US Election 2020: Trump demands Wisconsin recount as Biden wins

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Joe Biden is edging nearer to election victory after winning the state of Wisconsin and a 1 point lead in Michigan, which has prompted President Trump to claim election fraud, demand recounts and even file lawsuits to try to stop votes from being counted.  

Biden won Wisconsin with 20,000 votes. The only votes that are not yet counted are from a small town that is home to 300 people, the state’s Election Commission Administrator Meagan Wolfe said on Wednesday afternoon, giving him a 0.6 % victory with 1.63million votes over Trump’s  1.609million.  

Wisconsin gives Biden another 10 electoral college votes and Michigan, which is also in his sights, brings another 16. If he wins Nevada tomorrow as predicted, landing an additional 6 votes, he will have reached the 270 electoral college votes he needs to claim the White House. 

In Michigan, Biden is leading by 45,000 votes. 

Trump is leading in Pennsylvania, Georgia and South Carolina but even if he wins all three, he will not have enough to claim a clean victory. 

As his chances at victory shrank on Wednesday, his campaign set forth their plan to undermine the results.

They have already demanded a Wisconsin recount and have filed a lawsuit in Michigan asking that the vote counting be halted because they think it is suspicious.

‘The President is well within the threshold to request a recount and we will immediately do so. 

‘There have been reports of irregularities in several Wisconsin counties which raise serious doubts about the validity of the results,’ Trump campaign manager Bill Stepien said in a statement shortly after Wisconsin chief election official Meagan Wolfe announced the state went for Biden.

To contest a recount in Wisconsin, the margin between the two candidates needs to be 1 percent or less, which it is. 

In Michigan, Trump’s campaign claims that they weren’t given proper access to polling stations to oversee the process so they can’t trust it.   

‘As votes in Michigan continue to be counted, the presidential race in the state remains extremely tight as we always knew it would be. President Trump’s campaign has not been provided with meaningful access to numerous counting locations to observe the opening of ballots and the counting process, as guaranteed by Michigan law.

‘We have filed suit today in the Michigan Court of Claims to halt counting until meaningful access has been granted. We also demand to review those ballots which were opened andcounted while we did not have meaningful access.

‘President Trump is committed to ensuring that all legal votes are counted in Michigan and everywhere else,’ Stepien said.   

In a tweet earlier on Wednesday, the President cried fraud and claimed his overnight majority had ‘magically disappeared’ thanks to ‘surprise ballot dumps’ in Democrat states. 

It is due to a large number of mail-in ballots for Biden being counted after votes for Trump which have predominantly been in person.  Neither the President nor Joe Biden has yet reached the 270 electoral college votes they need to claim the White House and ballot counting will continue throughout the day and even the week.  

Biden has officially won the most votes of any presidential candidate. He currently has 69,543,071 votes, which is 50% of the total vote reported so far.

That beats Barack Obama, who, in 2008, won that record with 69,498,516 total votes, according to the Federal Election Commission.

If Biden wins Michigan and Wisconsin – with results due by early afternoon – and then, as expected, takes Nevada tomorrow – he will win the election with the key 270 electoral votes. 

Equally, he could take Michigan, Wisconsin and North Carolina today which would land him a victory, as would winning Michigan, Wisconsin and Georgia, though those scenarios seem less likely because votes in both of the southern states are still being counted.  

Then it won’t matter what happens in the Pennsylvania vote which was likely to be the subject of messy Trump legal challenges if he failed to win it when it finally finishes counting votes on Friday. 

The only way for Trump to win is if he snatches back Michigan and Wisconsin today, then wins another 28 points in any combination of Georgia, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Nevada. 

But even as they dared dream of Biden finally entering the White House after decades of trying, and an end to the Trump regime, it was dawning on many Democrats that this was not the new era they had hoped for.

Despite almost every opinion poll predicting an easy Biden victory the election turned into an all-night nail-biter before a route home eventually opened up for Joe Biden.

It most certainly was not the national rejection of Trump they wanted.

Trump still achieved 48 percent of the popular vote and notched up even MORE ballots than he did in 2016, albeit on a much higher turnover.

He also appeared to have made inroads into the black male and Latino demographics and not alienated as many white women as the polls suggested.

Meanwhile there was further disappointment in the Senate which remains tied at 47-47 so far – with little hope of Democrats eventually taking control.

And in another bitter blow to Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Republicans even took BACK some House seats, closing the gap to give the Democrats a mere 89 against their 183 seats, with just a few left to call.

All in all, the disappointing night for the Democrat party risks leaving Biden with little chance of enacting a radical agenda of change, frustrating the left wing of his party.

As leading Democrat donor Barry Diller said: ‘It clearly will be that there is no progressive agenda that’s got any steam behind it, given what is likely to happen with a divided Congress.’

Diller, chairman of Expedia and IAC, told CNBC he was ‘humbled’ by the results so far.

He said: ‘I had hoped for a repudiation’ of Trump, but ‘for all the reasons that are kind of obvious that has not happened.’ 

Trump on Wednesday morning tweeted that votes for him were ‘magically disappearing’. 

‘Last night I was leading, often solidly, in many key States, in almost all instances Democrat run & controlled. Then, one by one, they started to magically disappear as surprise ballot dumps were counted. VERY STRANGE, and the “pollsters” got it completely & historically wrong!’ he said.   

He went on: ‘How come every time they count Mail-In ballot dumps they are so devastating in their percentage and power of destruction?’ 

He then reposted a graphic which showed Biden’s numbers by 100 percent in one count in Michigan, saying: ‘WHAT IS THIS ALL ABOUT?’  

At the same time, his campaign manager Bill Stepien laid out their strategy to question the results if Biden wins. 

He outlined the path the campaign saw, which includes a recount in Wisconsin, Trump winning more votes inM Michigan and Pennsylvania going their way in greater margins than expected. 

The Trump campaign is also contesting Arizona, which has been called for Biden.

‘If we count all legal ballots the president wins. The votes still being counted will come the president’s way at day’s end,’ campaign manager Stepien said.

The campaign did not offer hard numbers to back up their argument and officials took no questions from the media.

Meanwhile, the Biden campaign said they expected to have declared victory by this afternoon.

‘Joe Biden is on track to win this election and he will be the next president of the United States,’ campaign manager Jennifer O’Malley Dillon told reporters. ‘We believe we are on a clear path to victory by this afternoon. 

But this year’s contentious presidential election could drag on. The Trump campaign said they expect the matter to end up in the courts.

‘We are obviously leading a full court press to make sure we have our legal teams are in place to make sure all the legally cast votes are ballot,’ Trump campaign senior adviser Jason Miller said. 

Pennsylvania has said will keep counting mail-in ballots until Friday and it’s unclear when a final result will come in in the other states.

Trump is currently leading there with 54% of the vote but only 65% of the ballots have been counted. He is also leading in North Carolina, with 50% of the vote. 

Once Michigan and Wisconsin are declared, it will become clear just how important those states will be when it comes to determining the final result.

Despite the overwhelming uncertainty, Trump held a victory party on Tuesday night and said at the White House: ‘Frankly we did win this election. We want all voting to stop. We don’t want them to find any ballots at four in the morning and add them to the list.’ 

He railed that the election had not been called already by TV networks and the press – although that is not their role. Trump then threatened a legal challenge –  without explaining how – saying he was going to go to the Supreme Court.

Even Republicans called his remarks ‘distressing’ and shocking. Biden, meanwhile, has vowed to wait for all of the votes to be counted before conceding or claiming victory.     

On Tuesday night, Trump claimed that a ‘very sad group of people is trying to disenfranchise’ his voters. ‘They can’t catch us,’ Trump complained several times, as he rattled off the current set of vote totals. 

The president also grumbled that ‘somebody’ – Fox News – had called Arizona for Biden. Almost as soon as he left the East Room that call was also made by the Associated Press.

Votes from major metro areas that lean Democratic – including Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Milwaukee, Detroit and Atlanta – are still being counted, with updates not expected for several hours. The deadline in Pennsylvania for late-arriving ballots is Friday. 

Trump’s statement came two hours after Biden took to a stage with his wife Jill to say that he believed he was going to win but that every vote had to be counted.

Biden had been first to speak, just after midnight, saying ‘it ain’t over till every vote is counted,’ in an address from Wilmington, Delaware. 

In response to Trump’s vow to sue and stop the count, the former VP’s campaign manager Jennifer O’Malley Dillon said: ‘The counting will not stop. It will continue until every duly cast vote is counted. Because that is what our laws — the laws that protect every Americans’ constitutional right to vote — require.’

 ‘Nearly 100 million people cast their ballot before Election Day in the belief — and with the assurances from their state election officials — that their ballot would be counted.

‘Now Donald Trump is trying to invalidate the ballot of every voter who relied on these assurances,’ she continued. 

‘If the president makes good on his threat to go to court to try to prevent the proper tabulation of votes, we have legal teams standing by ready to deploy to resist that effort. And they will prevail.’ 

Vice President Mike Pence took the podium after Trump and vowed to ‘remain vigilant, as the president said.’

‘We are going to protect the integrity of the vote,’ Pence continued. ‘But I really believe with all of my heart, with the extraordinary margins, Mr. President, that you’ve inspired in the states that you just described, and the way that you launched this movement across the country to Make America Great Again, I truly do believe, as you do, that we are on the road to victory and we will Make America Great Again, again.’

Trump provided little clarity about what he has in mind for his legal team after claiming falsely early Wednesday that he already ‘won’ the election.

Trump said he was ‘going’ to the Supreme Court, when in fact the course of action would be for Republican lawyers to sue in individual states and county jurisdictions seeking to stop or modify the count in some way.

If, for example, Republicans allege that there is a problem in the county in Allegheny County, PA, they first must go to court there, appeal through the Pennsylvania courts system and then if they are not satisfied, go to a federal court. Federal court decisions are appealed to the federal appeals circuit, and from there to the Supreme Court.

It is also up to the Supreme Court to decide whether it even hears a case. It can simply decline to take it which leaves in place whatever ruling the federal appeals circuit has made.

Three different federal appeals circuits are potentially involved in the Midwestern states.

Pennsylvania is in the Third Circuit, which had a majority of Trump and George W. Bush appointees; Michigan is in the Sixth Circuit which is majority Republican appointed, and Wisconsin is in the Seventh, against majority Republican.

‘So we’ll be going to the U.S. Supreme Court,’ Trump said in a speech to supporters at the White House where he railed against TV networks for making election calls that went against him while pointing out the battleground states where he holds leads over Joe Biden.

‘We want all voting to stop. We don’t want them to find any ballots at four in the morning and add them to the list,’ Trump said.

His chief legal obstacle is that states, who oversee elections under the Constitution, are fulfilling their obligations by counting votes lawfully cast. Seeking to stop the count before all votes are accounted for would likely run into constitutional protections for ‘one person, one vote’ grounded in the Equal Protection clause. 

Trump has repeatedly claimed mail-in ballots are fraudulent. However, lawyers representing his campaign and Republicans have already gone to court seeking to stop states from counting mail-in ballots after Election Day.

In the case of Wisconsin, the Supreme Court already upheld Wisconsin’s voting laws requiring mail-in ballots be received by Nov. 3 to get counted. What was holding up results there was simply the process of ballots already in.

‘We will win this. As far as I’m concerned, we already have won,’ Trump told supporters. 

Pennsylvania is further behind in completing its count, with less than three-quarters of the vote in around 4 am. Before the election, there was reporting in the Atlantic that amid a dispute over ballots, the Republican legislature could try to send a set of pro-Trump electors if the state’s vote remained undecided or contested in December.

The state was already the site of a pre-election battle that had the Supreme Court deciding 4-4 to allow mail-in ballots postmarked by Election Day to come in for three days after the election.

The decision itself would appear to contradict Trump’s claim that he has already ‘won’ based on an election that has not yet been certified with ballots still allowed to come in.

In just one example of the kind of multi-front campaign GOP lawyers could have in mind, a Republican congressional candidate has sued suburban Montgomery County outside Philadelphia claiming the state improperly began its count too early. The suit accuses the county of making ‘arbitrary standards’ – even as Trump complains about the process of deciding the election taking too long.

The astonishing move was immediately condemned by his own party. 

Conservative pundit Ben Shapiro tweeted, ‘No, Trump has not already won the election, and it is deeply irresponsible for him to say he has.’

Fox News was also critical of Trump’s approach.

‘This is an extremely flammable situation and the president just threw a match into it,’ said Fox News Sunday host Chris Wallace, who moderated the first presidential debate. ‘He hasn’t won these states.’

Former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, a Republican who advises Trump and helped him with debate prep, believed the president would come to regret it.

‘It’s a bad strategic decision. It’s a bad political decision,’ Christie said.

Former GOP Sen. Rick Santorum, speaking on CNN, copped it up to Trump being stressed, old and it being 2 a.m. and suggested he would walk back his comments tomorrow and say every vote needs to be counted.

‘I was very distressed by what I just heard the president say,’ Santorum said.

Biden was handed Arizona by Fox News, and later by the Associated Press, in a call which the White House was disputing. Both he and Trump are now effectively in a stalemate which can only be ended by the lengthy process of counting mail-in ballots.

‘We feel good about where we are, we really do. I’m here to tell you tonight, we believe we’re on track to win this election,’ Biden told supporters gathered outside the Chase Center just after midnight. He pointed to the gain of Arizona and Minnesota, which NBC News said was leaning Biden minutes before he came onstage.

‘And we’re still in the game in Georgia, although that’s not one we expected,’ Biden said. ‘We feel real good about Wisconsin and Michigan. And, by the way, we’re going to win Pennsylvania,’ he said, getting copious honks from his drive-in crowd.

Biden said he was ‘encouraged,’ especially, by turnout in Philadelphia, which is adjacent to Wilmington.

‘Look, we could know the results as early as tomorrow morning. 

‘It may take longer as I’ve said all along,’ he said. ‘It’s not my place or Donald Trump’s place to call who wins this election, that’s the decision of the American people.’

‘I am optimistic about this outcome,’ he said.

Right before he exited he told the crowd that he and his running mate, Sen. Kamala Harris, would be talking tomorrow.

As Biden was pulling in, the jumbotrons, which were playing MSNBC, announced that President Donald Trump had officially won Florida – the first sign Tuesday that the U.S. was in for a long night.

Big swaths of potentially Democratic votes were outstanding in places like Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Milwaukee, Detroit and Atlanta when Biden appeared.

Trump tweeted immediately after Biden’s speech to accuse Biden of fraud and say he was ‘winning BIG’ and would make his own statement.

‘Votes cannot be cast after the Poles are closed!’ he tweeted from the White House residence – spelling polls incorrectly, but making clear that the battle will be over late-arriving mail-in ballots.

Trump tweeted that ‘they are trying to STEAL the Election’. His accusation was flagged almost immediately by Twitter as ‘misleading’ 

After 1am, Nebraska’s 2nd Congressional district – which is worth one electoral vote – was called for Biden.

Trump won the rest of state, collecting four electoral college votes.   

The gain for Biden is notable because it will prevent a 269-269 tie between the two presidential candidates. In 2016, Trump won all three of Nebraska’s Congressional districts and thus all of its five electoral votes.

Trump snatched the biggest electoral prizes of the night in the closing minutes of Tuesday, as he took Ohio, Florida and Texas.

But Biden scored the first takeaway of the evening as he was also given Arizona, making the western battleground the first state to change hands from 2016.

The gain provided Biden a precarious path to victory even if he were to lose one of three Midwestern states with tight races that are part of his battle plan.

But that means the election now hinges on results which are certain to take well into Wednesday and probably even longer to be determined.

In Wisconsin, outstanding ballots in the state are coming in from red counties, including Brown County, where Green Bay is located – and where Trump held a rally on October 30. Those ballots, however, are from the mail-in category, which tend to tilt Democratic.

If Biden snags Wisconsin, he just needs Georgia, Pennsylvania or Michigan to win 270 Electoral votes.  

Keeping Ohio, Florida and Texas also suggested that polls had badly underestimated Trump’s support in the key battlegrounds – with some giving Biden double-digit leads with days to go, only for it to evaporate.

Ohio, with its 18 Electoral Votes, is a state Trump carried in 2016, but it represented an opportunity for Biden. He made a quick visit to Cleveland one of his final trips of the campaign.

Biden also eyed Florida as a prime electoral prize, but it was only a part of several electoral vote scenarios his team prepared to execute.

Having Florida and Ohio in his column handed the president key pieces of his 2016 successful electoral map – depriving Joe Biden of an early prize that would have sent a powerful signal had he won it.

However, the AP and other networks stopped short of calling Florida for Trump, given the close margin, outstanding vote, and the state’s history of close and contested elections.

A Trump loss in Florida had been potentially devastating. Instead, he was on track to keep a state where public polls had Biden with a narrow lead. Trump made Florida, a regular battleground, his official residence after moving it from New York.

Biden is leading Trump in Arizona. The projected victory means he can take away the state’s 11 electoral votes from the 306-vote coalition Trump assembled four years ago. 

That means Biden now needs to win two of the three Midwestern states which Hillary Clinton lost in 2016 to get to 270 electoral college votes. But with Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin all saying that mail-in ballot counting is going to run into Wednesday and even later, that means there is no rapid resolution in sight.

Biden made Arizona a top target, hoping to bank on demographic changes there. He got another boost when Cindy McCain, widow of the late Arizona Senator John McCain, endorsed him and campaigned with him. John McCain has been a regular Trump target, and his vote in the Senate helped kill a GOP effort to repeal Obamacare.

With Florida out of reach, Biden could still look to North Carolina, but he was trailing Trump there with 95 per cent of the vote in. Trump also held a narrow lead in Iowa with 84% of precincts reporting. In Georgia, Trump was leading 53 to 45, with 80% of precincts reporting.

Adding to the confusion and drama of the evening, each state counted its votes differently – with some running through early votes quickly, and others starting with Election Day votes, and mail-in ballots continuing to be the wild card.

The first sign of trouble for the Democrat began with disappointing vote totals coming in from Miami-Dade County in Florida. Biden ran ahead of President Trump there – but was only up 53 to 46% with 95% of precincts reporting. 

That wasn’t enough to match Hillary Clinton’s totals, and didn’t appear to be enough to offset Trump advantages in other rural parts of the state. It was a sign that Biden hadn’t done what he needed to do to lock down support among the state’s many Cuban-American, Venezuelan-American, and other Hispanic voters. 

Improvements over Clinton’s numbers outside Tampa and around Jacksonville might not be enough to make up the difference, and the state was too close to call with 94% of precincts reporting, although Trump was holding on to a narrow lead.

Florida has a long history of close elections and contested counts, and networks were loath to make final calls even with Trump leading 51 to 48 with 94% of precincts reporting. 

An early lead for Biden in Texas also slipped away, with Trump leading 51 to 47 with 80% of precincts reporting.

None of those state results were final, and there were also encouraging signs for Biden, including outperforming Clinton in some suburban areas that were key to Trump’s victory. 

In a sign that Democrats’ vast fundraising had failed to bring about success, the $100million spent by Jaime Harrison to unseat Lindsey Graham in South Carolina failed, with the Republican winning by a projected margin of as much as 10 points. 

President Trump watched returns in the upstairs residence of the White House with family and close advisers. Downstairs in the East Wing, Trump supporters watched returns on TV screens showing Fox News and snacking on fast food, including French fries and hamburgers.

Biden is at his home in Wilmington, watching the votes come in with his family.   

Trump won eight electoral votes from Kentucky, five from West Virginia and 11 from Indiana, while Biden took three for Vermont.   

The Supreme Court extended deadlines in North Carolina and Pennsylvania for officials there to accept mail-in ballots, a blow to Republicans.

Trump, in particular, has railed against the Pennsylvania decision and has threatened legal action in the state against any disputed ballots.  

Nancy Pelosi SHRINKS her Democratic majority in the House despite believing Republicans were outspent and outgunned – and faces nightmare of AOC-led Squad getting even larger – as Senate is tied at 47-47

Democrats went into Tuesday night expecting to pad their majority in the House, but instead Republicans were able to unseat several incumbents and close the gap.

Both parties’ assumption going into Election Day was that Democrats would be able to snatch at least a dozen more seats from GOP incumbents, adding to their majority in the lower chamber.

The opposite outcome ensued, however, with Republicans picking up several seats and defending representatives in at-risk districts.

Now, Democratic leadership led by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi will have to think hard about what went wrong and answer difficult questions on how their ideal Election Night was knocked so hard off track.

Republicans could very likely have a net gain of 10 House seats.

Pelosi led the House with 232 seats compared to Republicans’ 197 going into Election Day, but it now appears that the GOP will have somewhere north of 200 seats, holding a solid minority with more power than they’ve had the last two years.

The Democratic leader along with Chairwoman of House Democrats’ campaign arm Rep. Cheri Bustos of Illinois predicted a sunny outcome for Democrats Tuesday, claiming they would defend the 2018 gains and flip districts previously thought to be in safe Republican territory.

‘I think we are going to see some wins in these deep red districts that over time you’re going to see going from ruby red to purple to even blue,’ Bustos said Tuesday. 

She also leaned into the uncertainty of this years’ election, adding in her remarks ‘this is an Election Day that may end up looking like an Election Week.’

While Republicans overall are declaring Tuesday a win for their Party in the House, more progressive Democrats, including all four members of the ‘squad’, earned a win in their House races.

Representatives Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York; Ilhan Omar of Minnesota; Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts; and Rashida Tlaib of Michigan all solidly won reelection bids in their respective districts.

They also added a few new members to their ‘squad,’ to the dismay of Pelosi – a more establishment Democrat whose views often don’t line up with those in the more progressive arm of the Party.

Cori Bush, who won in Missouri’s 1st District, was immediately embraced by the ‘squad.’

The group also added its first two male members with Jamaal Bowman, who won his race in New York’s 16th District, and Mondaire Jones in New York 17.

Bowman said, ‘2018 was just the beginning when my sisters in The Squad were able to win their positions.’

‘Now we’re more than doubling up, in terms of those who are coming in with an unapologetically progressive platform rooted in centering racial and economic justice,’ he added.

Although Ocasio-Cortez was currently the youngest member of the House, elected at 29 and now 31-years-old, Republicans will now hold that seat with Madison Cawthorn in North Carolina.

The 25-year-old is taking over former Rep. Mark Meadow’s seat in North Carolina’s deep red 11th District after he vacated the seat earlier this year when he became the White House Chief of Staff earlier this year.

Potentially the biggest House win for Republicans was flipping Minnesota’s 7th District seat red after trying to unseat Democratic Rep. Collin Peterson there for decades and 15 terms.

Peterson, 76, has held his seat in the midwest state since 1991, but was solidly beat out by Republican Michelle Fischbach who earned 53.6 per cent of the vote to his 39.8 per cent. Only Minneapolis, the state’s largest city, and its suburbs voted for Peterson’s reelection, yet again.

With the help of the National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC) and Congressional Leadership Fund (CLF), the GOP had the funds and organization to mobilize House race efforts.

The GOP added several women to their ranks Tuesday night.

‘We defied the odds. It’s the night of the Republican women,’ House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy told Politico early Wednesday Morning. ‘The Democrats never solved one problem in their majority. They promised they would govern differently, and they didn’t.

Republicans beat two South Florida Democratic incumbents in the Miami area, which usually goes strongly blue – especially in presidential elections.

Democratic Rep. Donna Shalala, who at 78 at the time was the oldest freshman woman ever elected, lost her seat to broadcast journalist Maria Elvira Shalazar in Florida’s 27th District. And Democratic Rep. Debbie Mucarsel-Powell lost her seat to Republican Carlos Gimenez, a Cuban American, who won the 26th District seat.

Incumbent Democrats were also defeated by GOP candidates in New Mexico, Oklahoma and South Carolina and Republicans were able to hold onto vulnerable districts in places like Texas and elsewhere.

Nancy Mace took Rep. Joe Cunningham’s House seat in South Carolina 1st District.

Republican candidate Nicole Malliotakis is ahead in New York’s 11th District, which includes Staten Island – and is on track to beat incumbent Democrat Max Rose with a 15.8 per cent margin as of Wednesday morning.

Democratic Reps. Xochitl Torres Small of New Mexico and Kendra Horn of Oklahoma will also both vacate their seats for Republicans to take over in January.

In Virginia’s 7th District, which spans a large area west, north west and south west of Richmond, Republican Nick Freitas is on track to defeat Democrat incumbent Abigail Spanberger.

In the Senate, Majority Leader Mitch McConnell scored the first important win of the election night, with networks calling his race for reelection soon after the polls closed in Kentucky.

It was a result that political experts had forecast – but it dashed the hopes of Trump ‘resistance’ members who poured contributions into the race in hopes of turning back a prime facilitator of the president’s agenda.

McConnell, the architect of the strategy to push through a quick confirmation for Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett, was leading Democrat Amy McGrath 56% to 40%, with about two-thirds of the state’s vote counted.

McConnell, who also helped push through Trump’s tax cuts and confirmed a raft of appeals court judges, also designed the strategy to block President Barack Obama’s Supreme Court nomination of Merrick Garland.

What is still unknown is whether he will return to the Senate next year as majority leader or as minority leader. 

He won in a what was looking to be a difficult year for incumbent Republicans after spending 36 years in the Senate, defeating McGrath, a former Marine fighter pilot, as President Donald Trump carried the state.

Democrats made McConnell a top target even with ample other opportunities on the map, funneling $88 million to McGrath and shattering records compared to $55million for McConnell, a proven fundraiser.

Both Biden and Donald Trump have been eyeing Pennsylvania as one of the key swing states in the White House race. 

Pennsylvania accounts for a significant 20 electoral votes meaning both Republicans and Democrats – as well as pollsters – believe the outcome of the state could dictate the entire race. Concerns are mounting that Trump will declare victory in the state long before votes are counted or that he will attempt to stop mail-in votes being counted after election day. 

Democrats are thought to be more likely to vote by mail-in voting given Trump’s constant rhetoric that the process is ‘rigged’. 

Colorado Senator Cory Gardner became the first major political casualty Tuesday night, after former governor and Denver mayor John Hickenlooper defeated him.

Gardner was considered one of the most endangered Republican incumbents on the ballot Tuesday, running in a state where Joe Biden was running strongly against President Trump.

His defeat would take the GOP’s narrow Senate majority down to 52 votes – however should Republicans knock off Alabama Democratic Sen. Doug Jones it would be a wash.

Gardner trailed Hickenlooper in opinion polls going into election day, and Hickenlooper overcame some of his own stumbles after he was forced to pay a state ethics fine. He ran for president this year and stumbled, but was considered a top Democratic prospect in his state.

Like other Senate Republicans, Hickenlooper became tied to Trump, who was viewed negatively in the state. Although he once criticized Trump during the 2016 campaign after the ‘Access Hollywood’ tape, Gardner, a former leader of his party’s campaign wing, didn’t put much distance between himself and the president.

He said he thought Trump was moral and ethical when asked about it during a candidates’ debate. ‘I wish he could be more specific in his communications with the American people,’ Gardner added.