Friday Election Update: What Votes are Left to Count in Trump-Biden Race

If the Twitter chatter is any indication, Mr. Trump’s hopes seem to rest on the military and overseas ballots. I don’t think there’s much here. Most of the overseas and military ballots have been counted already, along with all of the other absentee ballots. But military and overseas ballots can still arrive until today, and there were about 8,000 requests that hadn’t yet been returned. This is the group of votes — the very-late-arriving overseas ballots — that’s still left to go.

We have no idea how many of these votes will materialize (there isn’t much reason to assume many). It’s also not obvious that Mr. Trump is favored to win these ballots: Even if Mr. Trump might be favored among military members, the cosmopolitan globe-trotter vote might be quite Democratic.

The pool of remaining provisional ballots is probably much larger. According to the The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, there were approximately 5,500 provisional ballots in heavily Democratic Fulton and DeKalb Counties alone. We don’t know how many exist statewide, and we don’t know how many will ultimately be accepted. But they will probably lean Democratic, as they do elsewhere — with the proviso about this year’s relatively Republican Election Day vote that we’ve added elsewhere.

The pool of potentially fixable but currently rejected absentee ballots may also be meaningful. There were 2,000 rejected absentee ballots statewide, and voters had until today to “cure” their ballots and fix whatever merited a rejection, like a missing signature. No one knows how many will do so, but we do know the absentee vote here was overwhelmingly for Mr. Biden.

All together, Mr. Biden has a very slim but nonetheless clear edge in the state. There’s just not much vote left, and on balance what’s out would tend to pad his lead. Still, don’t expect a call soon. It’s within the margin of a recount. This one might not be called until the results are certified.

Mr. Biden expanded his lead to about a percentage point on Thursday, or 9,000 votes, as a variety of late mail and provisional ballots broke his way by a comfortable 14-point margin. (Mail ballots postmarked by Election Day that arrive by Nov. 10 are accepted.)

His lead should grow further today. According to the Nevada secretary of state, 190,000 votes are left to be counted, and 90 percent of them are in heavily Democratic Clark County. Thursday’s ballots from there went for Mr. Biden by an even wider margin than 14 points. For good measure, the preponderance of the remaining vote — 124,000 — is mail absentee, which has gone for Mr. Biden by a wide margin in the state.