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CNN Live Event/Special
Trump and Biden Almost Tie in Georgia; Early Results in Nevada Leans to Biden; Pennsylvania Votes Still Being Counted; Sen. Bob Casey (D-PA) Was Interviewed About the Trajectory of Mail-in Ballots in Pennsylvania. Aired 10-11p ET
Aired November 05, 2020 - 22:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
[22:00:00]
GLORIA BORGER, CNN CHIEF POLITICAL ANALYST: All of this. What you're talking about reminds me, I just looked it up. When -- when Bill Clinton became president, you know, they leave each other notes in the desk there, in the Oval Office. And Bush 41 said to him, you will be our president when you read this note, I wish you well. Your success now is our country's success.
ANDESON COOPER, CNN HOST: Yes.
BORGER: I am rooting hard for you.
COOPER: Our coverage continues in just a moment.
WOLF BLITZER, CNN HOST: We may be on the brink of a major turning point in the presidential vote count. I'm Wolf Blitzer.
The former Vice President Joe Biden keeps gaining ground in Georgia tonight. He's now in a virtual tie with President Trump in that traditionally red state, and it's possible he will take the lead at any moment. Biden also is slicing deeper and deeper into the president's lead in Pennsylvania, another must-win for Trump.
It's a different story in Arizona where Biden's advantage has narrowed, but he stills appears to be on a firm path toward winning the 270 electoral votes needed to become president-elect of the United States. Biden is now at 253. Trump is at 213. And the votes keep coming. Here's a key race alert.
All right. Here are the closest four states right now. Take a look at this. Georgia right now, President Trump is ahead by only 1,902 votes. Look at how close, a virtual tie right now. And any moment now, that lead he has could switch, could switch dramatically in Georgia.
In Nevada right now, Biden is ahead by 11,438 votes. In Pennsylvania, Trump is ahead by only 42,142, but that's dramatically lower than it was only hours and hours ago. His lead is slipping dramatically in Pennsylvania. In Arizona, Biden's lead is slipping right now. It's at 46,257. It was much higher earlier, so his lead is slipping in Arizona right now.
A lot is going on. We're watching all this with John King over at the magic wall. Let's talk about Georgia and Pennsylvania right now because it's possible the president could lose the lead at any moment now.
JOHN KING, CNN CHIEF NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: If the president loses Georgia, the best he can do is 269 electoral votes. If he loses Georgia and Pennsylvania, it's game over. The president needs them both to get above 270 which of course is the finish line.
So, we're looking at this. This is so dramatic. 1,902 votes, 1,902 votes, 49.4 to 49.4 in the state the president have a lead excess of a quarter million votes if we go back to Tuesday and into Wednesday morning, it's above 300,000 votes at one point.
So, what are we looking for now? We're looking for the remaining votes. One of the places we know and they promise to get them to us by midnight tonight is Clayton County. This is just south of Atlanta. Hartsfield International Airport is right here. We have flown in and out or through Atlanta.
Right now, Clayton still has about 5,700, 5,776 ballots to count as of the last point. Just in this county alone if Joe Biden wins 71.8 or 72 percent of the votes when they're counted, he'll catch up to the president of the United States. So, he'll pass the president of the United States because the vote tally has changed in some since then.
So tight here more than 5,700 votes in a place where Joe Biden is getting 85 percent of the vote. And Joe Biden generally exceeds what you see for his county-wide vote. When they count the mail-in votes, pretty hard to exceed that, but we'll see if he does.
So, in a place where Joe Biden is already getting 85 percent of the vote, they've got 5,700. That's enough right there. Statewide, 16,000 votes still outstanding. Right there, Joe Biden needs 57 percent. It's a little smaller than that now if he pulls in the rest of the votes.
Where else are they? Some of them are still small amount of votes, we believe, still in Fulton County here. This is Atlanta and then some of the suburbs around here as you walk down and come through. This one is up to 99. We saw earlier, I just want to show you Rockdale County had some votes come in earlier. I just want to go because we've seen this throughout tonight, right?
How Joe Biden doing? So even in a place, even in a place where you see him running very well here. Let me bring this up. When these last votes came into Rockdale County, here's what happened. Joe Biden got 800 -- 800 -- sorry -- 803 votes. Right? So, that's 77.9 percent. I'll give you the president's total in just a minute. Seventy-seven point nine. The president got 208 votes.
So, let's fix that 208 votes. Now why am I bringing this up in a county where Joe Biden is winning so big? Because the challenge is because the president has the statewide lead to exceed that bar. So even in places where Joe Biden is getting 70 percent, when they're counting the mail-in ballots he tends to do a little bit better than that everywhere. So, we're seeing that consistently across these counties. So the
whole, the metric all day long, the test for Joe Biden is, is he getting enough votes at the percentage he needs to narrow the gap. And we were asking that question.
[22:05:01]
When it was 60,000, we were asking that question. When it was 50,000, 40,000, it's now 1,900. It's below 2,000. We're waiting for the rest of the votes. Again, on the track it is on right now, the expectation --
(CROSSTALK)
BLITZER: Look at Georgia just dropping in.
KING: -- here we go, as we speak -- as we speak, 1,797. This has been a methodical climb for Joe Biden or if you want to call it a methodical decline for the President United States. And again, in the White House earlier tonight he said that this was because of fraud and cheating. It is because of math and democracy and counting ballots in a state with a Republican governor or Republican secretary of state, Republican office holders.
If the governor of Georgia thought there was fraud, we would have heard from him by now. He's the Republican governor. This has been playing for a couple of days. They're simply counting votes and we'll watch, 1,797 now, the president's lead because they counted the election day vote first. It was above 300,000.
We went from Tuesday into early Wednesday. There we go. That's Georgia. We'll keep an eye on that. And then it will tell me if it changes while I move up here to Pennsylvania. Again, 42,142 votes in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania where the president as we went from Tuesday into the early morning hours of Wednesday led by more than a half million votes. Six hundred -- over 600,000 votes at one point.
There's nothing wrong with that. They counted the election day vote first. You see all these red counties. Pennsylvania is a big complicated state, very rural state up in here. And the president does extremely well in those counties. He turned out on election day and he mounted an impressive vote total.
But then they started counting the mail-in ballots. Democrats did that disproportionately. And you see down here especially we're waiting -- as we wait for the rest of the votes to come in, I want to switch to Pennsylvania. About a quarter million left to count. At last check, 250,000. Twenty percent of those are right here in Philadelphia. Twenty percent of them, about 72,000, Joe Biden is getting 80 percent of the vote in Philadelphia. Right?
You can pick a pencil at home, get your calculator out. If he keeps winning votes at that pace here, then he's going to catch up to that. And we've been going throughout the day. The president is getting his votes. But Joe Biden, even when you go -- even when you go to places like this, we haven't had any mail-in votes here. But I just want to pull up a Republican county.
Even when you go to places like this, today Joe Biden is getting 60, 70 percent of the vote or higher even though he's not in the totals because in the election day count the president ran it up very successfully. But Joe Biden -- the Democrats who live here voted by mail and those are the votes that are coming in as we go through this.
So again, just like in Georgia, this has been a steady progression toward the president, away from the president's lead, Joe Biden coming up. If Joe Biden, 20 electoral votes, this is the largest prize still on the board. As I said, the President of the United States to get above 270, he needs this and he needs this.
Let's flip the math another way. Joe Biden right now is at 253. It takes 270 to win. That's 20. There's the most simple math of all. Two fifty-three plus 20 means Joe Biden is the next president of the United States. So, we will keep our eye on the count in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania and in the state of Georgia 42,000 right there. And Wolf, it's just been a steady methodical shift.
BLITZER: I want to go back to Georgia for a moment. Martin Savidge is on the ground for us in Georgia right now. Martin, tell our viewers what you're seeing right now. Where are they still counting these votes in Georgia tonight?
MARTIN SAVIDGE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: yes, there are a number of places, Wolf. So, we are likely to see the president's decline even more. Rockdale County is one of the latest to come in with 1,031 votes, 803 went to Vice President Biden and 203 went to President Trump.
Now Clayton County is that county now that still has the most outstanding votes. There's 5,726. Now we are told they are going to continue counting till at least midnight. They actually believe in Clayton County that they will get through all the absentee ballots that they have outstanding or that need to be counted before or at the time of midnight.
So, that's going to be a significant time. We should point out, though, it's not going to be one sort of dump right at 11.59. They're actually updating on a much more regular basis maybe on the span of about every half hour.
Gwinnett County was going till at least nine o'clock. Now the thing about Gwinnett County was they were going to counting but they weren't going to update their numbers, they say they're going to do that until tomorrow morning sometime.
And then we know there are a number of other counties that have been contemplating going later into the night. But the smaller the county, the less likely they would do that. They just simply don't have the staffing to go 24 hours.
But still, we point out there is Clayton County with the largest number. They are still counting. They do expect to be completed tonight. And as you've already mentioned the numbers from Clayton County alone could flip the entire race as it stands in Georgia right now. A really remarkable story that is breaking by almost every moment.
BLITZER: And has anyone there at all, you're in Savanna, has anyone at all suggested fraud or any illegal voting, anything untoward going on?
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SAVIDGE: Well, I should say, yes, there are Trump supporters that have come out and been quite vocal but they have nothing to substantiate it. They base it on conversations, they claim they have with people who thought they were going to get absentee ballots that they say never received them.
And then there's all sorts of other conspiracy theories that are out there. But no, there's no official complaint. There was one that went to Chatham County court here. But that was dismissed by the judge. The claim was that there were a number of absentee ballots that came in too late, about 50 of them that may have been slipped in to the actually tally.
But county election officials here were able to prove to the judge that that did not happen and that case was dismissed. That's the only legal case there was so far. There could be others to come in the days ahead.
BLITZER: Georgia a key, key state. Martin Savidge, thank you very much. martin Savidge is in Savanna for us.
SAVIDGE: Absolutely.
BLITZER: You know, John, as we keep pointing out, Georgia has a Republican governor, a Republican secretary of state and things are moving along. There's always a few little minor problems in any election. They've got to do a little recounting here and there, but nothing significant.
KING: And to Martin's point about the Trump supporters, there's a process. And again, I don't mean this -- I mean this with no disrespect. You can complain publicly all you want. If you want to prove it there are ways to do it. You can go to court. Or you go to your election officials and you file the complaints and it goes through the process. So we'll watch that. We'll watch that.
And look, let's assume. First, we're looking at 1,797, the trajectory seems crystal clear. Let's assume that Joe Biden passes the president in Georgia. Well, guess what. It could be within grounds for a recount, number one. There are 8,000 possible military and overseas ballots. They mailed out, I believe, 8,800 was the number. That's the universe.
They don't all come back. Not everybody sends them back, but they have to wait. They have to wait. So, if this is a race that's within a few thousand votes at the end no matter who's in charge, we're not going to wait for those ballots as well. So, we're not going to be definitive in Georgia but we have seen just an undeniable trajectory.
And again, the places where the votes are out, Martin mentioned Clayton County, look at it. The votes that have come in so far, 85 percent for Joe Biden. There are 5,700 votes still to be counted. They expect to have those by midnight. So we should see those within the next couple of hours in this one county.
Then he mentioned, it will come up here, he mentioned -- he didn't mention DeKalb down there. But he mentioned Gwinnett. He said they're going to wait till tomorrow now. The last time I check there 4,800 ballots there. And Joe Biden in the county-wide vote is just shy of 60 percent.
But again, when they count these mail-in ballots the numbers have been consistently much higher than that because the election day votes include the president's vote there. And in the mail-in ballots Joe Biden has been getting consistently 79, 80 percent or higher. It doesn't guarantee it happens again.
But 4,400 ballots here that they're going to count tomorrow tells you that whatever we get by the end of the night that's a reserve of most likely more votes for the former vice president and the Democratic nominee tomorrow. So, we wait.
And where Martin is, this is a big piece of it here. We were waiting earlier in the day but they had more than 17,000 ballots here. And when they came in you see they're up to 95 percent now. So, it's one of the smaller counties as Martin mentioned.
These people, bless them they're working incredibly hard in overtime. But they may have a few left that they're going to count tomorrow but they did most of theirs and this was one of the counties when they reported them that really started the exponential decline of the president's lead.
And that's what they're doing county by county across Georgia counting the votes. As you noted, you know, they had a Republican governor, a Republican secretary of state.
There are two Senate races playing out in Georgia right now. If there was widespread fraud, trust me, people on the ballot -- this is personal. You're running for Senate. You're running for House. You're running for county commission. You're running for anything. We would hear it. We would hear it.
Again, there's a process. If you have a complaint, make it by a process. Fill out the paperwork. File it in court. File it with the election board. Don't just talk about it. That's not -- that's not a complaint. That's politics.
BLITZER: An awful moment in American history when the president came out today in the briefing room made those allegations, totally, totally unfounded and potentially very, very dangerous.
Jake, Dana, and Abby, guys, back to you.
JAKE TAPPER, CNN HOST: Wolf, I mean, what a nail biter. Look at the margins in these four key battleground states. In Georgia it is only 1,797. They are basically tied with 49.4 percent each, Trump and Biden. In Nevada the voting continues. Biden is ahead by only 11,438. Trump has really chipped away at the -- I'm sorry. No, I'm thinking of Arizona. In any case, 11,438. It's incredibly narrow. Biden has expanded his slim margin there by about 4,000 today.
In Pennsylvania, 41,305 votes separate Donald Trump from Joe Biden. And as the votes keep getting counted, that lead keeps getting narrowed. And Arizona, 46,257. As the voting goes on there, the vote counting goes on there, Biden is losing votes and Trump is chipping away. I have never seen anything like this. I mean, having one state this close, that's one thing.
DANA BASH, CNN CHIEF POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT: That's right.
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TAPPER: Having four, this close. Two days -- is that how many days it's been since election day? I mean, two days, it may three, five ten, whatever it is.
BASH: Does it matter?
TAPPER: It is unbelievable. And the stakes could not be higher.
BASH: Could not be higher. You know, it's -- I want to say it's like having four Floridas. But it's, you know, hopefully we will end up in a place where -- Florida 2000 -- hopefully we'll end up in a place where these votes will get counted. They're doing it very slowly, very cautiously, very deliberately.
Nevada in particular, which is slower than the others. And we will get the answers. And we're going to get maybe some more news from Arizona later. Pennsylvania is working pretty fast, especially considering, as we talked about, this is really new for them. I mean, it's new for a lot of states to have this volume of mail-in votes. But the whole notion of mail-in voting is really new for Pennsylvania.
(CROSSTALK)
TAPPER: You're talking about my fellow Pennsylvanians as if we're not the greatest, the greatest people --
BASH: Well, even --
TAPPER: -- on the planet already. Of course, we're capable of a such a thing.
BASH: I know. But even Pennsylvanians have said that this -- that the state, the commonwealth, was behind on the whole notion of mail-in voting before 2020. And you know, they're getting it together. There are problems. There's no question. And they -- it was a little bit rough with the legislature and the Democratic governor. But at least they're doing it and they're doing it in a pretty brisk way.
ABBY PHILLIP, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Do you know what I think about a lot as we go through this all together as a nation? The president is freaking out, frankly, over these narrow margins. But four years ago, he won in Pennsylvania by 44,000 votes.
TAPPER: That's right.
PHILLIP: In Michigan by 10,000 votes.
TAPPER: Right.
PHILLIP: In Wisconsin, 22,000 votes. So, the narrowest of narrow margins in three states won Donald Trump the presidency of the United States. The difference tonight though is that the numbers are moving. We're still counting votes and they're shifting on him, which I think is one of the things causing some anxiety over at the White House.
But if you're the Trump campaign tonight, what is going on in Georgia is a nightmare scenario. It makes the math virtually impossible. And once that states flips, then you have the process of trying to find votes to flip it back. If you're Trump, that's what makes Georgia such a difficult situation for him. It's not over, but we are 1,700 votes away from Joe Biden potentially flipping that state and we could get more votes again tonight.
TAPPER: Yes.
PHILLIP: That's a huge, huge deal.
BASH: And by the way, it's Georgia.
PHILLIP: Yes.
BASH: It is Georgia.
(CROSSTALK)
TAPPER: A state that hasn't gone Democrat for president since 1992.
PHILLIP: Democrats have wanted this for decades. Yes.
BASH: Yes. I mean, it's really remarkable. In recent times it's been the white whale for Democrats. They think that they're going to get it, not so much on the presidential level but statewide in a more aggressive way. Didn't happen two years ago. But considering how red Georgia has been in recent decades, this demographic shift has been almost warp speed in the past several years.
TAPPER: President Trump on Sunday in Georgia, Sunday before the presidential election believe it or not said I shouldn't even be here because, you know --
(CROSSTALK)
BASH: That's true. He said that in a lot of places.
TAPPER: He said I have that all wrapped up. No, he didn't. And the rate we're going, Joe Biden looks like he will overtake Donald Trump in Georgia. Although we're not calling it and there remain all those other ballots, military ballots and the like. So, we might not get an official call from Georgia for a few days.
But look at that. It's remarkable. I have to say also, this is exciting because it is votes being counted. It is the experiment of America. It is democracy. And it's not only working in one way.
BASH: No.
TAPPER: Biden's margins are getting better for him in Pennsylvania and in Nevada and in Georgia, but Trump's margins -- it's getting better for Trump in Arizona. We're seeing how the counting of votes is really something to be celebrated, and it is being celebrated by everyone except for President Trump and his minions.
PHILLIP: Can I just say though that I like that we're counting votes. It's good that this process is happening but it did not actually have to be this way. Some of these states should have been able to count these votes before election day which would have speed up this process.
We're watching this happen in slow motion in part because the Trump campaign pushed back on any efforts to count early so that we could get some of this counting done before we got to election day. So that's really, I mean, especially in the state of Pennsylvania, that is why we are --
TAPPER: Commonwealth.
PHILLIP: -- the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, that is why we are where we are today.
(CROSSTALK)
TAPPER: But the governor, the Democratic governor wanted that.
PHILLIP: Yes.
[22:19:58]
TAPPER: The Democratic attorney general wanted that, but the Republican legislature refused to let them count the vote-by-mail ballots ahead of election day. They would not do it precisely because they wanted to let President Trump do this, claim victory by pretending that all this vote by mail ballots weren't legitimate.
PHILLIP: Counting early doesn't solve all of our problems. Arizona counts early but we're still waiting on what --
(CROSSTALK)
BASH: That's exactly what I was going to say.
PHILLIP: But Pennsylvania is a very large state and it would have helped them to be able to count a little bit earlier.
BASH: Yes, there are fewer voters in Arizona than Pennsylvania. But Arizona -- I guess that makes our point. Arizona has much more of a history with mail-in voting, and they were allowed to start I believe --
PHILLIP: Two weeks.
BASH: -- two weeks ago to start counting the votes as they came in. And yet here we are still waiting for them to count the votes. So, it's volume. It's, by the way, we're in the middle of a pandemic.
TAPPER: Right.
BASH: And it was -- it's not been great in a lot of these states. But particularly Arizona was very hard hit over the summer. And I'm -- that has to be taken into account. Maybe we haven't talked about that enough, that it's not just that we are in a position where things are probably happening slower because of the pandemic, but that these people who are trying to count the votes are doing it wearing masks, maybe wearing face shields, trying to be as careful as they possibly can for their own protection and the protection of others.
TAPPER: Although, Dana, I have to say, and you're more of an expert of this than I am. But two years ago, I think it was, when Senator Kirsten Sinema defeated Martha McSally --
BASH: It took a while.
TAPPER: -- and Martha McSally the first time she was defeated for the Senate as oppose to the second time a few days ago as --
(CROSSTALK)
BASH: I don't think we have called it.
TAPEPR: We haven't called it yet? OK. As it looks like it's going to happen.
BASH: Yes.
TAPPER: In any case. That race took a long time to determine who won. And McSally was ahead on election night in 2000 -- was it 2018? I think it was.
BASH: Yes.
TAPPER: Election night 2018.
BASH: Yes.
TAPPER: And then they had to count all these absentee and vote-by-mail ballots. There are a lot of seniors in Arizona, obviously a huge retirement community. A lot of people vote by paper whether it's absentee or vote by mail. And it was days later --
BASH: Yes.
TAPPER: -- that we find out that Sinema had had defeated then- incumbent Senator McSally. So, we are used to this from Arizona. It's just that the entire country wasn't paying attention to it, really just nerds who care about --
(CROSSTALK)
BASH: Right. If the presidency didn't hang in the balance.
TAPPER: Yes.
BASH: Because of what was going on in Arizona. This is the first time in a really long time the eyes of the country have been on Arizona as a battleground state on a presidential level, a really long time. You know, it was just a fluke that Bill Clinton won, and it was because of Ross Perot kind of helped get him there.
But aside from that, it has been a reliably red state on a presidential level. Again, as I talked about Georgia, it is that very, very quickly changing demographics. In Arizona, not just retirees now, much bigger minorities community and a lot of younger people.
PHILLIP: And in addition to Georgia now being on the verge of flipping potentially to Joe Biden, we are going to have two run offs in January. That state is about to become the center of the political universe.
TAPPER: In Georgia, yes.
PHILLIP: In Georgia. It is almost certain that this margin, whatever it is between Trump and Biden, is going to be so razor thin and then on top of that, you have -- you're going to have a really massive effort by both parties to fight over those two seats because that state is changing, as you said, Dana, so quickly.
And because there's so much activism in that state. After 2018 when Stacey Abrams lost the gubernatorial race, she has really helped activate the Democratic base --
BASH: Yes.
PHILLIP: -- especially black voters in the State of Georgia.
TAPPER: Yes.
PHILLIP: And it's making a difference for Democrats tonight.
TAPPER: If Joe Biden ends up winning Georgia, he will have Stacey Abrams --
PHILLIP: Absolutely.
TAPPER: -- and the communities that she has gotten excited and motivated, African-American community, young community, Latino community, lots of different groups, he will have her to thank for the work. And similarly, if Joe Biden ends up winning Arizona, we talked the other day about the fact that Joe Biden according to exit polls, which are still, you know, early, show that Joe Biden won 10 percent of Republicans in Arizona.
So, there was the McCain/Flake factor there. But if Joe Biden wins Arizona, the Latino community in Arizona --
BASH: Yes.
TAPPER: -- came out for him --
PHILLIP: Yes.
TAPPER: -- in a major way. And there's a lot of talk about how Donald Trump has done better with the Latino community in 2020 than he did in 2016, especially in places such as Florida. But the Latino community in Arizona is a completely different story. And the activists there did a fantastic job in getting out their voters for Joe Biden.
[22:25:00]
PHILLIP: Yes, and that's exactly what you're hearing from Democrats who are looking at the map and they're saying, you know, it is a little bit of a different story depending on where you're looking geographically, and they really look at Arizona as a bright spot about their engagement with the Latino community. But also, about the issue of immigration and how it can work for certain segments, certain segments of the Latino population in that state in particular.
There's a lot that needs to be unpacked there, but Joe Biden might be saved in the state of Arizona by Latino voters showing up.
BASH: That's right.
PHILLIP: Though, we should point out, he actually doesn't need to win the state of Arizona to win.
BASH: Good point, yes.
TAPPER: All right. We are following these very dramatic developments in the vote count in the great Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. And we're standing by for new numbers in all of the battleground states. We're going to talk to Senator Bob Casey of Pennsylvania next as election night in America continues. Stay with us.
[22:30:00]
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
BLITZER: Only about 1,775 votes separate Joe Biden and Donald Trump in the State of Georgia. That number has shrunk dramatically. There's a virtual tie going on right now.
Let's discuss with Shauna Dozier, the director of the board of elections in Clayton County right now. Potentially that county could flip the vote right now. Shauna, thanks so much for joining us.
I know there are about 5,000 outstanding ballots in your county, Clayton County. When do you expect the counting to be done there, and what's going on?
SHAUNA DOZIER, ELECTIONS DIRECTOR, CLAYTON COUNTY, GEORGIA BOARD OF ELECTIONS: Well, thank you for having me. Yes, we have roughly 4,200 absentee ballots that we are working on counting.
BLITZER: And when do you think we're going to get those results?
DOZIER: We're trying our best to get it done by midnight.
BLITZER: By midnight. So, are you going to wait to release all of them at the same time, or are you going to be releasing them, you know, as they come in?
DOZIER: Well, periodically, we are updating our web site every 30 minutes.
BLITZER: So, if there's 4,200 outstanding ballots that are going to come in, what is your sense, how many do you think percentage wise, rough estimate would go to Biden and how many would go to Trump?
DOZIER: Well, I'm not sure of how to make that determination.
BLITZER: Clayton County is an important county, a suburb of Atlanta. John King is with me. John has a question for you.
KING: We have a seen -- Shauna, thank you for your time. I know you're busy. We have seen including in some of the early vote total for your county in these mail-in ballots that Joe Biden getting roughly 80 percent or so or more which is above the percentage he needs to catch up statewide. What's left are all mail-in ballots. Is that correct?
DOZIER: We do have absentee by mail ballots and also our provisional.
KING: Some provisional ballots as well. OK. But the on-election day, the on-election day vote has already been counted.
DOZIER: That is correct.
BLITZER: What about military ballots?
DOZIER: They are still outstanding.
BLITZER: Outstanding. But you have no idea how many military ballots maybe outstanding.
DOZIER: We don't know how many we'll receive but they have until 5 p.m. on Friday in order to submit their ballots back to us.
BLITZER: All right. We'll get forward to getting those numbers from you, Shauna. Thank you very much. Good luck and thanks for all the important work you and your team are doing, really, really grateful. i appreciate it very much.
DOZIER: Thank you.
BLITZER: All right. Let's go to Pennsylvania right now. The Democratic senator from Pennsylvania, Bob Casey is joining us once again. Senator Casey, thanks very much for joining us. We spoke earlier today. You told us you believe Biden will win the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania and you suggested maybe by as many as 100,000 votes. Senator, are you still confident about that assessment?
SEN. BOB CASEY (D-PA): Yes, Wolf, I am in both the assessment that he'll win and also an approximate fashion that the margin. But now it may be that he wins by less than that when we get the say 98, 99 percent, 99 percent of the vote count. But I think eventually it will be right around 100. But what we don't know right now is when he'll cross or overtake the president, but we'll see.
BLITZER: We just got new numbers from Pennsylvania. Donald Trump's lead right now, Senator, and I'm looking at the vote board over here, the lead of Donald Trump just went down. It's only 36,572 in Pennsylvania with 94 percent of the estimated vote reporting. Still a lot of votes left out there. Do you have a sense of how many votes are still out there?
CASEY: Wolf, not an exact votal for the whole state. But just to give an example, the bulk of them are the following. If both five counties, Philadelphia as you know, about 70,000, a little more than 70,000 Allegheny County, 35, Lehigh, 25, Buck is 22, and Monroe is 14.
So, all five are significant population counties but also a lot of votes to count. So, there could be others. As you know, sometimes a small county will report and they don't have -- they have some mail-in ballots and it's a county that the president wins but there's still a high number of mail-in ballots for Joe Biden. So. But the bulk of them obviously in Philadelphia and suburban Philadelphia or Lehigh Valley.
BLITZER: John King has got some questions for you too, Senator.
CASEY: Yes.
BLITZER: But before I let him start asking you some questions, do you think we'll know a winner tonight? How many absentee ballots are left to count?
CASEY: I think it's -- I don't see it happening tonight in terms of a winner. The only question is if more came in tonight, would that be enough to put Joe Biden in the lead. But I can't be certain of that.
BLITZER: All right. John King has some question.
[22:34:57]
KING: Senator, you understand the stakes, obviously, if Joe Biden wins Pennsylvania, there's no path for Donald Trump to get to 270. In fact, if Joe Biden wins Pennsylvania that would get him to 273 even before we finish the counts in Arizona and Nevada.
So, I just want to walk through a couple of these. You just mentioned you believe there are still -- how many votes do you think are in Lehigh County?
CASEY: I'm told about 25,000. There's still uncounted -- they're not counted yet.
KING: So, 25,000. We saw some votes earlier from Lehigh County. In these mail-in ballots, I just want to make the distinction for our viewers. They're counting mail-in ballots now. So, the election day President Trump did pretty well everywhere. Even in Lehigh County you see he got 46, 47 percent of the votes if you round up. But these are just mail-in ballots.
And earlier we got some from Lehigh County and they were disproportionately for Joe Biden in the high 70s or the low 80s. I'm not recalling that specific county but that's what we've seen all day long across the commonwealth. So, I assume that's your expectation because they're mail-in ballots.
CASEY: Yes, the Biden percentage would be very high.
KING: I'm sorry. Go ahead.
CASEY: It would be roughly 80.
KING: And so that's Lehigh, roughly 80. Well, if you have roughly 80 and you say with it, look, 36,000. So that's one county where you get a basket of 20,000 votes or so, that would cut it. And in Philadelphia area you mentioned, Philadelphia City itself, obviously they're at 89 percent now. But 11 percent in the city of Philadelphia would be a ton of votes. What do we think the number is there now?
CASEY: The best number I have now is a little over 70.
KING: Seventy. All right. So, again, if you're thinking about 70,000 votes there where the former vice president is getting 80 percent or higher, just 36,000 just do it yourself. I mean, there are votes in Philadelphia alone, Wolf, that are more than enough, Senator, and you stated as well. And you say there are other counties in the Philadelphia area in the suburban county. We're still looking. Do we think there are more in Bucks County?
CASEY: Yes, some in Bucks. The best estimate we have is about 22,000.
KING: So again, if you think about this way. So, 20,000 Lehigh, 22,000 Bucks. Well excess of that, a couple of times, three times that in Philadelphia. So, there are more than enough votes. Again, the reason we're going through this exercise, and we appreciate your patience, Senator, we're going through this exercise, just to show the math that the president has a 36,572-vote lead right now.
There are many ballots out there and they are in these Democratic strongholds. And Senator, please correct if you think I'm wrong. We're consistently throughout the day we have seen Joe Biden getting 70 percent or higher, often in excess of 80 percent in these counties, Wolf.
And you know, he doesn't need that high of a percentage to pass the president. And again, the math we did earlier, Senator, tell me if you agree with this. The math we did earlier, at one point we had, if Joe Biden continued on the path he went on, he would not only pass the president but build a lead of about 40,000 votes. He's overperformed that to the ballpark with the last time I did it on the back of a cart. I got to 50, 55,000 votes. Does that sound about right if it continues at the current trajectory?
CASEY: I think that's entirely possible based upon what we're seeing.
BLITZER: You know, it's really amazing, Senator. When you see what's going on right now, and especially, I want to get your reaction to what we heard from the president when he was making all these wild accusations, totally unfounded of widespread fraud and cheating going on including in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. What's your reaction to what you heard from the president when he was at the White House briefing room speaking to the -- speaking to not only the United States but to the world?
CASEY: Well, totally unfounded. There's no evidence at all for the charges he made. But this has been a repeated pattern. He foreshadowed these weeks ago, even months ago, when he started lying about mail-in ballots, lying about the process. But the good news is despite all of that, despite all of the intimidation tactics, people are voting in record numbers and Joe Biden is going to win our state. And he's going to be the president.
BLITZER: You have no doubt about that. Is that right?
CASEY: No. I don't.
BLITZER: Is it a surprise to you as you see these results coming in? Were you always anticipating that Biden would win in Pennsylvania?
CASEY: Well, I had a good sense because one of the problems that we knew after 2016 was your margins in a city like Philadelphia before suburban Philadelphia county in addition to Allegheny County where Pittsburgh is right over my right shoulder here, that often is enough to win the whole state with addition of a few other counties added.
But in 2016, we learned that you can still have big numbers there, but you have to be able to reduce margins in rural areas or rural counties. I think Joe Biden was able to achieve both, actually he gets higher numbers in the Philadelphia suburbs as well as high what will be, I think a high number in Philadelphia. Hard to be sure exactly what he could win. But he could win the city by half a million votes.
A much bigger number in Allegheny County as well, running ahead of '16. So, he was able to cut margins with some of the rural counties as well.
[22:40:03]
So, the combined effect of that is a win in my judgment. And it's a win against an incumbent president, which is really, really hard to do.
BLITZER: And if Biden does win Pennsylvania, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, that blue wall has been back on the Democratic side which is so, so dramatic.
Senator Casey, thanks so much for joining us and good luck.
CASEY: Thanks very much.
BLITZER: All right. Senator Bob Casey of Pennsylvania.
Right now, Joe Biden appears to be on the verge of flipping Georgia from red to blue, that would be for the first time in almost 30 years. We're standing by for new numbers when election night in America continues.
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BLITZER: We've got a key race alert. Look at this. The lead of President Trump in Pennsylvania has dropped once again dramatically. His lead has gone down to only 26,319 out of more than 6.5 million votes cast, 49.6 percent to 49.2 percent, a 26,319-vote lead. Ninety- five percent of the estimated vote in Pennsylvania is still out there.
[22:44:59]
Remember, Pennsylvania has 20 electoral votes. President Trump cannot win without Pennsylvania. John, this is expected. It's dramatic what's going on because that lead that Trump has had in Pennsylvania has basically collapsed. It is close to a complete lead.
KING: And again, so what do we ask ourselves each time this happens. This has been a steady methodical decline in the Trump lead or a steady methodical climb in the Biden total. And every time we get new votes, we say is Biden at or exceeding the percentage he needs to overcome that lea.
Again, a lead that back on Tuesday into Wednesday at one point was about 600,000 votes. It's now at 26,000 votes. We just had some more votes from Philadelphia. This obviously is the biggest basket of Democratic votes. It's more than 12 percent of the state population.
Let me bring up the board so I can just show it to you here. So, more votes just came in Philadelphia. Now you know -- you know that Joe Biden is going to win when it comes to Philadelphia. So, I'll show you the last installment of votes that we reported, 11,993, right? OK. So, Joe Biden gets that. So, you say the president needs votes there to keep the march from happening.
Well, here's what's happened. One thousand seven hundred forty. So, that is 86.2. We keep saying Joe Biden needs to get 62, 63 percent of this vote to catch up the president of the United States, and every time we keep getting votes we're getting high 70s or in this case high 80s.
And so, you just look at this, and this keeps happening. This keep happening. This is Philadelphia. It happened just a short time ago. Right before that we had some votes come in in the suburb as well. We came down here in Delaware County we had a very similar thing. A smaller number of votes. It's not as big as Philadelphia City but very safe.
The big -- more votes come in. Joe Biden is getting above 80 percent of those votes, which you just keep adding them up. You get to 26,319. As we just had with the conversation with Senator Casey. There are more than enough votes out there. You know, still -- well in excess of what Joe Biden needs. And he keeps narrowing this gap.
Will they keep counting, will they get there tonight? We don't know. But this is on a trajectory that seems at the moment to be unstoppable. So, every time the votes come in, you look at them and you think, is the president performing high enough. Right? He doesn't have to beat Joe Biden. He's in the lead. He doesn't beat him. He just needs to be high enough to keep Joe Biden down.
It keeps happening. And it's been happening for hours every time we get more votes, Biden is above the threshold he needs. That lead shrinks. It looks inevitable but we're not there yet.
BLITZER: We've been speaking to Senator Casey all day today and he's been suggesting from the very beginning. Not only will Biden win in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. But he'll have a significant win, maybe 100,000 vote wins. I don't know if it's going to go that high but he'll have a significant win.
KING: Right. And it's not as if he's like making up these numbers up or guessing and projecting. They know how many mail-in ballots were cast. They know that these were disproportionately cast by -- cast by Democrats because they were requested by Democrats. And so, we knew it was going to be above 70 percent.
Now there's no guarantee that a Democrat request a ballot that a Democrat votes for Joe Biden, but we also know because of the polarization in our politics that more than 90 percent of Democrats were voting for Biden, just as more than 90 percent of Republicans were voting for President Trump.
So, they knew they had this giant pool of mail-in ballots, and so when they saw the president pull out to that big lead, don't get me wrong, there were considerable jitters among Democrats when they saw it was 600,000. Did they have that many in the bank, those mail-in ballots when they count them.
But they knew that they were going to narrow the gap. And now we have the methodical count and with the methodical count comes a methodical decline in the president's math.
BLITZER: Remind our viewers why those 20 electoral votes in Pennsylvania are so critical right now.
KING: Well let me walk over here to do that because this is the easiest way to do it. And again, we are at a decisive tipping point because Joe Biden because of these other wins on the board including Michigan and Wisconsin, remember, Donald Trump is president because of Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin.
Joe Biden has taken back Wisconsin and taken back Michigan which gets him to 253. Two hundred fifty-three you're on the road to 270. Right? He can get it out in the west, but he can get it right there with an exclamation point and a statement. One state, the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania would put Joe Biden over
the finish line. Now Joe Biden might catch up here. We're watching that. It's down below 2,000 votes. Joe Biden leads here and he leads there. So, Joe Biden could get as high as 306. You only need 270. You'd like to make a statement. You'd like to get as many as you can. Obviously, it gives you more a political mandate the higher you go.
But that alone right there, if Joe Biden wins the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, which is his birth state. He was born in Scranton before moving to Delaware. A, it would be a rejection of the president's math. B, it would get Joe Biden over the top. And c, for the Democratic Party it would be the moral victory of Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin. We're not there yet but that is the trajectory we are on in 26,319 vote lead for the president now in a state if we rerun -- rewind the tape he was once ahead by more than 600,000.
BLITZER: Just curious if Biden were to win Pennsylvania, Georgia, Arizona and Nevada, how many electoral votes would he have?
KING: That's your path to 306, which guess what. That's the exact total Donald Trump won on election night four years ago. There were two electors. When the electors met, there were 304 in the official count in the history votes. But he won 306 on election day 2016.
[22:50:07]
You can see his map here. Three hundred six. If Joe Biden -- it is a possibility that we end the 2020 campaign 306 to 232 but with Joe Biden in the 306. And I can play that out for you. If Joe Biden holds this, holds this, and holds this, and the president can get the rest.
We -- the president is leading right now up here in the second congressional district of Maine. We haven't called it yet. The president is leading there. We have every expectation the president will hold on in North Carolina although they're still counting votes in North Carolina and the president is most likely, of course, almost certainly to carry the state of Alaska.
So, there is a possibility, a possibility. This is not done. This is not done. This is not done. And these are not done. But Biden leads here. And he's climbing quickly here. So that is the possibility. That is the possibility on the table right now. It's the most Joe Biden can get, unless North Carolina has a dramatic turnaround. But that is most unlikely.
We haven't called that state yet because we're still counting votes. We're going to be conservative about it. But the Trump lead there. Nobody in the Biden campaign will argue with the statement that the Trump lead there is most likely to hold up as they count the final votes.
BLITZER: Go back to Georgia right now, and remind our viewers how tight it is in Georgia right now.
KING: Let's go. BLITZER: Because we expect by midnight to get a whole bunch more votes
in Georgia.
KING: Here we go, 1,775. One thousand seven hundred seventy-five votes in a state where, again, because of the early election -- the actual election day turnout, on election day, the Tuesday vote was counted first. The president's lead, early on, was above 300,000 votes. It's now down to 1,775.
And we were speaking just a short time ago to the executive here in Clayton County, Georgia, they have more than enough ballots to make up for that lead and they plan to report those ballots. Just going to check, 10.51 right now, the executive told us by midnight, she hopes, that they report most of the outstanding ballots there, Clayton County, former vice president is getting 85 percent of the vote. Even higher than that percentage in an installment from Clayton County that came in earlier.
So, there are more than enough votes here. And we know, Wolf, where the other votes are here. We're down to small universe. Let me just go check my notes here. We're down to 16,000 votes. Joe Biden needs to win about 57, 58 percent of the remaining votes.
Again, just like in Pennsylvania, because these are mail-in ballots, they're disproportionately Democratic. Because Republicans tended to vote more on election day. Democrats took advantage of the opportunity in these COVID times to vote early and by mail. We have just seen this consistently even in Republican counties as we counted the votes, Joe Biden has been getting 70 percent or more, sometimes 80 percent as we go through these counties and the votes come in.
And again, Clayton County is one of them, and you come around the Gwinnett County has 4,400 ballots to be counted. We believe they're done for the night and they'll resume in the morning. But as you're doing the math and looking at it, we're not looking at a 1,175-vote lead. There are more than enough votes, 16,000 totals. But where they're from, a lot of them here in the Atlanta and the suburbs around it where Joe Biden is not only winning in the today count of those mail-in ballots, he's off the charts winning.
So, you just go to, you know, you go Gwinnett County, for example, winning 58 percent. That's wow, right? That's a great number to win. But in the mail-in ballots that have been counted today, Joe Biden is well in excess of that. Because the president's share of this vote came in on Tuesday, came in on people who voted on election day.
So, we have sort of the two strategies playing out, the president with his rallies including in Georgia, voters to turn out. The turnout for the president, you know, the turnout, if you come out nationally here, the president is exceeding his 2016 numbers by quite a point, by quite a mark.
The issue is that the Democrats, Joe Biden and the popular vote, because turnout is up in this election, you see more than a four million vote margin right now for Joe Biden. Now, that's not how we pick a president. But you have a national
turnout at that level because you have 50 states of high turnout including the state of Georgia, 1,775. Again, that was in excess of 300,000 Tuesday night into Wednesday morning. But as they count these mail-in ballots, just like in Pennsylvania, the trajectory has been steady and consistent for hours today. And it just seems the statistician would tell you there's inevitability to that but we're going to count the votes.
BLITZER: Record number of votes coming in even in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic. Because there were new opportunities to do mail- in voting.
KING: Right.
BLITZER: And the president has himself at least in part to blame for the fact that Biden is doing so much better with the mail-in votings -- voting than he is because he was besmirching mail-in voting saying you got to show up at the polls, don't trust the mail and all that. A lot of his supporters believed him.
KING: Right. And so, you're looking at something here. If you come out, if you look at this. The president did. He from the very beginning said I don't want mail-in voting, I don't want states mailing ballots to people, I think that's an invitation for fraud which we know is just simply not true.
Republican states and Democratic states. Washington state is a Democratic with a Republican secretary of state. She says they've done it for years out there. Utah, the state Republicans win all the time. They have mail-in voting. Many states have done this for years.
[22:54:57]
Now, this year, many more states. Pennsylvania, for example, where we're counting votes tonight, didn't even have early voting four years ago. So, states have had to adapt. The president mocked it, said it would be full of fraud, wanted his people to vote on election day.
But it's not like as if the president did not turn out the votes. Just look at the 69 million there. You come back here, 62 million. The president is getting already seven million more votes than he did four years ago. The issue is Democratic turnout is off the charts.
BLITZER: Yes. And only 91 percent of the national vote is in so far.
All right. Major changes almost by the minute coming in with President Trump and Joe Biden now neck and neck in Georgia and the president's lead rapidly disappearing right now in Pennsylvania. We're standing by for new numbers as Election Night in America continues.
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