhile, in the southwestern U.S., the Associated Press and Fox News both called Arizona — which has 11 electoral votes — for Biden on Election Night, making Arizona the first Trump state from 2016 that Biden flipped. Wisconsin was the second.
Pennsylvania, which has 20 electoral votes, has often been described as a make-or-break state for Biden. And the New York Times, on Thursday morning, reported that in Pennsylvania, Trump "leads by nearly 700,000 votes, but there are 1.4 million absentee votes outstanding." And the absentee vote count, according to the Times, "appears to be overwhelmingly for Biden."
