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U.S. Presidential Race Too Close to Call; Votes Still Being Counted in Battleground States of Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin, which could Determine Winner of Presidential Race; Nail- Biter Election Comes Down to Arizona, Georgia, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin. Aired 8-8:30a ET

Aired November 04, 2020 - 08:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

[08:00:00]

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: Without a winner in the presidential election, at least not yet. This nail-biter of a race is coming down to several key states where millions of votes are still being counted at this moment, and that counting, that very counting is something we should rejoice in. This is what it's all about. Joe Biden has 224 electoral votes to the president's 213, but with many states still left to be called where the race is stunningly close, President Trump has falsely claimed victory, attacking legitimate vote counting efforts and making baseless claims of fraud. Former Vice President Joe Biden is calling for patience, and his campaign calls the president's words outrageous and unprecedented.

I want to get right to the numbers that tell the story, and that is where we start with the CNN key race alert. These are the states where they are counting and where it is stunningly close. Let's start with Pennsylvania, with 75 percent of the vote in and 20 electoral votes up for grabs. The president leads by some 600,000 votes, but, and this is the story we will tell throughout the morning, we are waiting for votes to come in from major population centers that could make the major difference.

Michigan next, with 16 electoral votes up for grabs, the president leads by 26,000 votes. This margin has been narrowing almost by the minute throughout the last hour. Again, we're waiting on vote to come in from major population centers.

Wisconsin, a little bit ahead of these two other states, we've been watching Wisconsin maybe tell the story of the morning. Joe Biden now with a 20,000 vote lead there, 10 electoral votes up for grabs, not much vote left to be counted in Wisconsin.

Now, Georgia, hasn't been a lot of counting in the last few hours in Georgia. Donald Trump holds a 100,000 vote lead for those 16 electoral votes, but, again, we are waiting on vote to come in from the Atlanta area, major urban centers which could tilt toward the Democrats.

A couple other states we have our eyes on this morning, let's take a look at Arizona now with 11 electoral votes, Joe Biden leading by 130,000 votes with 82 percent of the vote in. Maricopa County still a lot of outstanding vote to count. We don't know which way that leans because we're not quite sure when those votes were cast.

North Carolina, the president with a 76,000 vote margin, 95 percent in, 15 electoral votes up for grabs. We are counting that throughout the morning. In Nevada, which is interesting, it is very close in Nevada. This is a state the Democrats have won three times in a row. Joe Biden is clinging to a 7,000 vote margin with 86 percent in. Those six electoral votes by the end of today could be crucial in piecing together a margin of victory, particularly for Joe Biden.

So let's dig a little deeper now. Let's look at the Electoral College map and the road to 270. This is where things stand. Again, Joe Biden with 224, Donald Trump with 213, but look at all the states there in white. Those states will make the difference. What happens there, what happens with the votes we're counting now will determine who the next president of the United States is.

Let's walk over to the magic wall and talk to Phil Mattingly. Phil, you've been up all night, and the story has changed over the course of the night. I want to go state by state, if I can, to where they are counting now, what votes remain, and what it means. Let's start with Pennsylvania, the biggest of these states, 20 electoral votes up for grabs.

PHIL MATTINGLY, CNN CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: The biggest of these states, and as it currently stands, the biggest lead for President Trump in terms of the states that have still not been called. Right now, Donald Trump, as you just noted, John 55 percent to 43 percent, 618,000 vote lead in the state of Pennsylvania, 75 percent reporting, though. That's the key along with where the vote is still outstanding. If you are a Democrat you went into last night, to election night, looking at Philadelphia and the counties surrounding Philadelphia. You looked at Allegheny County, the home of Pittsburgh. Those were the places where you needed your vote to come in and you needed your vote to come in big. Those are the places where, if you start to tick through, you see the vote is not in. It's in big, but it's not in entirely.

And one of the questions going into the night, we saw it in the inverse to some degree, John, if you remember look at Ohio, look at North Carolina. Early in the night it was blue, it was blue. Well, let me quickly move back to Ohio to give you a sense of things, how it actually ended. Yes, Ohio turned out was not in play when it came down to it. This is a similar margin to 2016. However, we spent so much of the night, the early night talking about it. Why? Because of when the vote was reported and what kind of vote was reported.

Pennsylvania is the inverse of that. Election day vote has been reported early, waiting for mail vote. Mail vote largely absentee, vote by mail, largely Democratic across the country. So you can go through the counties. Montgomery County, Democratic stronghold, still 23 percent outstanding, expect margins to grow. Move over to Bucks County, a little bit more of a swingier county, Democrats thought it was moving in their direction. Maybe Donald Trump holds on to this county. That margin unlikely to stay where it is right now, 55 percent reporting.

[08:05:02]

So John, the story of Pennsylvania right now is unquestionably a massive lead for President Trump. It is also a massive amount of outstanding vote in Democratic strongholds.

BERMAN: What I want to make, is the story of the last few the story of the minute. Is the votes that are coming in are largely votes from major urban centers, they are largely absentee and mail-in votes, and both of those things tend to skew Democratic. So Democrats, we have seen, close margins. Case in point, the state of Michigan.

MATTINGLY: Yes. Look, Michigan over the course of the last couple of hours, I could tell you two-and-a-half hours ago Michigan was a 220,000 vote lead for Donald Trump. Where is it right now -- 26,416 votes, 86 percent reporting. And if you are Democrats right now, you are pulling this back and saying where is the outstanding vote? And what you're seeing is making you confident. Not confident necessarily that it's over, there's a lot of votes still to come in, but what you are looking at here, largest county in the state, Wayne County, home of Detroit, only 64 percent reporting. Look at this margin right now, Joe Biden with 414,000 votes in, 64 percent reporting. We're talking 10, 20, 30,000 votes for Democrats here. We're talking potentially a couple hundred thousand votes coming in here.

Pull back a little bit. We just spoke to the Michigan secretary of state, you look at this county right here, Grand Rapids, 82 percent in, you say, look, this is a red county. It's a red county. Donald Trump is up. Donald Trump is up by four or five points. Guess what, 45 minutes ago that margin was 14 points. That margin is narrowing.

And what's outstanding in Kent County? What's outstanding? Grand Rapids. Grand Rapids went huge for Hillary Clinton back in 2016. Kent County may stay Republican, may do what it did in 2016 and narrowly stay Republican, but as it currently stands, Grand Rapids the outstanding vote, even though it's red, it's Democratic. It's coming from Democratic areas.

I want to make something perfectly clear. We don't know the exact makeup and composition of this vote. we know where it's coming from, what the history of what it's coming from is, and we know that vote by mail, which as you know, it is outstanding throughout the course of the night, whether it was being reported early or late, has skewed largely Democratic. So Michigan right now, Donald Trump still hanging on to a lead. Democrats looking at counties across the entire state and saying we have options in this state.

BERMAN: If you were gauging the relative attitudes in the states right now, in Pennsylvania no one knows what the heck is going to happen. No one feels confident or otherwise. Michigan, Democrats feel confident for what is going to happen. In Wisconsin, Democrats feel confident at this minute for what has happened. Explain.

MATTINGLY: Yes, the best way to put it, it's like a progression from Pennsylvania to Michigan to Wisconsin. Wisconsin being the first one to go and actually turn blue. Doesn't mean it's going to stay blue, but with 97 percent reporting, Joe Biden up by just shy of 21,000 votes. Throughout much of the night, Donald Trump was ahead by 100,000 plus votes. Now, 97 percent reporting, Joe Biden is ahead. Why is Joe Biden ahead? Right here, major urban center, biggest county in the entire state, home of Milwaukee. Milwaukee County, 16 percent of the state population is here. This was a narrower margin for much of the night, and then the absentee vote came in. And then the early vote by mail came in, 69 percent, 29 percent, and all of a sudden the Trump lead started to narrow.

Then same thing we saw, I was just talking about in Michigan, Brown County is a Republican county. It went by 10 points for Donald Trump back in 2016, now holding about a seven-point lead here, except the vote that was outstanding in this county came from Green Bay. It was vote by mail. Green Bay leans Democratic, vote by mail leans Democratic as well. Guess what, more vote for Joe Biden, even in a Republican county. We saw the same thing in Kenosha as well as it came in.

So right now 97 percent in, Donald Trump -- or Joe Biden with a 20,000 plus vote lead. I guess, the big question is, what's outstanding? Where does Donald Trump go to get 20,000 votes? And the answer is not a lot of options here. You know that what's outstanding is vote by mail, which is heavily Democratic. You know this is not a big county. You're not going to find 20,000 votes there that are purely Republican. So the big question right now for Donald Trump is can you find somewhere 20,000 votes? Are we headed to a recount?

BERMAN: That's a whole other issue.

MATTINGLY: Which is a whole other issue that I don't want to get into particularly given how late I've been up so far. But the reality is, as we've talked about Pennsylvania and Michigan heading into, Wisconsin has done it for Democrats right now. It is blue for the moment, and we'll have to see how it plays out.

BERMAN: One other point I just want to make on the margin here before I move to Georgia, 20,000 votes seems close, and yes, it is close in a certain way. But Donald Trump won Wisconsin by 22,000. And just a history lesson here, the Democrats only won Wisconsin in 2000 by 5,000 votes, and in 2004 by 11,000 and change. So Wisconsin is close. And 20,000 isn't the closest election you could see there. So right now I'd rather be Joe Biden than Donald Trump in the state of Wisconsin.

Let's talk about Georgia now, because I think attitudes on Georgia have changed over the course of the evening and we are into that really uncertain category.

MATTINGLY: Yes. Look, if you think you understand pathways or kind of where things are progressing in the Pennsylvania and into the Midwest, everybody is just kind of shrugging their shoulders right now.

[08:10:05]

And the reason why is this -- you hit it when you were talking about the state earlier. What's outstanding in the state, Donald Trump with 100,000 vote lead, 92 percent reporting. But it's where that eight percent outstanding is that is so crucial, including Fulton County, largest county in the state, big Democratic county. What happened in 2016, Hillary Clinton won it big, 41 points. What's happening now, Joe Biden winning it big. And guess what, there's 20 percent of the vote is outstanding.

Move over to Dekalb County as well. What happened in 2016? Hillary Clinton won this county big, 63 points. What's happening in 2020? Joe Biden winning this county bigger. But 80 percent reporting right now. So we don't have the best idea right now in terms of when this vote is going to come in and how it's going to come in. We know it's likely to come in big Democratic, but what we don't have the best idea for yet is it going to make up 100,000 votes.

And also if you take a look at what's outstanding in the state, are any of these Republican counties where, look, the story of yesterday into the night was Donald Trump turned out voters and his campaign turned out voters exactly like they said they would. A lot of people scoffed at it, said no way you were going to do it again, and smaller and rural counties and traditional Republican counties, they blew out turnout, just like Democrats did in a lot of places.

So are these smaller counties, you want to go into Wilkinson County, not a huge county, a couple thousand votes here, maybe. Are those enough to keep the lead as the bigger Democratic counties come in? It's an open question right now. It's one we're all keeping an eye on. It would be nice if we got some reporting to see some of the vote anytime soon. But just to be very clear, what election workers are doing right now is heroic, and we appreciate it.

BERMAN: Absolutely, and it's what it's all about.

Just very quickly, I want to say Arizona, Nevada, you don't have to go into those right now, also very close. Joe Biden clinging on to a lead there. We are not going to see more votes from either of those states for a while. Pacific time is really the reason for that, but we're watching those very closely.

Talk to me about the different paths that each candidate has to 270 and why, again, anything could change. But last night at about 11:00 if you were a Democrat you felt lousy. But at 7:00 this morning you felt maybe a little better.

MATTINGLY: Yes, no question about it. What you're seeing filled in right now is states that CNN has called. Anything you see in gray, states we haven't called. We have got Nevada, we've got Arizona, we've got Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Georgia, Maine, Alaska.

Let's say for the sake of argument based on where things stand right now Donald Trump is going to win the state of Alaska. We'll even give Donald Trump the state of North Carolina. He's got a pretty solid lead there right there, he's been hanging on to it all night. And we will give Joe Biden the state of Maine. I'm not going to give him Maine two. We won't give him Maine two, the congressional district with the single electoral vote, we don't know where that's going, but he has got a decent lead in Maine right. So what does that leave? That leaves states where Joe Biden has a

lead, and that is Arizona and Nevada. You made a key point, Nevada is razor thin right now. But the outstanding vote, mostly mail, mostly coming from Clark County, a Democratic stronghold. So we will say for the sake of argument we will give that to him. What's left? Georgia, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin. Well, Joe Biden holds on to Wisconsin.

BERMAN: He's leading there.

MATTINGLY: He's leading there. Holds on to it. Joe Biden overtakes Donald Trump in Michigan.

BERMAN: Which is getting closer by the minute.

MATTINGLY: It look likely at this moment. Look at the electoral vote.

BERMAN: That's there.

MATTINGLY: That's the path.

BERMAN: That's 270.

MATTINGLY: That's the path. That's the path if Georgia stays red, and that's the path if Pennsylvania is too tough to overcome with the 600,000 lead that Donald Trump currently has. Again, I want to stress here -- not done, not done, not done, not done. But if you were a Democrat and you went to bed last night assuming it was a 2016 redux and everything was over, it's not. There is a very clear pathway with a lot of vote to count, but there is a pathway.

Same goes for President Trump. He has a pathway here as well. You look through what he's been able to do, say he holds on in Michigan, say he flips Nevada because that's very, very close, and he wins Pennsylvania, and there you go. He doesn't need to win Georgia. He needs to dig into some Democratic territory and he needs to somehow manage to hold off Joe Biden in the state of Michigan and hang on to a very sizable lead right now in Pennsylvania, and he's over 270.

The reality is right now, John, both candidates have pathways. The reality is also that the Biden campaign right now should feel pretty good about where they stand given how things have progressed over the course of the last three hours.

BERMAN: The momentum over the last few hours is headed in their direction. There is still a long, long way to go. And just before we leave the wall for a moment, show me Nebraska for a second. And talk to me about this one electoral vote which could really be so important.

MATTINGLY: Yes, so it's -- we've called it.

BERMAN: That's what I mean, it's one vote that's called, and it may make the difference.

MATTINGLY: Yes, what it will do more than anything else is it will prevent a 269-269 tie, which I think everybody can appreciate to some degree. So you come over here -- sorry, it's late.

BERMAN: It's early.

MATTINGLY: Early, whatever it is. So right now, here's the interesting part. I'm pulling up the House district because we don't' have it carved out. But here is what I will do, I will draw it around, because the Republican actually ended up winning this district. Don Bacon held onto the district.

[08:15:08]

Republicans on the House side very happy with what they did last night, by the way.

Now, flip this up to presidential and you see right here, it's all blue. That is a single electoral vote. There are two states to do this. Maine two, Nebraska two, we haven't called Maine yet. Democrats felt good in Maine going into the night, hasn't appeared that way as votes coming in. Nebraska 2, Donald Trump won this in 2016.

If Arizona flips, that's one thing that flips, if this flips that's another one and it is sizable and important even though it is just a single electoral vote because there are also pathways that ended in 269-269 and I don't have the mental bandwidth to deal with that right now.

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: Basically, that's Pennsylvania protection. This means that Joe Biden could lose Pennsylvania, if he hangs on to Arizona in this he still gets 270.

Phil, I will let you go back to doing research, counting particularly look at Michigan and Pennsylvania over the next several minutes, keep us posted.

If we can, we talked about Wisconsin. Wisconsin in a way what we've seen over the last few hours might foreshadow what we see over the next few hours.

So let's go to CNN's Ryan Young live in Milwaukee -- Ryan.

RYAN YOUNG, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Yeah, so much drama here, quite honestly. Most of my career you see people do things at night in terms of maybe seeing a suspect being brought in, but we were all chasing people carrying votes and that was so interesting. In fact, we have some of this video as they brought some of those data cards over from the city to the county to register some of these votes.

We all were watching in anticipation to see exactly what happened. Let's not forget that this state was won by Donald Trump in 2016 by less than 1 percent, and it's all sort of tracking again to be a very close election. Of course, you guys were just talking about Brown County and how those votes came out.

But I think something to highlight here is the fact that Kenosha is still sort of outstanding. We're getting those information here about Kenosha and the votes from there. Just let's not forget that the president visited Kenosha, one of his last stops on the campaign trail. What did his ground team know in terms of what they needed to emphasize in those last few moments?

Of course, everyone sort of holding their breath to see how close this election will end up being. As we talked to voters yesterday we heard over and over again, several different words in terms of what people were actually voting for.

Some people were really concerned about COVID-19, obviously this state has been hit very hard by the pandemic and, in fact, we've seen numbers increasing over the last few days. We heard people say I'm concerned about where we're going health-wise.

Then when we talked to small business owners, they were concerned about another shutdown and that motivated them to come out as well.

Let's not also forget the fact that more than 1.8 million people voted early in this state. So we saw a lot of ebb and flow yesterday when it came to this election, but obviously, we thought it was going to be close again and so far as we talked to election officials, they're obviously going back through some of the information here to make sure everything is right as we talk about this vote -- John.

BERMAN: Close is one way to say it with a 20,000 vote margin separating the two candidates right now. There was an ink jet printer, they needed to get ink for a printer to print out the results and we were waiting on that. That's what we're dealing with as the votes come in.

Ryan Young, thank you so much for being with us.

Let's go over to Michigan now where the votes are still being counted and the margins have narrowed by the minute, 16 electoral votes at play.

CNN's Omar Jimenez is live for us in Detroit.

Omar, what are you seeing?

OMAR JIMENEZ, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, John, right now in Michigan it's Detroit, Flint, Grand Rapids, Sterling Heights, those are the cities that are anchoring counties where we are still seeing absentee ballots counted at this early morning hour on this second morning of votes being counted so to speak.

And the number of ballots that are being counted in a number that is wider than the margin between either of these candidates, according to Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson. Now, we are standing right now is known as the TCF Center here in Detroit, people have been working around the clock throughout the overnight hours trying to process as many absentee ballots as they possibly can, literally coming in and out in 900-person shifts just to keep, again, this process moving.

At last check that we heard from them, we had about a little over 90,000 outstanding absentee ballots, my guess is based on the pace that they've been working at over the course of the night they've shrunk that a little bit, but we did just hear from someone, an official here with the clerk's office who walked by and said they initially were hoping to get that count done by early this morning, but that it will likely be a little bit later into the day as well.

When you look at timelines that we are seeing in other locations as well, I mentioned Sterling Heights, that's in a county, a suburb of Detroit, Macomb County, they were actually hoping to get their vote done by 7:00 a.m. this morning. Well, we're obviously past that now.

[08:15:01]

And we've reached out to them, we haven't heard back on what the status of that count is as well. The county that is anchored by Grand Rapids, Kent County, they were hoping to get their count done by noon today and overall as a state, Jocelyn Benson, the secretary of state here says they will have a clear picture of what Michigan looks like by the end of the day today, and they say they are still on track for that and that is sort of the timeline they are working with at this point, which if you go back a few days, they initially thought they wouldn't be able to get to that point until Friday.

So, obviously, a lot of things have gone smoothly in their books up until this point to get them to this scenario. It's weird that we're saying a day later seems early, but that seems to be the situation here in Michigan, especially since they've seen record turnout both on the absentee ballot side and when you combine that with the people that showed up on election day, they are expected to blow past that 2008 voter turnout here in Michigan which previously had set the record for turnout in the state -- John.

BERMAN: Omar, they're doing great work counting. Buy them a coffee from all of us and tell them to get back at it. We appreciate you being with us this morning.

All right, everyone. Stand by for a key race alert.

We're getting a fresh look at the state of Pennsylvania, one of the pivotal states in the nation right now. Let's take a look at this moment, Donald Trump still leads by 618,000 votes with 75 percent of the estimated vote in, 20 electoral votes up for grabs. But, again, the vote we are waiting for is the early absentee, the vote by mail which is tended to skew Democratic and we're waiting for that vote from urban centers which also tend to skew Democratic.

So let's go to Pamela Brown at the voting desk for a deeper look at Pennsylvania and where things stand -- Pamela.

PAMELA BROWN, CNN SENIOR WHITE HOUS CORRESPONDENT: All right. So, let's put this into perspective. You pointed out that the margin is a little over 600,000 in Trump's favor, but here is the thing, only 44 percent of the early ballots have been counted. There are still 1.4 million left to be counted out of the 2.5 million early ballots cast in Philadelphia. So that is more than the margin there in Pennsylvania.

Now, nearly 22 percent of the mail-in ballots counted, more than 272,000 mail-in ballots were in Philadelphia. That's important. That's a Democratic stronghold. We're still waiting for those numbers to come in. I'm told they're working diligently in Philadelphia trying to get those numbers as quickly as possible.

Then you go to the suburbs, Bucks County, more than 30 percent mail-in ballots counted, more than 107,000 left to be counted there. Allegheny County, that's the home of Pittsburgh, more than 48,000 mail-in ballots counted so that's more than 178,000 left to be counted there.

Another suburb outside of Philadelphia, Montgomery County, nearly 49 percent mail-in ballots counted. So, that's more than 121,000 left to be counted.

Just to put this in perspective as well. We've been talking about skewing, you know, early vote skewing left and the day of votes of the election skewing right. We know in Pennsylvania the early votes accounted for -- were tied to 65 percent registered Dems and 23 percent registered Republicans.

I also want to look at Wisconsin because it is razor thin there and Wisconsin two counties we have been waiting on are done counting. You mentioned that printer issue there, Brown and Kenosha were those two places. All that's left to count now are some provisional ballots in the state.

So here is where things stand in these two key states, Wisconsin has just 3 percent of the vote remaining, Pennsylvania has 25 percent of the vote remaining and nine counties in Pennsylvania, John, just started counting today and don't forget there's that grace period, the three-day post election grace period for mail-in ballots to arrive there in Pennsylvania to be counted.

Of course, they could be under a legal dispute if it gets down to the wire.

BERMAN: Pamela Brown for us at the voting desk. I know everyone has got their calculators out trying to do the math to see if it adds up. The bottom line is the math is there, it is possible for Joe Biden to make up that margin. Likely? We don't know. But possible, yes.

Pamela, thank you very much.

On that possible note, let's go live to my friend Kate Bolduan. She is in Philadelphia -- where if Democrats are to cut into this margin, a big chunk will have to come from Philadelphia, Kate.

KATE BOLDUAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Yeah, that's exactly right, John. Here in Philadelphia where I'm standing outside of the convention center, this is where all of the action is happening this morning and to be honest it hasn't stopped. It's been happening counting and processing of these mail-in ballots has been happening all throughout the night.

Here is what we know and that's -- and we don't know a lot, but here is what we do know, there is more than a million ballots that have still yet to be counted and we are talking about the mail-in ballots and the biggest counties in the commonwealth the numbers are important.

For perspective, in Philadelphia 141,000 mail-in ballots have been counted, that is not yet half of the mail-ins that have been returned.

[08:25:10]

In Allegheny County where Pittsburgh is, not yet half of those mail-in ballots have been counted. In Montgomery County which is the big suburb outside of Philadelphia, not yet -- same story there, not yet half of the mail-ins have been counted.

Bucks County, outside Philadelphia same story there. Caution is what I'm hearing. What Pennsylvania election officials are offering me this morning, caution because there's so many mail-ins that have yet to be counted.

Let me play for you what one of the Philadelphia county commissioners said this morning about the road ahead.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

AL SCHMIDT, PHILADELPHIA CITY COMMISSIONER: If everything keeps up we will have the total results in the next couple of days, but Pennsylvania allows votes to be received and counted up until Friday, three days after the election. So we can't count what we don't yet have. So if you've mailed your ballot on or before Election Day on Tuesday and it comes in Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, those votes will be counted.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BOLDUAN: Now, nine counties in the commonwealth did not start processing and counting the mail-in ballots yesterday. They are only starting to count the mail-in ballots this morning. That's nine counties in Pennsylvania.

All of this data is to say what you know, John, which is there is still a long way to go. Here in Philadelphia we are expecting an update from the county commissioners on how things are going and have gone overnight, but they stress that the counting has been going on -- going on all throughout the night, we were getting updates on numbers that we were expecting coming up in the 9:00 hour, but in a state -- in this -- in Pennsylvania which we know was won by 44,000 votes four years ago, a million ballots, more than a million ballots still left to be counted is a lot.

BERMAN: It sure is. I know they're working very hard at getting it done. We are waiting patiently for more results.

Kate Bolduan in Philadelphia, thank you very much.

And we are expecting more votes to come in shortly from any one of the six key states that have yet to be called. In the next state that tilts in one direction could be decisive in telling us where this entire election will go.

CNN's special live coverage continues right after this.

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