President Donald Trump and Democratic challenger Joe Biden continue to jostle for important battleground states at the end of massive campaigns to claim the 2020 presidential race.
Early voting numbers show that Biden currently leads Trump in electoral votes, according to CNN and the New York Times, but crucial states including Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin are still too close to call.
The amount of mail-in ballots and votes cast during early voting opportunities will mean that state races that remain close will have to take extra time to determine their winner.
Each state has set different postmarked deadlines for mail-in ballots, with many states counting ballots postmarked before Nov. 6. In Alaska, for example, absentee ballots won’t even begin being counted until a week after Tuesday’s election.
Trump won the necessary states to keep his bid at a second term alive, including victories in Florida, Ohio and Iowa. The incumbent president also leads in Georgia, North Carolina and Pennsylvania. Biden won the electoral votes in Arizona in a historic effort, according to Fox News and the Associated Press, through the Trump administration is disputing the assertion. Trump won in Arizona in 2016, and the state has voted Republican since 1996. The New York Times reports that Biden holds a four point lead in the state with 14% of the vote yet to be counted. Biden also kept the race close in Texas, a traditional Republican stronghold, as Trump claimed the state by six percentage points.
Biden leads in Michigan, Wisconsin and Nevada. The result of the election will likely come down to the results of mail in ballots, which will reportedly favor the Democratic challenger, in five toss up states: Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan, Georgia and Arizona.
In Utah, Trump was named victor by a decisive margin earning 58% of the vote. Biden has earned 38% of the votes in Utah, the highest total for a Democrat in the Beehive State since Hubert Humphrey received 37% of the vote in 1968.
At the state level, Lt. Gov. Spencer Cox was named the victor for the gubernatorial race against Democratic opponent Chris Petersen by the Associated Press, securing 63% of the vote.
Incumbent Republican Attorney General Sean Reyes secured his position by earning 59% of the vote in the state. Democratic challenger Greg Skordas conceded the race an hour and a half after polls closed at 8 p.m. after only securing 36% of the vote.
John “Frugal” Dougall will serve another term as state auditor after accruing 74% of the vote in the state. United Utah Party candidate Brian L. Fabbi earned 13% of the vote and finished in second.
Republican incumbent David Damschen also defended his position as state treasurer, as 75% of voters marked his name on the ballot.
Chris Stewart has a commanding lead in the 2nd Congressional District. He leads Democratic candidate Kael Weston by more than twenty percentage points with 58% of the vote.
It will take some time to determine the exact margin, but more Utahns voted in 2020 than in any past election. In 2016, 1,152,369 Utahns cast a ballot, which was 82% of the active voters at that time. By 5 p.m. Tuesday, Utah clerks reported counting more than 1.2 million votes.
This story will be updated.
Story by: Connor Sanders
eic@suunews.net
