Joe Biden won the battleground state of Michigan, adding 16 electoral votes to his tally and moving him ever closer to reaching the 270 electoral votes necessary to win the White House.
Victory in Michigan, coupled with his win in Wisconsin, puts the former vice president and 36-year Delaware senator within striking distance of the presidency. If Biden also wins Nevada and its six electoral votes, he’ll go past the 270 mark necessary to deny President Trump a second term.
Arizona and its 11 electoral votes have been called for Biden by Fox News and the Associated Press, but with other outlets holding off on a decision, the Trump campaign says it believes there are enough votes out there to swing the state in its favor.
Michigan was among six battleground states this presidential election season that Trump and Biden focused on as part of a successful campaign finish. In 2016, Trump won the state over then-Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton by 10,704 votes, or just under 1% of the vote.
Prior to Trump’s winning Michigan in 2016, the last time a Republican presidential candidate won the state was in 1988 with George H.W. Bush, who went on to win the White House that year. Starting in 1972, all Republican presidential candidates before Bush won the state. In 1992, Bill Clinton, then the Democratic governor of Arkansas, won the state, kicking off six straight wins for nominees of his party.
Less than a week before the 2020 election, Biden was leading Trump in the RealClearPolitics average by 9 points. The Biden campaign aimed to win Michigan’s largest city, Detroit, or at least pick up the votes of its suburban residents, while the Trump campaign sought out support for the president in the state’s more rural and industrial regions in western Michigan. In 2016, Trump picked up overwhelming support almost everywhere outside the state’s largest urban regions.
The Trump campaign, in an effort to find votes from the state’s blue-collar workers, rebuked Biden over the airwaves toward the end of the summer for the former vice president’s support of the North American Free Trade Agreement in the 1990s.
The Biden campaign worked through black churches as well as Lizzo, a well-known performance artist from Detroit, to reach out to black voters and get out their base vote. Additionally, the Democratic National Committee took out a full-page ad in the Michigan Chronicle, Detroit’s African American weekly newspaper, advocating for voters to cast their ballots against Trump.
A win in Nevada, though, wouldn’t necessarily end the campaign because the Trump campaign has promised a vigorous legal fight. White House chief of staff Mark Meadows and senior campaign adviser Justin Clark will head the legal team to challenge counts in battleground states.
The campaign has lodged a lawsuit to halt the count of mail-in ballots temporarily in Pennsylvania, claiming a lack of “transparency.” It is demanding a recount in Wisconsin. And it is taking court action in Michigan to get access to the locations where ballots are being counted in the state, which could determine the outcome of the election.
