Joe Biden won the state of Pennsylvania, giving the apparent election winner enough Electoral College votes to be declared president-elect by a range of media outlets.
The outlets called Pennsylvania for Biden on Saturday, and the state’s 20 Electoral College votes put the former vice president over the 270-vote threshold necessary to become president.
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Biden is set to pick up 20 electoral votes from one of the most fought-over battlegrounds of the 2020 presidential campaign. Biden, a native of Scranton, Pennsylvania, and President Trump both made repeated visits to the Keystone State in the campaign’s waning days, as did their family members and other supporters.
After Tuesday’s election, four days of additional counting in Pennsylvania tipped the state in Biden’s direction, and the Associated Press called the race in his favor shortly before 12 p.m.
Trump in 2016 was the first Republican to win the state since former President George H. W. Bush was elected in 1988, breaking Democrats’ hold on the Rust Belt by a narrow margin of 44,292 votes. Voters in the once-reliably Democratic working-class Luzerne and Erie counties flipped to support Trump, who promised to renegotiate free trade agreements and bring back manufacturing jobs.
The final days of the election underscored the importance of Pennsylvania.
Biden, Democratic vice presidential nominee California Sen. Kamala Harris, and their spouses “barnstormed” across all four corners of the state the day before the election.
The former vice president stressed his personal connection to the state. He was born in Scranton and attended school there before moving to Delaware. Taking advantage of living in a neighboring state, Biden traveled to the commonwealth in the final two months of the campaign more times than he did to any other state.
Trump placed just as much emphasis on the state. He held three rallies in Pennsylvania on the Saturday before the election and another one on the Monday before in Biden’s hometown of Scranton. Trump hammered the former vice president for previously saying that he wanted to end fracking, a major industry in the state, though Biden stressed later that he does not want to outright ban the practice as part of his plan to reduce fossil fuel consumption and carbon emissions.
A RealClearPolitics average of polls just before the election found Biden with a 4.3-point advantage over the president.
Early mail-in and absentee voting, recently expanded in the state, complicated and delayed the ultimate results of the election. Nearly 3.1 million voters requested mail-in ballots, and an estimated 2.4 million had returned them before Election Day, according to University of Florida professor Michael McDonald’s U.S. Election Project. Of the state’s 67 counties, seven that voted for Trump in 2016 waited until the day after the election to begin counting mail-in ballots.
Early votes received in Pennsylvania as a percentage of 2016 total turnout reached 39%, lower than other battleground states, increasing focus on the state by the candidates in the campaign’s final days as there were more votes up for grabs.
CORRECTION: The Associated Press called the race in Pennsylvania for Joe Biden at 11:25 a.m. EST and the presidential race at 11:26 a.m. EST.
