With More Than 163,000 Mail-In Ballots to Go, Biden is Closing in on Trump in Pennsylvania

Almost 59,000 mail-in ballots are in Philadelphia, where it is believed the vast majority will go to Biden. Another 36,000 are in Pittsburgh.

Joe Biden’s path to the presidency took a dramatic leap overnight Thursday.

The former vice president now leads in Georgia by 1,096 votes. A victory there would mean President Donald Trump won’t be able to earn the 270 Electoral College votes to capture re-election even if Trump wins the states that aren’t finished counting ballots.

Biden also leads in two of the three remaining states, one of which is Pennsylvania.

If Biden stays in the lead in these states, he would earn 286 Electoral College votes.

As of 1 a.m. Friday, Biden was down 18,066 votes with 163,501 mail-in ballots left to be counted across the state. Almost 59,000 of those mail-in ballots are in Philadelphia, where Biden has been getting more than 75% of the vote so far. Another 36,000 mail-in ballots are in Pittsburgh, where counting will resume shortly after 9 a.m. Friday.

Election officials also will need to count any mail-in ballots that arrived between Wednesday and 5 p.m. Friday, and an unknown number of provisional ballots.

The mail-in ballots that arrive after Election Day are being counted separately from the ballots that arrived prior to Election Day because they are currently part of a legal dispute by the GOP.

As of Friday morning, Biden still leads by about 47,000 votes in Arizona, and 12,000 in Nevada.