Newsroom decision desks that held out on projecting Joe Biden to be the winner of the presidential race in Arizona called the race for the president-elect on Thursday night after it became clear that President Trump had no mathematical way to win the race with outstanding ballots.
The New York Times, CNN, NBC, and ABC decision desks projected Thursday, more than a week after Election Day, that Biden would win the state’s 11 Electoral College votes, adding to his wining tally.
A Thursday night posting of ballots in Arizona showed Biden leading Trump by 11,434 votes in Arizona. The secretary of state’s office estimates that 10,315 ballots have yet to be counted, giving Trump no chance of pulling ahead of Biden.
Of the remaining 10,315, 5,846 are ready for tabulation, 3,259 are provisional ballots that need to be processed, and 1,210 are early ballots awaiting signature verification.
The razor-thin margin separates the candidates by just 0.3% of the total vote, with Biden at 49.40% and Trump at 49.06%.
Despite the improbability of a Trump win, the Arizona Republican Party’s leader, Kelli Ward, continued to project confidence.
“The count is 0.3% separating the two candidates, President Trump from the other guy. That is too close to call,” Ward said in a video posted to Twitter on Friday. “There are still over 10,000 votes to count, and I think it was inappropriate for media outlets to call that election on Election Night or any time now. We are getting close to recount territory here.”
Arizona provides no way for a candidate to request a recount, and state law only triggers a recount if the margin between the two candidates is less than 0.01% or fewer than 200 votes, whichever is less.
If Trump won all outstanding 10,315 ballots, the margin between the two candidates would be 1,119, well above the 200-vote margin necessary to trigger a recount.
Fox News drew the wrath of Trump and other Republicans after it projected on election night that Biden would win the state, even though more than 870,000 votes had yet to be counted. Sources told the Washington Examiner that the president called Rupert Murdoch, the network’s owner, that night, demanding that Fox retract its projection.
Trump’s campaign argued that remaining votes, most of which were cast on Election Day, would favor the president rather than Biden.
The Fox News decision desk stood by its projection. Three hours after Fox made the call, the Associated Press also projected that Biden would win the Grand Canyon State.
As Arizona released batches of counted ballots over the next week, it became clear that Trump was not winning those votes by a large enough margin to overtake Biden.
Trump’s campaign and the Arizona Republican Party has filed a lawsuit alleging that poll workers in Maricopa County, the most populous county in the state, improperly instructed in-person voters to process ballots that caused them not to be counted properly. The number of votes at issue in that lawsuit is just 191, a number would not make a difference in the race.
