Biden Lead Shrinks in Arizona as Counting Continues
Fox News, Associated Press have put state in Biden’s column, which Republicans say was premature
Joe Biden’s lead continued to shrink in Arizona after more vote tallies were released Thursday evening in a state that the Associated Press and Fox News have already put in the former vice president’s column but that Republicans and some election experts say remains too close to call.
As of early Friday morning, Mr. Biden was ahead of President Trump by roughly 46,300 votes with about 90% of the state’s expected total vote counted, according to the AP.
Arizona released about 100,000 votes Thursday night but is expected to have roughly 350,000 more to tally. More than 200,000 of that is in Maricopa county, the state’s most populous. Maricopa county is set to release more tallies Friday at 11 a.m. and 7 p.m. EST.
Because the presidential election is so close, the stakes in Arizona are high for both candidates. If Mr. Biden carries the state, which hasn’t voted for a Democrat for president since 1996, he only needs one other state to give him the 270 electoral votes required to win the White House. Mr. Trump would need to take Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Georgia and Nevada to win without Arizona.
As more votes were counted, Mr. Biden’s lead over Mr. Trump shrank to 1.5 percentage points on Thursday evening from 3.4 percentage points on Wednesday night.
“This race is going to get pretty close. Either way it’s going to get close, but the question is: Can Trump pull off an election miracle?” said Mike Noble, chief of research at OH Predictive Insights, a Phoenix-based nonpartisan polling firm.
Experts believe Mr. Trump needs to win close to 60% of the remaining votes in the state to overtake Mr. Biden’s lead, a difficult but not impossible task.
Arizona has a history of taking days to count close races. The 2018 Arizona Senate race wasn’t called for six days.
Fox News declared Mr. Biden the winner in Arizona late Tuesday night, followed by the AP early Wednesday. In an article explaining its decision, the wire service, which is widely seen as a definitive source of election results, said its analysis of ballots cast statewide “concluded there were not enough outstanding to allow Trump to catch up.” The Wall Street Journal’s news coverage relies on the AP’s calls of races.
Other news outlets hadn’t called the race as of Thursday. Trump campaign officials, who complained in public and in private about the Fox News and AP decisions, said they believe the president will win the state and its 11 electoral votes.
“We think it’s completely irresponsible for anyone to call this state for Joe Biden,” Trump campaign senior adviser Jason Miller said.
Later Thursday, the Arizona Republican party and Trump campaign held a news conference in Phoenix in which they expressed confidence that when all votes were counted, they would win.
The Biden campaign, meanwhile, says it remains confident that Mr. Biden will win Arizona, though aides acknowledged the former vice president’s lead could continue to narrow.
Arnon Mishkin, director of the Fox News Decision Desk, said on the cable network on Wednesday night: “We strongly believe our call will stand.” Sally Buzbee, AP’s executive editor, said Thursday that the news agency “continues to watch and analyze vote count results from Arizona as they come in,” adding, “We will follow the facts in all cases.”
The ballots cast on Election Day in Maricopa County have all been reported. The remaining ballots were all received over the weekend and Monday, or dropped into ballot boxes.
In many other states, early and mail-in votes have favored Mr. Biden. However, Arizona could be different because the state has long had a robust mail-in voting program used by both parties. In 2016, mail-in votes accounted for 75% of all ballots cast. Mr. Trump won the state by 3.5 points that year.
The state has moved left in recent years as a result of a growing Latino population in Maricopa County and suburban residents moving away from the Republican Party.
Arizona on Tuesday elected its second Democrat to the Senate. The AP called the race for former astronaut Mark Kelly, who as of Thursday was ahead of GOP Sen. Martha McSally 52.1% to 47.9%. Arizona also voted to legalize marijuana.
This year, Mr. Trump visited Arizona seven times. Mr. Biden visited the state once during the general election.
By Wednesday evening, Republicans were using platforms including Facebook and Twitter to organize rallies in the state. About 150 people gathered that night in Maricopa County, including outside the county election office, according to local news reports.
On Tuesday evening, a video began circulating on Facebook, falsely alleging that ballots marked with a felt-tipped Sharpie pen in Maricopa County wouldn’t be counted. Facebook and other social-media companies took steps to reduce the sharing of the video.
“If you voted a regular ballot in-person, your ballot will be counted, no matter what kind of pen you used (even a Sharpie),” Katie Hobbs, Arizona’s Democratic the secretary of state, wrote in a Facebook post.