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Joe Biden Still Ahead of Trump; GOP Leading in Senate Race; Susan Collins with a Big Lead in Maine; Sen. Lindsey Graham Won Another Term in Senate; CNN's Coverage of the Election Night in America Narrowing on Pennsylvania; Presidential Race for the White House Narrows as Votes are Being Counted. Aired 3-4a ET

Aired November 05, 2020 - 03:00   ET

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

[03:00:00]

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CHRIS CUOMO, CNN HOST: Election night in America continues. I'm Chris Cuomo along with one and only Don Lemon.

Votes being counted tonight in the remaining states yet to be called all over the country. There are races that matter. Let's show you the latest results. We have a key race alert.

All right. Arizona, 11 electoral votes, we just had a move there. The president is making ground on Joe Biden. Can he continue to overperform, do better than he had been doing in areas, and chop down the leader? There are enough outstanding votes. Will he win enough of them? We'll see.

Right now, 50.5 percent to 48.1. Another 15 percent of the vote still to come in. And Georgia, big x factor for this president if he can hold on to it. The lead has been just falling in big, big lumps. Twenty-three thousand is still the spread, 49.6, 49.1 for Biden.

And now let's look at the state of play on the electoral map, 253 - 213. Why? Because the white places have not been decided. And we are going to not color it in yet. White places, whatever you want to call them. I'm not talking about demographics.

All right. So, Phil, when we're looking at the map, let's worry about what matters here, which is to look at Arizona. And with that little bit of change in play and what that tells us about how we're looking at what to expect.

PHIL MATTINGLY, CNN CORRESPONDENT: I think this is a key thing, is what's actually left to come in, right? Because as it currently stands right now Joe Biden 68,390 votes ahead. And what you're looking at has been what we've been looking at throughout the course of the night and that is Maricopa County. Sixty percent of the population is here. This is the county.

And we know based on the great reporting from Kyung Lah, they have about 320, somewhere around there, thousand votes left right now. So, what is coming in from there and what's the composition of that vote outstanding? As it currently stands in the county, Joe Biden up 51.4 percent, 47.2 percent. Why does that matter? Flip back to 2016.

Donald Trump won this state and he won this county. If you want to win the state of Arizona, particularly if you're a Democrat, you have to win Maricopa, at least by a couple points. Right now, Joe Biden is doing that. The question is will he be able to hold on to it?

Here's what we know about the outstanding vote up to this point. Donald Trump in the last several batches that have come out of Maricopa County, and why Donald Trump has started to close the margin both on the top line and in the county is he is overperforming. He has been hitting his target and his target is essentially trying to hit 56 percent or 57 percent of every vote batch that's coming out.

So far, last couple batches, he's done just that. And that is why his top line has dropped significantly over the course of the last 12 hours, from about 200,000 to 68,000. The big question on the outstanding vote is has the majority of the Republican vote or the Republican vote that would give Donald Trump that margin essentially come in? Is everything else in Maricopa even or somewhere with Joe Biden having a lead like this? If Joe Biden hangs on to these margins, he's fine, he will win the state of Arizona. That's the outstanding question.

Now, people on the ground, Democrats in particular, believe Biden will be OK. They believe that the remaining vote is not as heavy Republican as we've seen the last couple batches. We will have to wait and see if that's the case. This is still very much a live ball.

Kyung, though, reported, great reporting throughout the course of the night, no more information over the course of the next several hours. We're going to have to wait and see here. But we just got the new data and that new data has made very clear that Arizona is still very tight.

CUOMO: Absolutely. We understand why the president's team didn't like that it had been called by another organization. Now, why would the campaign know better than we do? Because they have better information about who the person was that asked for the mail-in ballot based on party registration. So, they have more ease of tracking things. Is it absolute? No.

The key point, we're not going to learn more tonight. And in the size of batches we've been getting in the tens of thousands, 60, 70, it's going to take a few cycles of them getting through it. Let them take their time. They're doing God's work for our democracy. Good for them.

All right. So, state of play, my friend. Brilliantly explained and thank you. How does it play into a theory of what needs to happen and for whom?

MATTINGLY: Can we go into Georgia real quick and just kind of -- because we're still getting some vote in to Georgia and I want -- I want to through, just hasn't moved a ton. But right now look at the margin right here because this all plays into what I'm about to show you.

CUOMO: OK.

MATTINGLY: Donald Trump right now up 23,000 votes, 95 percent reporting. This has been somewhat static. But you've seen over the course of the last several hours it went from 31,000 to 29,000 to 25,000 to 23,000. Why is that happening? Well, it's primarily been driven by Fulton County, largest county in the state. And the vote that has been coming in is vote by mail and the Democratic county. You see the margin right here. You understand this is a Democratic county.

[03:04:57]

And instead of 72-26, the vote by mail that's been coming in for Biden has been coming in 80-20, 80-20. Which means everything that's coming in is going heavily in his direction, something that we've seen over the course of the night. So, the big question for the Biden campaign and the big question for the Trump campaign, which needs to hang on to this, is what's outstanding and can they hang on? I think the bigger question now is when is what's outstanding going to be reported? That's the question we need the biggest answer to.

But it underscores as we've gone through this Donald Trump's whittling away the margins in Arizona. Joe Biden is whittling away the margins in Georgia. So where does that leave us? This is the map as it currently stands. Everything that's blue has been called for Vice President Biden. Everything that's red has been called for President Trump. That puts you at 253 electoral votes for Biden, 213 electoral votes for President Trump.

Let's take what we have here and go ahead and add the state of North Carolina to President Trump. We're not calling this race right now. What we're doing is trying to game out possibilities to show pathways right now.

CUOMO: And Alaska.

MATTINGLY: And Alaska. Give him Alaska as well. So, what does that leave you with? What have we been talking about? Let's say President Trump wins Arizona -- wins Arizona, takes it back from Joe Biden. Let's say President Trump wins Nevada, right now, down by 7,000 votes. We don't know what's going to happen. Tomorrow, Clark County will report, we'll have some better idea of where that stands. Right now, Biden is up by 7,000 votes.

What I'm demonstrating is the difficulty that President Trump has at this moment. You give him Arizona, you give him Nevada, you give him North Carolina, which we expect to go his way. Give him Georgia. Give him Georgia. If Joe Biden wins the state of Pennsylvania, the race is over, Joe Biden at 270 electoral votes. That's why we've been talking about Pennsylvania so much throughout the course of the night. We're still waiting on Pennsylvania.

President Trump has the lead right now, 164,000. But you talk about margins getting narrowed down. It was at 700,000 about 12 hours ago. Now it's about 164,000 with a lot of Democratic vote heading out there.

So that's kind of the pathway right now. If Pennsylvania goes to Vice President Biden, that's it. President Trump wins Pennsylvania and wins everything else, he should be good to go. President Trump can afford to lose Arizona if he wins Pennsylvania and Georgia and Nevada. What we're laying out here is that President Trump needs a lot of things to fall in line over the course of the next couple of days --

CUOMO: Right.

MATTINGLY: -- to be able to win here. And the biggest, the biggest by far is the state of Pennsylvania.

LEMON: And look, I understand why people are tired. You're getting fatigued. But one of the common questions that keeps coming up is what changed? You know, Trump was doing so well. He lost Wisconsin and he lost Michigan. Those had been projected. Those are a huge difference there. And everybody was always drawing these two lines for you down this corridor of Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania. And that held true. Two of them have been given to Biden. That's the big change.

And of course, when you hadn't counted all the votes it was going to look lopsided. Now that you have counted the votes, we're starting to get a different picture but the president still very much in it. I'm going to go talk to the panel a little bit there.

So, Harry, let me start with you. In terms of the president having a harder pathway, give me a sense of how true that is given him overperforming to date in Arizona and making a comeback.

HARRY ENTEN, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL WRITER AND ANALYST: I mean, look, even if he won in Arizona, right? And let's say he win in Nevada and then he goes up and wins in Alaska. Let's say you give him Georgia, you give him North Carolina. If Joe Biden wins in Pennsylvania, that gets him over the top, right?

And that I think sort of just gives you an idea of how narrow the pathway is for the president at this point because even if he nearly sweeps the board but loses in Pennsylvania he still loses. Simply put, Joe Biden has many more paths to 270 electoral votes than Donald Trump does at this point.

CUOMO: Nia, you made a great point earlier on about what might have been driving this biggest popular vote we may have ever seen for Joe Biden. What that means about systemic inequality and people's passions and pain being sent to purpose.

Let's flip it.

NIA-MALIKA HENDERSON, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL REPORTER: Yes.

CUOMO: What does it mean that the Democrats thought they were going to get one kind of result? Let's put the popular vote aside. And they lost House seats. The Senate doesn't seem to be going the way they wanted. And the president seems to be much stronger. What is the reciprocal realization? HENDERSON: You know, Donald Trump has a very powerful message to

particularly white Americans who are dealing with all sorts of anxiety, one of which is economic anxiety. Some of it is anxiety about the changing demographics of America. America will be a minority majority country by 2050 or so. And you saw Donald Trump really play into that much more so than he did in many ways in 2016. It was sort of on steroids, the kind of culture war that we're used to hearing from this president.

So that was very effective for him. I think it was in some ways a surprise, a disappointment to some Democrats to see that it worked so well. They thought it would turn off many more white voters, particularly college-educated white voters than it did.

[03:09:59]

But yes, that's sort of the reality of where Republican Party politics are under Trump. We'll see if that changes if there is a post-Trump era. But I think the lesson if you're a Republican is these kind of culture wars work with a wide swath of the American public and if you're a Democrat you have to do something different.

It's a very different, more diverse coalition. You have to think about the sort of complaints of African-Americans and the issues of a wider swath of America. But I think it is a real surprise to a lot of Americans that this is who the Republican Party is and it works so effectively.

CUOMO: You want to talk about Pennsylvania. We will. But Mark, the idea of the House seats. OK? Did the Democrats lose House seats in places where Trump was strong, so it's really that Trump effect? Is that why they got them?

MARK PRESTON, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL ANALYST: Yes, it is. And I have a lot of conversations today with folks within the party trying to figure out how they're sassing it out and what's their next step forward. And I know I'm all doom and gloom at this hour of the morning but I like to look over the hill and see what's going to happen afterwards because as, you know, as Phil is so aptly counting with Harry here, like, we'll get to the finish line. The question is what happens on the other side of the finish line.

I will tell you a couple take takeaways. There was an incredible amount of money that was put into Senate races and into some House races that donors right now I'm being told are saying what did we do? We flushed tens of millions of dollars down the toilet when in fact -- like for instance, I'll use an example, money was spent in a Kentucky Senate race that seemed to be like a great idea, let's go in, Amy McGrath had a great profile, she was a veteran.

But guess what. She lived in Kentucky and she was running against the Senate majority leader who we all know is really one of the craftiest politicos of our time. Why wasn't that money put into Georgia, for instance? We're now going to go into a runoff where we could actually have the reverend of the Ebenezer Baptist Church. Just imagine him running in January now. This is going to be a huge

race for Democrats and Republicans. But had they had an extra 10 or 15 million dollars, could Democrats have crossed that threshold?

CUOMO: What is the issue? Isn't it the it was a good idea at the time kind of analysis?

PRESTON: So, a couple things. One is I think you're right, like listen, Donald Trump had coattails in some places even though he's going to lose. But I also do think that there really is this inward look at how we run campaigns.

And look, you grew up in the business. You know how campaigns have evolved over time and over time. I do think that the way campaigns are run now is absolutely over with. It's absolutely over with. We're going to see an entirely different way of how money is being spent. I'm not saying that it's necessarily going to work. But we are going to see a transformation and I do think that the COVID situation we've run into accelerated where we're going to be in the next --

(CROSSTALK)

CUOMO: Nia, you had a point you want to weigh in?

HENDERSON: I was going to say, I mean, you think, we're talking about the South Carolina race with Jaime Harrison, he raised what, like, $56 million. I'm from South Carolina. I never thought that Jaime Harrison was ever going to win that race. Nobody in South Carolina who I would talk to on the ground thought that was a competitive race. The polls juiced that race up and you had all of this outside money flowing in, thinking that white, white, you know, South Carolinians might pull the lever --

(CROSSTALK)

CUOMO: He's the Beto of this round.

HENDERSON: Well, Beto did much better, I think.

ENTEN: Beto lost -- Beto lost by less than three points.

HARRISON: Yes.

ENTEN: Jaime Harrison --

PRESTON: You're talking about Beto for the presidential or battle for the Senate?

CUOMO: No, I'm saying the key word is lost.

HENDERSON: Right.

CUOMO: You know, you guys have this fascination with getting close, which I've never understood, you know. It really, it's only horseshoes and hand grenades. You know, if you lose, all that money is gone and you have not made Mitch McConnell or Senator Graham any more vulnerable because you came close.

HENDERSON: Right. I don't think anybody -- I think everybody agrees with you.

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CUOMO: I think you give him some solace in it, this guy. You know, he came close --

(CROSSTALK)

ENTEN: We deal in margin. We don't deal in binaries. We deal in margins, continuous linear regressions. Look, here's the thing as far as I'm concerned, just broadening out a little bit. We have a global pandemic right now. We have a President of the United States whose disapproval on handling the coronavirus was approaching if not over 60 percent of the vote. And as we stand at this hour, he still has a shot to get re-elected.

CUOMO: Yes.

ENTEN: How powerful is his message beyond that that he's still in the ball game even at this late hour despite the supposed -- or the belief that he mishandled the pandemic?

PRESTON: I don't think it's his message at all. I think it's the fact that let's go back to what we talked about a half hour ago. Racism, you know, is dividing our country right now and people just don't care. They have license now to have no morals and to just speak without thinking. And that's where our problem is right now.

[03:15:04]

CUOMO: All right. Let's take a break. A state that is being discussed a lot but we're not really flying through understanding of it with new data is Pennsylvania, 12 electoral votes. You're going to start to hear more and more about how for the former V.P. this may be the best path even though it has the biggest gap between him and the president. Why? When? How? Next.

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CUOMO: All right. If we tick through what matters and is still open issues, obviously we're waiting to see what the tally is that gets us to our next president. There is also a problem with potential litigation on two fronts. One you're hearing a lot of I believe unnecessarily, which is questioning the way states are counting. I think that's noise. A real issue that's not getting enough attention is what's happening with the United States Postal Service. OK?

[03:19:56]

We know a federal judge is involved. We know they believe that there's been inefficiencies and some of those inefficiencies are in the states that matter now. But what about that potential litigation or a cure for that? How many ballots that should be counted that are legitimate may not be because of our Postal Service. And what is the reason for that?

What else are we looking at? The Senate. It turned out so bizarrely different than certainly Democrats and their supporters believe. So let's check on that. Boris Sanchez has the state of the Senate. Good to see you.

BORIS SANCHEZ, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Good to see you as well, Chris. Yes, look, Democrats had a real opportunity here in about a dozen different races that they felt were competitive that would have allowed them to take control of the U.S. Senate. It's not really trending in that direction.

But there is one small very narrow path, purely hypothetical, that we'll get into. First let's look at the balance of power, where things stand right now in terms of the real numbers. It's effectively a stalemate, Democrats with 47 seats, one pickup in the state of Colorado, Republicans with 47 seats, one pickup for them in the state of Alabama, six seats that remain undecided.

Let's dig a little bit deeper with some key race alerts. First let's look at Arizona. Right now the former astronaut Mark Kelly, the husband of Gabby Giffords, he's comfortably ahead of Martha McSally. She has refused to concede in this race. We're still getting votes in from Arizona. Other outlets have already called this race. We're still hanging on. We're getting very close to calling Arizona for Mark Kelly, but we're not there just yet.

Let's go ahead and pivot to Maine. Republican incumbent Susan Collins, about 52,000 votes of Sara Gideon, the speaker of the Maine House of Representatives. Gideon has conceded but if you look at where Collins is, 0.3 percent above 50 percent, there are still some votes to come in. There's a chance that the rank choice tabulation, that rank choice voting in Maine, may change the calculus here. So we're not calling this race yet. But Democrats aren't really optimistic that this one is going to flip.

So, let's look at North Carolina. This was the most expensive race in Senate history. And right now, Thom Tillis 96,000 votes ahead of Cal Cunningham, 94 percent of the vote in, again, not really a pathway here. For Democrats, they're not confident that this seat will flip where things are in this race. But it's still just close enough that we're not ready to call it despite Thom Tillis's lead.

Now, this is where the hypothetical comes into play. Right now, in the Senate election in Georgia, David Perdue well ahead of former journalist Jon Ossoff. He's got about three, almost three points on him. But here's the key. With 95 percent of the vote in he only has about .1 percent above that 50 percent threshold needed to avoid a runoff. Georgia has that runoff rule. If you don't get above 50 percent, they'll see you on January 5th, there's essentially a new election.

We're still getting votes, there are tens of thousands of votes outstanding in Georgia. He may dip below that 50 percent mark. Let's look at the special Senate election in Georgia. That one definitely going to a runoff on January 5th. Right now, the Reverend Raphael Warnock, 314,000 votes ahead of

Republican incumbent Kelly Loeffler. Those two will square off on January 5th almost assuredly very low chance that anybody's going to cross 50 percent there.

A lot of information I just gave you a lot of numbers. Let's look at the two most important ones. As we talk about control of the Senate, Democrats will need at least four pickups to take control of the U.S. Senate. And currently with that race in Arizona they only are leading in one race where a Republican holds the seat.

But here's where things get interesting, Chris. If Joe Biden is elected president, that magic number goes from four to three because then potentially vice president Kamala Harris holds the tie-breaking vote in the Senate. And then if David Perdue slips below 50 percent and you're talking about two special elections coming up in Georgia at the beginning of January that could decide the fate of the U.S. Senate, again, a lot of hypotheticals there but it is really the biggest likelihood that Democrats have at this point to take control of the Senate, Chris.

CUOMO: Boris Sanchez, that was a lot of information and a lot of maybes. Thank you for taking us through it, along way to go, long way to go. We have to take our time on that narrow path for the Democrats. Let's take it to the panel, Mark Preston. I wear new balance sneakers to avoid a narrow path. Who said it? What rap?

PRESTON: My brother would be very happy because he's the president of new balance. Isn't that interesting?

CUOMO: Tribe called quest. Phife dawg. The idea of how they got it so wrong -- that was a good pitch, though, for your family. I respect that.

PRESTON: I don't even like them.

CUOMO: The idea of why they got it so wrong. Is this a discussion about one side rejecting the pain of another? Or is this about priorities?

[03:25:03]

And pain taking different manifestations across the country and the Democrats getting wrong how real the pain is, that it's not tied to Trump. And you had to do better for us. You have to recognize us and you have to stop representing what scares us and causes our pain and you didn't, so you're going to lose all these races.

HENDERSON: You know, I think it's unclear. I think Susan Collins was a much tougher candidate than people thought she would be. They thought she was going to --

(CROSSTALK)

CUOMO: She was getting beat up in the polls.

HENDERSON: Yes, exactly. She was getting beat up in the polls. Cunningham in North Carolina was up by 10 in some of these --

(CROSSTALK)

CUOMO: In the polls.

HENDERSON: -- polls.

CUOMO: Collins never led in a poll.

HENDERSON: Yes. For instance, like Harry there were sort of embracing those numbers.

CUOMO: Love those numbers.

HENDERSON: Yes. And it ended up just not --

(CROSSTALK)

CUOMO: Linear regressions. How about that regression of those polls and their value in those races? How is that feeling, my friend?

ENTEN: It's 3.25 in the morning. My goodness gracious. Look, I think, though, the real story in the Senate beyond the Collins race, which is its own unique thing and I think she had a unique brand in Maine and just a good politician that fit the state well, is in every state I believe in which Donald Trump is leading the Republican candidate for Senate is leading and in every state in which the Democratic Senate candidate is leading Joe Biden is leading in that state.

And that's what we're talking about here, is people came out in support or opposition to Donald Trump and they voted that way up and down the ballot with the exception of Maine.

CUOMO: Somebody missed something. I know it all makes sense now. But somebody missed something, Mark, because there was a very different set of assumptions going into this. I agree with you about your point. I'm sure everybody does. It's not just the man with Trump. People forgive him a lot of things because he represents something to them that they want to change. I don't even think it's his message. I don't even know that he has one, to be honest.

But their pain is real. Their anxiety is real, real enough that they'll look past his weaknesses and flaws and that he doesn't articulate what they're upset about well but he does project that animus. He hates the same things in people they do.

PRESTON: Interesting about the Trump coalition is he has brought together the aggrieved, the angry, and the rightfully so aggrieved middle class in America, which has been absolutely left behind by corporate America.

And by the way, he's brought along corporate America as well, who is just loving what's happening by and large with the stock exchange right now and what's going on with the stock market. You know, I think when we look at the Senate and we look back at what happened I think that we're going to see that not only are people angry and they use Trump as the vessel to deliver that anger but the fact of the matter is that we are different.

You know, people that live in Virginia are going to be different than folks that live down in Mississippi. And I just think that as much as we look at polls and we think Democrats might be able to get back, you know, this state or that state, it's really not that easy. It's not that easy.

And as much as I'm talking about how demographics are changing, and I do think that in Georgia they have changed very quickly, I also think that we are again a very divided nation, that it's hard to move people off of their positions.

CUOMO: All right. Let's get a little bit of break time in here, get some new perspective and numbers. I think we're going to have a little bit of a nugget of insight. We're getting new information from our correspondent Alexandra Field, who is on the count in Pennsylvania. We will zero in on Allegheny County. Next.

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[03:30:00]

CHRIS CUOMO, CNN HOST: All right. CNN's Alexandra Field is in Pittsburgh. Alex, you've been digging into what votes are yet to come in? You've got a little information for us?

ALEXANDRA FIELD, CNN INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Sure. Look, Chris, I have been watching you and Phil try to teas at how many more votes there could be left to find to chase in the State of Pennsylvania. What we are seeing right now, is that Allegheny County is saying that they have finished that long and arduous process that some have complained about concerning counting of those mail-in ballots.

You've seen some of the video of this. These ballots that have to be taken out of the envelope, out of the secrecy envelope, loaded into the machines, some people are saying why is this taking so long? That's exactly why it's taking so long.

But Allegheny County, home to Pittsburgh, is saying that part of the process is done, they've opened up all those ballots, they've loaded them and they have now counted some 313,000 mail-in ballots to the county's current total number of votes.

There are still some in-person votes that need to be tallied up. We're expecting to get more of those tomorrow. What are we learning from these mail-in ballots? Well, what we're seeing here in Pittsburgh is a trend that you guys have been tracking across the state.

The in-person votes tended to err toward Donald Trump in Allegheny County. The mail-in ballots that have been received have overwhelmingly gone to former Vice President Joe Biden. That's the trend here.

The number that I just told you about, Chris, that 313,000, that is what is currently being factored into the total number of votes in the county. But the county has also let us know that there's another pool of ballots that they received in the mail about 35,000 and those need to be subject to hand review.

They believe that the bulk of those ballots may have been some of the 29,000 ballots that the county incorrectly sent out. The county sent them out with errors. The county then went about working weeks before the election to give voters new ballots, but they believe that they may have potentially received some of those old ballots as well as the new and updated ballots.

So, that's something they've got to sort out. They've also got to look at a few thousand ballots that they weren't able to put through the machines that do need to be reviewed by hand because of certain areas. How do we look at this in total?

Well, it's showing us a trend again, we see across the state, that the large metro areas were expected to go for Biden and that seems to be exactly what is shaping up here, but more importantly it should get us closer to understanding exactly how much vote there is left to chase in Pennsylvania. Chris?

[03:35:03]

CUOMO: I appreciate it. Thank you for the download, Alexandra. So let's go over the magic wall with Phil Mattingly. 313,000 and then there are some maybes, right? That they're looking into, that did we send it twice? Obviously you can't vote twice. And they'll go through all of that. We don't know when. Maybe sometime tomorrow. How does this fit into your reckoning?

PHIL MATTINGLY, CNN CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: It's what -- the best way to describe it is you look at the margin right now. OK, so, Alex did a great job describing Allegheny and what this vote actually means. We expected it to go to Biden. Obviously the home of Pittsburg if you flip back to 2016 it went Clinton. But look at two top line numbers here. Look at the percentage, 56 percent and look at 367,000.

Now look at what's going on right now. Biden has a higher margin. And he's got about 30,000 more votes with still about 11 percent reporting. So what does that mean?

This is what you, Harry, and me have been talking about a lot of times during commercial breaks over the course of the last several hours, which is what Joe Biden is doing in Pennsylvania as we wait, again, for Philadelphia County to come in, some of the collar counties to come in as well, and Donald Trump holds 164,000 vote lead, is he is beating margins from 2016.

He's beating margins from 2016. The turnout is higher than 2016. That's 30,000 more votes in the Democratic column. That is a two, three-point margin increase right there. And so we're trying to extrapolate that out a little bit, right. What are we waiting for most? We're waiting for Philadelphia County. We're waiting for the City of Philadelphia to come in. There's 30 percent vote outstanding right now, that's 457,000 votes in the Democratic column as it currently stands.

What was the turnout for Democrats back in 2016? 584,000. My point is this. With 30 percent outstanding right now if you're looking across the Democratic strongholds in the state of which Allegheny is one. And Alex kind of gave us the rundown. And Joe Biden, the turnout for Democrats is 30,000, 40,000-plus in Allegheny and we're still waiting for Philadelphia County, and they're right now currently about 130,000 down from what they were in 2016.

You've seen the turnout surge in Democratic strongholds throughout the state. You know what happened in Allegheny. You expect something like that or akin to that to happen in Philadelphia County and the city of Philadelphia.

We've been trying to nail down how much vote is outstanding here. 100, 120, maybe something around that, thousand. It gives you an indication if you extrapolate out and try to look at the trends in this state, of what we're missing right now and what kind of turnout Democrats have been getting.

You can look at the margins. You can look at the margins in the strongholds. Joe Biden's matching or doing better than Hillary Clinton in Democratic strongholds. You can look in the margins for Republicans. There's a huge Republican vote here for President Trump back in 2016. It was big again. And there's still some vote outstanding.

However, it's down. It's down a little bit. Just .2 points, .1 points. And you see that consistently throughout the state. So, that's kind of -- it's what we're doing to identify what's outstanding, what's left, and is Joe Biden either over performing or is President Trump underperforming? Here's one thing I want to show you, because I think this is actually pretty good.

Where is Biden over performing Clinton by 5 percent or more? Where is Donald Trump over performing where he was in 2016? A couple counties right now. A couple of counties, where is he underperforming? Not a lot. So it's interesting. Where is Biden underperforming? A couple counties here. Now look at this counties.

What's left? A lot of vote. A lot of vote is left. What have we been talking about over the course of the night? These Republican counties. Remember I ticked through hour by hour by hour. As mail-in votes started to come in Alex was talking about this in Allegheny County, mail-in vote leaning heavily Democrat. It's the same thing in Republican counties as well.

Watch how this margin changes when 79 percent goes up to 100 percent. The margin will still be big for Donald Trump. There's no question about it. But it will start narrowing a little bit. And that is where Joe Biden is picking up vote as you wait for the big urban centers as well.

CUOMO: How many outstanding votes do we believe there are in Pennsylvania?

MATTINGLY: So, this is a topic of discussion Harry and I have been in over the course of the last several hours. Harry, do you want to -- what's your sense right now? HARRY ENTEN, CNN POLITICS SENIOR WRITER AND ANALYST: We're getting

different reports, right? The Secretary of State or the election officials there think that there's north of 700,000. That was the last posting. Phil and I actually think it's somewhat less than, it is closer to perhaps a little less than 500,000.

That to me doesn't necessarily change the bottom line, which is I do think that there are enough votes out there for Joe Biden to overcome his deficit. But there is some discussion about that, and that's something that obviously will have to be resolved.

CUOMO: All right. And look, the best cure, more information. So as it comes in -- but again, you know, thematically consistent. It takes the time it takes. OK? Human beings are doing this with the addition of machines. Let them take the time. The only premise was always to count all the votes. We got off on the wrong foot with that idea for a bad reason.

But now we're all on the same page as the information comes in. We're counting it. Hashtag keep counting because that's what democracy demands. Let's take a break. We'll be right back. Find out why he's coughing.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[03:40:00]

DON LEMON, CNN HOST: I like to say that we're up so you won't have to be up. But we're up because you're up and you're watching us and we know that you want to know what's going on with this election. So, let's bring in some folks who are up because they want to inform you. And that is Bakari Sellers, Ryan Lizza, and Alice Stewart. Right? You guys still awake? You're good?

[03:45:02]

ALICE STEWART, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: We're still awake. Lots of coffee.

RYAN LIZZA, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR, CHIEF POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT, ESQUIRE MAGAZINE: Absolutely, 100 percent, Don.

LEMON: So, Alice, I'm a Fulton County guy. I wasn't born and raised but I lived there for a long time. You were born and raised in DeKalb County. Talking about Georgia. OK, so, what are you -- I'm sure you've been talking to Republicans there. What have they been saying to you?

STEWART: The numbers are certainly closing in. And it's a long shot but it's a slight possibility that Vice President Joe Biden could pull this off. Because the numbers of Democratic voters in Fulton County and DeKalb County are so large, and it's interesting. If you look at the state map of Georgia, it is mostly red. Except for you look at Atlanta, Savannah, Macon and Albany, the bigger cities across the state. And those are typically more Democrat. And the key here is that, you know, the president won Georgia by six

points back in 2016 and right now it is less than one percentage point that he has the lead. And I think it's also important to note all eyes are on this presidential race and it's key to keep an eye on that. We are counting all the ballots.

The Secretary of State has assured voters every legitimate, every legal vote will be counted and it will be added to the total. And that is important to reassure voters that they are following the process and they're encouraging people to be patient.

LEMON: Are they nervous? Are your friends nervous? Are the Republicans in Georgia and DeKalb County where you're from, born and raised, are they nervous? Or are they optimistic?

STEWART: I'll be honest with you, Don. The Republicans I'm talking to in DeKalb County and Fulton County, they're nervous. And they're concerned not just -- not just so much the presidential. That is important because that could certainly help Joe Biden get to the 270. They're also concerned about that Senate race. And Boris outlined it very well earlier in the hour, talking about the two Senate races.

We already have one that is going to go to a runoff in January. We have the Republican didn't get the 50 percent threshold. We now have Senator David Perdue potentially could not stay at the 50 percent threshold. He would also go into a runoff with Jon Ossoff in January. That would lead to potentially two Republican-held Senate seats in Georgia. Both of them could potentially go Democrat. And I will tell you what, they're concerned about the president but the Senate as well.

LEMON: Yes. Reverend Ralph Warnock is in one of those races. Ryan, I've got to ask you, and we've got to move it along because they may be getting some more vote totals coming in here. Well, there's a major election headline here. And that is Democrats did not bring in -- bring it for the House and the Senate as Alice was just talking about. The Senate races. But you say even Biden, if Biden can pull this off that he's screwed? Why do you say that?

LIZZA: Well, I don't write the headlines. But no, look, if Biden wins and they're going to have a reduced -- Democrats will have reduced numbers in the House, that's not as meaningful. They'll still be able to pass stuff through the House. But in the Senate the only case for the Senate right now is those two seats in Georgia. Right? That's the best case for the Senate right now.

Those two seats in Georgia go to a runoff and in January the Democrats win them both, you'll have a tie Senate with Kamala Harris breaking the ties. In the more likely scenario where you have a Biden presidency and Mitch McConnell and Republicans running the Senate, we're going to be back to the situation that Obama experienced for a good chunk of his term.

Mitch McConnell will have to make a decision based on his members and how much they want to cut deals with Biden. I think Biden personally will be interested in cutting deals. A lot of liberal Democrats will not be.

And you're going to have, you know, you are going to have half a dozen Republican Senators running for president in 2024 under that scenario and they're going to have no incentive to give Joe Biden any victories, and I hate to be, you know, grim. I know that we're going to have deadlock in Washington under that scenario.

LEMON: Bakari, you remember it. I'm going to make Barack Obama a one- term president. That's my job. That's what Mitch McConnell said. Do you think Mitch McConnell might be more open to working with a Joe Biden, who he knows in years past and doesn't happen to be the first black president? Do you think he may be more open or he's going to want to make Joe Biden a one-term president and not work with him?

BAKARI SELLERS, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR, FORMER HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES: I think that Joe Biden is going to come in and be able to do more things than Barack Obama was able to do. But I agree with Ryan. I mean, it's a pretty dead end situation having to go through a Republican Senate because not only do the Republicans, sparing what may happen in Georgia, not only do the Republicans control the Senate but they also control the courts. Which is also very important.

I want to piggyback on one thing that was said earlier, though. And I want to remind people that we still have yet a ways to go. And Democrats are going to have to hold out hope. Last night Democrats went through this spiral where we were going downhill. Now we're all worn out. We're tired.

[03:50:04]

We're looking at the screen. We're trying to figure out what's going on in Arizona and Nevada. But Democrats still can actually win the Senate. It's tough. But we will get the golden ticket, which is the White House.

LEMON: All right, Bakari. Bakari, you're a glass half full. And you're right. It's so hard -- it just started hitting me, it's so hard to keep a train of thought when we've been up for this --

SELLERS: It's 4:00 in the morning.

(LAUGHTER)

It's 4:00 in the morning. I'm trying to run some things together here. And I'm doing the best I can do.

LEMON: I'm with you, my brother. Same thing. I'm like where am I? Read what? OK. Thank you all. I'll see you soon. Get some rest. All right?

LIZZA: Thanks, Don.

STEWART: Thanks, Don.

LEMON: You're watching the votes come in. Don't go anywhere. (COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[03:55:00]

CUOMO: All right. CNN is ready with a key race alert. We're looking at it right now. Pennsylvania. Numbers will be coming in. We're not sure when. But we know that there are a lot of votes out there ready to be counted. Twenty electoral votes up for grabs, 89 percent of that vote estimated to be in.

But remember, that's an estimate. There are hundreds of thousands of votes still to come in. Mathematically, Joe Biden could meet or even beat Donald Trump in the State of Pennsylvania. We're watching it very closely overnight. Georgia, 16 electoral votes, 95 percent of the estimate.

Again, where the vote hasn't come in are big, potentially blue areas. And we're looking at that in Georgia. The president holding on to a lead of 23,009 votes, 49.6 percent to 49.1 percent. Just on our watch it has narrowed almost 10,000 votes. So as it comes in, we'll give it to you. So please stay with CNN.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[04:00:00]

CUOMO: Great to be with you here at 4:00 a.m. Eastern, election night in America continues. I'm Chris Cuomo with the man, Don Lemon.