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CNN Live Event/Special

Biden Close to Victory as Counts Continue in Arizona, Georgia, Nevada and Pennsylvania; Biden Expands His Lead in Georgia. Aired 3-4a ET

Aired November 07, 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 ANCHOR: Welcome back to CNN's live coverage, Election Night in America, continued. Chris Cuomo, Don Lemon, on the case, with a good team here at 3:00 am, Eastern, on this Saturday.

And we have had news, on our watch, Don.

DON LEMON, CNN ANCHOR: That's right. That's right. We have breaking news. Well, you said -- you said Election Night. This is really Election Week. And during Election Week, in these hours right now, we're getting new numbers, by the minute, right?

We just got some numbers in Georgia that increases Joe Biden's lead. We'll see what -- what the rest of it, what it all means for Joe Biden and for the president. The votes, overall, we're going to talk about.

And guess what?

This is all happening in the middle of a pandemic. We've got a lot of folks at the White House. We shouldn't say a lot but a number of folks at the White House who have now tested positive for the coronavirus. But the numbers are coming in, Chris, and right now I'm going to steal your thunder because, you have a key race alert.

CUOMO: True. All right. Here it is. Georgia. We had a very significant occurrence, 64 percent increase in Biden's lead, 7,248. Now I know the temptation, 64 percent. It's only 7,000 -- ah, ah, remember the context. First, it was 4,000-plus votes. Now it's 7,000.

What's the game here for Biden?

Win in a way that is recount safe because they are well within the recount margin. So a 7,248-vote lead over Donald Trump for Joe Biden. Go find a recount that wasn't a product of something that was huge, that we would be well aware of by now, especially in a Republican-run state. You don't find them.

So, this margin could be very significant. Pennsylvania, 20 electoral votes; 28,833 votes separate the two men. There is, still, vote coming in. And we will be watching because, the moment that Pennsylvania is called for Joe Biden, if it is, is the moment that we have a new president-elect.

Arizona, 11 electoral votes. Donald Trump has been gaining ground on Joe Biden.

Are there enough votes for him to make up enough ground?

We don't know. We'll check in.

Nevada, six electoral votes. Very important state of the race there. We're expecting some change in that 22,000-vote margin for Joe Biden. In fact, we're going to discuss that right now.

Why?

Because Pennsylvania is the one and done for Joe Biden. If he wins that state, it is dispositive. He gets to 270 electoral votes.

However, it's not his only route. If he wins Nevada and Arizona, he also receives exactly 270 electoral votes. So we got reporters with the latest on count there. Stephanie Elam is in Arizona. But we'll start with Dan Simon, next door, in Vegas, where it is just after midnight.

Thank you for being with us, my friend.

What is the state of play, by you?

DAN SIMON, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, hi, Chris. We are standing in front of a darkened election center here in Clark County. No more votes being counted tonight. But earlier this evening, we did see a number of people in line, who were here just to make sure that their ballots are, in fact, being counted.

Election officials had contacted these folks to see their IDs, to make sure they are, in fact, legitimate voters. And the deadline was tonight.

In the meantime, Joe Biden, doubling his previous lead. And from what we are told, about 124,500 ballots remain to be counted here in the state of Nevada.

Now there have been questions as to why things are taking so long in the state. And when you press election officials on this issue, they just tell you they want to ensure accuracy.

But of those ballots, 90 percent of them are here in Clark County, which, of course, includes Las Vegas and the surrounding suburbs. We did see Trump supporters making a bunch of noise of widespread voter fraud, lost and effort in federal court today in Nevada, to have the counting stopped.

CUOMO: That's a function of proof. Dan Simon, thank you very much for being on the job, brother. Appreciate it.

Stephanie Elam, good to see you once more, my friend. Arizona.

[03:05:00]

CUOMO: This, a very, very important state.

What do we know about the state of play?

STEPHANIE ELAM, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Right. And it's different than what we've seen in some of the other states, Chris, when you talk about how we have seen Biden surging from behind and gaining more votes coming his way.

Well, it's different here. We've seen President Trump has been able to claw back some territory each time we have seen some of the most recent numbers come in.

But just to give you an idea where we stand, statewide, they are saying there are some 173,000 ballots left to be counted. Of those, 92,000 of them are here in Maricopa County; obviously the most populous county in the state. This is where Phoenix is.

They are saying, after that, they will have the provisional ballots, which usually take more time to go through. That will be what will be left here. So they're hoping to get through that this weekend. We expect to get two downloads of tallies later in the day.

I can tell you, though, here outside of the center, where they are doing this tabulation, that we have seen protests happening here throughout the day. It started to just drizzle here in Phoenix, which sounds odd to me because I've never had it rain here when I've been here.

But they've been protesting in what is called their free speech zone with their flags, making sure, they're saying, every vote count. The county actually coming out and putting out signs with QR codes so that people can scan and actually watch to see that democracy in action and showing ballot tabulators in there, doing their jobs to count all the votes to make sure they have the numbers.

But when you look at the numbers here, you have Biden with 50 percent of the votes in Maricopa County and Trump at 48 percent. So very, very close. If there were to be an issue or if they wanted to do a recount, it would be automatic if it were within about 0.1 percent here in Arizona. But right now it's about 1 percent, Chris.

CUOMO: Stephanie Elam, thank you. I hope it doesn't rain too much, too soon.

All right.

So, what is the state of play?

270 electoral votes.

That's the goal, right?

To Phil Mattingly at the magic wall. Amazing, still late, they are working so hard not just to report it

like Dan and Stephanie but to count, many of them volunteers, Ameri- cans, working through the night for our democracy. Once again, we have a move.

What impresses you?

PHIL MATTINGLY, CNN CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Joe Biden's lead in the state of Georgia. Look. We know what we are looking at right now. We're looking at Pennsylvania, Georgia, we're looking out west to Arizona and Nevada. We are expecting results from all these states, at some point.

And I think, the question right now is less of if Joe Biden's going to get to 270 electoral votes, he's got so many different pathways to do it, but can he actually extend on the 270-plus?

One of the biggest outstanding issues is where is Georgia going to end up?

Because Georgia is in recount territory. So, the issue for the Biden campaign is, can you carry a sizeable lead, all things considered, into any kind of recount that makes it, as you noted, fairly safe?

And we just saw a vote come in. And I'm not -- I'm not going to put my numbers down with my fingers anymore for anybody who is watching right now. But what we just saw is the ballots come in from Fulton County, largest county in the state; obviously, home to Atlanta.

This has been a big county for Joe Biden throughout the course of the election. We knew it would but putting up the margins he needs to do, adding 2,800 votes to his total. He's been doing better on net in this county.

So why is he doing that?

Harry, I want you to jump in on this one because what -- the batch of votes that we just got. OK. Everybody's trying to figure out how many votes are still outstanding. The batch of votes we just got are what I believe is the remainder of outstanding absentee ballots for Fulton County, which was a minimum amount; and provisional ballots, of which we believe they had about 14,000.

Harry, now that we know Biden's lead, if you include military, there are a lot of theories, what does this mean?

This might lean Republican. This might lean Democrat.

What's your sense?

What's the score right now?

HARRY ENTEN, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: Joe Biden's at 72.6 percent of the vote. Of the provisional ballots, the first batch we just got from Fulton County, Joe Biden pulled in 73.5 percent of those votes. So, these provisional, as they sort of come in, I don't think they're

going to be Republican leaning at all. They'll probably be more representative of the county as a whole and, therefore, of the state as a whole. Right now, if you are Joe Biden, that's good news for you.

[03:10:00]

ENTEN: Because if they are representative of the state as a whole, counties as a whole, he's in the lead, right?

More of them tend to be in the bluer areas both in the state of Georgia as well as the state of Pennsylvania. So, if the provisional ballots are starting to match what looks like the vote count in those areas, Joe Biden's lead, if anything, may, in fact, expand a little bit.

CUOMO: About 14,000 provisional ballots, we believe, are to be counted. I want to, also, talk about Arizona and Nevada and what we learned, if you don't mind. But before we move on from Georgia all the way, because it's 3:10 in the morning in the east, let me ask you this.

Name the song that the line, "Granny does your dog bite? No, child, no," refer to in reference to Georgia.

MATTINGLY: So we have been doing a lot of math on the board. There is literally 0 percent chance I ever had an opportunity to answer that question.

CUOMO: Tell them, Lou.

Of course, it is.

ENTEN: I Googled it. I had it right here.

CUOMO: No, Lou got it.

ENTEN: But that's not fair. He knows so much more about music than I do.

CUOMO: He never gets any credit in coverage. The only thing we get anything right is because of our producers and our crew. Lou knows everything about music, all the time. We keep him in dark because he's too handsome.

Let's talk about Nevada and Arizona fast and you can thank Lou later for bailing you out with the mask on.

So, what did we learn about what we have to come?

MATTINGLY: We saw, over the course of the last 24 hours, Joe Biden's margin continue to narrow.

Why did it continue to narrow?

Where the vote was coming in. You see the red here. There are very conservative counties in the state of Arizona.

However, the vast -- not the vast majority -- more than half of the votes that are outstanding right now come from here. It's Maricopa County. I think the thing Harry and I have been watching like hawks, as batches come in from Maricopa, is not whether or not Joe Biden wins that batch or Donald Trump wins that batch but if Donald Trump wins that batch by a certain percentage.

If Donald Trump is winning any of the batches that come through, he needs to be doing it by about 55 percent to 56 percent. And what happened yesterday, even as he was picking up votes and narrowing the margin, he was beating Joe Biden by about 51 percent.

Check me on that.

ENTEN: Yes. Yes. Generally, in the low 50s. Basically, what Phil is getting at is, although he was beating former Vice President Joe Biden, he wasn't beating him by the margins necessary, given the votes that are outstanding to close the gap and ultimately go into the lead.

CUOMO: Also, in Arizona, as a function of the story of our country, is in the change of who we look like and the diversity. But it's also about diversity within diversity. Here's how.

Maricopa County is a big county. Trump won it last time.

Why is Biden winning it, this time, as Phil has explained so many times excellently?

It's because you have an increase in Latino population there that is playing Democratic. Here, the fastest growing minority group in America, Latinos. They are not a monolith. So, in Texas, along the border, people suggestively, people coming from Mexico, where would they be?

Along the border. And yet, they voted for Trump, why?

In Miami, Cubans, Venezuelans, voted heavily for Trump because they don't identify that way. Think we're talking illegal immigrants. It's not us. Went a different way.

Around Atlanta, you have the Black vote. It's different. Not all minorities are the same. Part of the understanding of the diversification of who we are.

So, what do we expect in terms of, when this is all done, do we believe, given the trends, that Joe Biden can hold and can't be caught?

MATTINGLY: So the feeling on the ground right now, and I have talked to both Republicans and Democrats on the ground, based on what we saw in the batches that came out yesterday, exactly what Harry was talking about, that Joe Biden is in a more comfortable position today than he was yesterday.

We will see. There is more vote to come from Maricopa and obviously that's the crucial element here. But if you are in one campaign or the other, you are feeling more comfortable about the state of play in Arizona if you are the Biden campaign, than if you are in the Trump campaign.

ENTEN: I agree, 100 percent. The other thing in terms of why Arizona shifted to the Left is the culturally upscale suburbs. Voters, there are a lot of them in Phoenix, in the suburbs of Phoenix. It's a big part of the reason why Joe Biden is ahead by a point right now in Arizona, not behind by a point.

MATTINGLY: If you want to see the shift.

CUOMO: No, I do but I can't. I got to go to break.

MATTINGLY: 2016. 2020. That's the shift.

ENTEN: Boy, that was fast, Philly.

CUOMO: We're going to go to break. When we come back, we'll take a look what's happening in Georgia and what that means about what might happen in the rest of this country. Stay with CNN.

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JOE BIDEN (D), PRESIDENTIAL NOMINEE: We're going to win this race. Just look at what has happened since yesterday, 24 hours. We were behind in Georgia. Now we're ahead. And we're going to win that state; 24 hours ago, we were behind in Pennsylvania and we are going to win Pennsylvania.

And now, we're ahead but we're winning in Arizona, we're winning in Nevada. And, in fact, our lead just doubled in Nevada. We're on track to over 300 electoral votes, Electoral College votes.

And look at the national numbers. We're going to win this race with a clear majority of the nation behind us. We have gotten over 74 million votes. Let me repeat that, 74 million votes. That's more than any presidential ticket has ever gotten in the history of the United States of America.

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[03:20:00]

LEMON: Well, I mean, listen. It's no doubt that he is exhausted. Imagine being -- how we feel and Joe Biden and the stress that he's dealing with right now. Even the current president -- Joe Biden not giving a victory speech but as close as you can come to giving a victory speech.

President Trump, though, has said before that he isn't a good loser. Definitely, not winning right now.

So, what's happening if he does lose this race?

So, let's talk, Nia-Malika Henderson, John Avlon, Margaret Hoover. So good to see all of you. So we have one person saying we need to come together, it's time to do this. We have another person saying, it's rigged. They are stealing the election.

The longer this goes on, this limbo of who is winning, who is not winning, there are a lot of things that can take root and I think disinformation is one of them.

JOHN AVLON, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL ANALYST: I think that's danger that we are in. It is absolutely appropriate for everyone to make sure they are getting the math right with the projections. There is too much at stake.

With that said, the trends have been clear for a long time. Easily, getting into a day, into two, now. We've got these separate medical ecosystems. You got a hyper partisan media ecosystem that is feeding people disinformation consistent with the president's --

(CROSSTALK)

AVLON: -- right. That the only way he could lose the election is if there is massive fraud.

There's no massive fraud. Ben Ginsburg will tell you that. But it's very dangerous. There is no moral equivalence. But that message is being seeded in people's heads and will make this election seem illegitimate to just under half the country.

LEMON: Margaret, let me -- I am looking for a friend's text because one friend said, look, Don, I know you guys don't want to call it. But I am a mom and I have a calculator and I balance my checkbook and you keep saying the math is not there.

But if I'm doing this math, you know, a blind person can see what's happening here. That's what one friend said.

Another said to me -- just give me two seconds. My other friend says -- it says, "Getting somewhat scandalous that you're not calling the race. Wt --" you know what was the thing.

MARGARET HOOVER, REPUBLICAN STRATEGIST: You know, you're going to be ahead of the states. I mean, once the state's secretary of state in Pennsylvania says they're all counted, here it is, then, I think it's appropriate for a news organization to do it. But makes sense to me.

Shouldn't we wait until at least --

(CROSSTALK)

LEMON: Folks, we are talking about the sentiment of people at home. And you brought up a very good question that was on another network.

What are you telling your friends?

I'm telling my friends it's over, but the networks won't call it, officially. But go on.

HOOVER: That's right. I mean, we all know that this is trending a certain way. We are going to see President-Elect Joe Biden, within a certain period of time.

But it isn't appropriate to call anything before the states, themselves, have said, you know?

We have done a really good job, I think, of saying this is going to take a really long time to count.

So why are we so surprised this is taking a long time to count?

LEMON: Because people are impatient, right?

NIA-MALIKA HENDERSON, CNN CORRESPONDENT: But I do think presidential elections have been called, before, with counting still to happen.

LEMON: Do you think the polling was so wrong, like, oh, no, no. It is almost people were afraid were afraid to say, even with the polling, that Joe Biden was going to win because, I don't know, 2016.

HENDERSON: Even if I tell Democrats President-Elect Biden is for sure going to happen.

They're like are you sure?

What about these court cases?

Listen. I think the big problem that we have right now is we have a president who seeded the ground here with lies about it being rigged. He started that weeks ago. And his followers have picked up on these lies.

He now can't back out of these lies and he can't concede. That is what's missing from this. It's the lack of concession. That's why we're here.

LEMON: Nia, we see it when -- there are folks, diehard supporters, they wait on the president's messaging to figure out what they should say and what they should believe and we know that because we have one group saying, stop the vote, stop the count, stop the count.

And we have another group saying, keep counting, keep counting all the votes.

(CROSSTALK)

HENDERSON: Right, which is his mixed messaging.

LEMON: If he says this is rigged, if he says it's being stolen, they're going to believe that. The longer this goes on, doesn't --

HENDERSON: Oh, totally. Totally. But it's taken root long before this time.

[03:25:00]

HENDERSON: He's been saying for weeks and weeks and weeks. You can talk about Mitch McConnell, whatever prominent Republican you would want to come out, it's not going to work.

LEMON: I got to go.

So then, what do we do?

What do we do?

Because people don't know what to believe.

AVLON: Look. There is a difference between facts and fanaticism. This weekend is a very combustible point and we need to take it very seriously.

LEMON: You guys are going to be here with us for quite some time so we will continue our conversation throughout the hours here on CNN.

Meantime, what are we talking about?

Vote count. We are looking in Georgia. We're looking in Pennsylvania. We're looking at Arizona. We're looking at Nevada.

Who knows where we are going to get the next round of votes coming in?

But the big thing is, when are we going to have that critical projection?

We shall see. Stay tuned.

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CUOMO: Joe Biden's lead keeps expanding, on our watch. That means one thing: key race alert. All right. In Georgia, we have seen a significant move.

Why?

Joe Biden may be out of recount concern range in Georgia. The big line is, without it, Donald Trump does not have a path to win this election through the Electoral College. The lead now 7,248 votes. They are coming in smaller batches but this last one gave a big percentage increase for Biden, over 60 percent. Let's go to Kristen Holmes, right now, at the voting desk for some

perspective on what we're watching and what we can, still, expect to see.

Hello.

KRISTEN HOLMES, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Hello. Well, let's talk about recounts because you just mentioned it and there are two states within that margin right now and Georgia is still one of them.

On top of that, the secretary of state in Georgia, a Republican, has already said there is going to be a recount. Let's go over the rules what that would look like.

In Georgia, there is no automatic recount. So, candidates can request a recount if the margin of victory is 0.5 percent or less. Biden still, obviously, within that margin for a recount. Again, the secretary of state has already said that there is going to be a recount.

But I want to point something out here. There is a history of recounts in this country not having flipped the winner, in years. OK. So, Georgia, in particular, the last two recounts they had, one was for a judicial recount. It was a statewide judge in 2004. The margin was 400 votes.

So clearly, this is a much larger margin. The other was in 2017. The Atlanta mayoral race, Keisha Lance Bottoms, who, of course, we know. Her opponent got no more votes there. So again, recounts have a long history of not flipping the winner.

It is possible. But still, unlikely. The other one I want to look at is Pennsylvania. If you listen to Democrats in the state, they say by the end of the day, there will not be room for a recount, the margin will be so large.

The difference of 0.5 percent or less is when it triggers an automatic recount in Pennsylvania. The margin, of course, as we know, Biden is ahead by 28,000-29,000 votes, 0.4, so still falling within that recount range. Something to keep an eye on.

But I think it should be noted there are rare times in history that this actually makes a difference. And Donald Trump has said they're going to ask for a recount in Wisconsin, too. That's a 20,000-vote margin. Even former governor Scott Walker, who was a big fan of Donald Trump's, said that was a very heavy lift to try to flip that -- Chris.

CUOMO: Kristen, thank you very much. Very helpful. Appreciate it. Let's take that insight to Phil Mattingly at the magic wall.

Why does this issue matter?

Well, in Georgia, Donald Trump doesn't have a massive fraud narrative that is helpful. All Republicans running the infrastructure of the state, the secretary of state, the governor. If there had been gross fraud, you think they would know and be very anxious to blow the horn there.

So, this -- this range of vote should be OK, even with a recount because you don't see recounts, as Kristen pointed out and you have as well, change the game.

Pennsylvania is a more important recount play because it is vulnerable to political optics. Perception is often reality or, too often reality in politics. Trump identified it early on for his fugazi fraud theory. And they have those ballots that they extended three days to accept, as long as marked by Election Day.

That's been part of the court battle there involving the attorney general. And if he can get out of automatic recount range there, then it would make it harder for the president to press the case, falsely, in Pennsylvania.

Fair analysis?

MATTINGLY: Fair analysis.

CUOMO: Make better points.

MATTINGLY: No, I agree with that. It pains me to say that.

CUOMO: I don't know why. Something about my face.

MATTINGLY: What I want to actually -- because we have the new vote here, what I think is so fascinating is just the state of Georgia, generally. Because if you flash back 36 years ago, and by that, I mean Tuesday, Tuesday night, we've seen this progression mostly in Pennsylvania and the Midwest.

With Georgia, too, there was a point Tuesday night, going into Wednesday, at midnight, people were basically not paying attention to Georgia anymore.

[03:35:00]

MATTINGLY: Everybody thought Trump had Georgia locked up. It was doing exactly what Republicans said it would do. It was a pipe dream for Democrats. And it's just fascinating to watch the progression as absentee ballots came in, 71,000 to 18,000. Through and through and through, we saw a similar thing.

While Arizona hasn't followed, Georgia absolutely has. And I think why that matters, why the progression matters is, one, it shows a very clear trend line, a trend line that has not been thrown off track for the better part of 36 hours, a trendline that has added 2,800 votes to Joe Biden's margin.

And what does that mean, given how small the universe of that vote actually is?

It looks Joe Biden is very much on track -- yes, Harry.

ENTEN: Thank you, Phil. Look, I think what is so interesting about all of this is, before the

election, we were warning viewers, right, especially in the northern battleground states, it's going to take some time. And don't be surprised if Biden moves the margin in his direction, even in a state like Georgia.

Those of us who have been watching Georgia politics for a long time know Fulton County take a long time to count their votes. Everything follows the pattern we expected before the election and, therefore, everything seems to be -- you know, look. Elections are oftentimes a messy thing. And that's something I want to say over and over and over again.

MATTINGLY: Can I say something about recount, please?

Went through a number of examples. If you want to put more perspective over where Georgia sits right now. We will see what happens the next couple hours. But Joe Biden ahead, you know, let's go back to 2016 and let's go to Michigan.

And Donald Trump -- Joe Biden right now is closer to where Donald Trump was in Michigan, where nobody really questioned where this -- they went through the process. Hillary Clinton's campaign tried to pursue avenues here in Michigan, but nobody really questioned the validity in Michigan.

This was just put into the Trump column as breaking through the blue wall and that was it. It was something Democrats needed to find a way to come back from. Right now, Joe Biden is a lot closer at this point.

CUOMO: And he'd be closer to the same electoral delivery, also, which Trump called a landslide.

MATTINGLY: Yes, 306-232. If you give Joe Biden Pennsylvania, give him Georgia and Arizona and you give him Nevada, guess what?

CUOMO: Same.

MATTINGLY: 306 electoral votes.

CUOMO: There you go. Thank you very much. Let's go to break. When we come back, we will take you through what we're seeing. Let's do it, together. Stay with CNN.

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[03:40:00]

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CUOMO: Welcome back to our continuing coverage. Joe Biden says voters have given him a, quote, "mandate for action." But he is stopping short of claiming victory. How does Biden negotiate this period, not just now, if he is lucky

enough to be gifted with your votes to become president-elect -- he's got a couple of months here before an inauguration -- what does he do, especially with a recalcitrant Trump?

Let's bring in Laura Barron-Lopez, Toluse Olorunnipa and Professor Ron Brownstein.

It's good to have you all.

So Laura, what he said tonight, what is the right line for Joe Biden to walk, in terms of messaging, right now?

LAURA BARRON-LOPEZ, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: Well, I think that, what he said tonight is the option that he thinks he has, which is not declaring victory; again, telling people to be patient but also, showing that he -- or articulating that he thinks he has a mandate, which is to, you know, work with Democrats and potentially -- we don't know the makeup of the Senate, yet.

And we may not know for a few months. But he thinks that he has a mandate to get the country on a different track, one that focuses, clearly, more on science-based steps to address coronavirus, which was a big part of his campaign and address other policy issues that he spoke about.

Now how he handles dealing with Democrats in this moment, especially as there is a lot of introspection in this party, given the way the election turned out, because a lot of Democrats, on the one hand, are clearly very happy he is about to win the presidency, they are also very frustrated by losses in the House as well as not being able to fully get a mandate in the Senate.

CUOMO: Ah.

Ron, is the message this country is center Left and Right. Stay center. You go too far left. You're going to lose. Same thing if you go too far on the Right.

Is that the message for the party?

RON BROWNSTEIN, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL ANALYST: I think the message is that the country is really, really divided. And there are separate realities of what America wants. If you look in the big metros, I mean, the margins that Biden ran up were astonishing. In the Atlanta metro, he won by 671,000 votes. Hillary won by 483,000.

[03:45:00]

BROWNSTEIN: Denver metro, he won by 417,000; she won by 258,000. The big five counties in Texas you were talking about before, the border disappointed enormously but he won the big five counties by 913,000. Hillary, by 611,000.

On the other side, Democrats simply could not break into Trump country, hardly, at all. I mean, a few blue-collar counties in Pennsylvania where Biden did better. But by and large, Republicans remain dominant everywhere outside all of the metros.

So, you are left with the situation where Democrats are consolidating control of sort of big population centers in the country. Although, those voters as you note tend to be more centrist on economic ones. On the other hand, they are almost completely shut out of the non-metro parts.

And I think Republicans more department on those voters, become even more recalcitrant because they are kind of more reliant on Trump company for that, whether you are Lindsey Graham or Joni Ernst. And that makes them more susceptible to pressure from not only Trump but from that conservative media ecosystem.

CUOMO: Toluse, isn't the easiest move for Biden to not worry about talking the talk, just walk the walk, we're in a pandemic. Say what you want to do in the pandemic. And then, if you are gifted with mandate of being president-elect, just go around Trump and deal with the agencies on the task force.

TOLUSE OLORUNNIPA, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: Yes. This pandemic does present Joe Biden with an opportunity and the biggest challenge facing the country and something he can bring both sides together on.

No one wants thousands of Americans to be dying every day. It's not as much of an polarizing issue, although President Trump has made mask wearing highly political, that's not something most Republicans want.

They don't want hundreds of Americans dying in red states because we haven't gotten this pandemic under control. So even though there are going to be fights over policy, there are going to be fights with Joe Biden figuring out how to bring together his base, the activist base, that wants him to press every advantage he may have, he's going to have to work on that.

But in the meantime, in the weeks ahead, he is going to really have to focus on this pandemic, try to show the country he is getting his arms around it because, if we are getting 100,000 people infected a day, weeks and weeks into his administration, it's really his biggest challenge.

Otherwise, it's going to be hard for him to put forward any kind of major policy agenda with the country still wracked with this pandemic.

CUOMO: Laura, what's our sense with Joe Biden?

Is he going to be looking to make deals in the Senate?

Or is he going to some vanguard agent for change?

BARRON-LOPEZ: Well, we have heard a bit of both from him throughout the campaign. One of his biggest talking points was, I'm someone who has always worked across the aisle. I am someone who knows how to work in a bipartisan way. I am the one who went to the Hill when Obama needed me to work with Republicans.

But then, there was also talk of this, could Biden be this FDR-esque president once he finally came into office?

I think they are recalculating that a bit, given the makeup of Congress that we may very well see because, as Toluse was saying, it could be hard for Biden, especially since he is coming in with a pandemic, with an economy trying to recover.

And so, there is a lot on the table that he has to get to first before he can even address big issues like climate change or police reform or immigration reform.

CUOMO: Well, thanks to the pandemic and the tax cut and the deficit spending of what used to be a conservative fiscal base for the Right, Donald Trump changed all that. He doesn't have the money to be FDR.

We got to jump. Ron, Laura, Toluse, appreciate you.

We saw a shift in the middle of the night, once again.

Why?

Because we have the best of us, Ameri-cans, busting their butts to safeguard our democracy. We have the latest. Stay with CNN.

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[03:50:00]

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LEMON: You know, the turnout in this election, breathtaking, really. The 270 electoral votes come with the key. But the popular vote can, also, tell us a whole lot about what people want in this country. It is 3:54 am Eastern time. It's time for a coast-to-coast key race alert.

So look at that. There is the popular vote. Imagine how many people voted in this country, 145 million people, 74 million for Joe Biden, 70 million for Donald Trump.

[03:55:00]

LEMON: This is the most people have turned out in this country for any candidate, any two candidates, in the history of America. That is our key race alert at this hour, 3:54 am Eastern time.

Trump isn't giving up and Joe Biden isn't ready to claim victory, but the numbers will make the decision for both of them. And they continue to flow in, early, this Saturday morning.

Forget what day it is?

It is Saturday, by the way. A status report from the states that matter, the ones that matter most, they're next.