How Trump or Biden could win, mapped

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As of now, Edison Research has called seven competitive states, all for the same party each went for in 2016: Colorado, Minnesota and New Hampshire going for Biden, and Iowa, Florida, Texas and Ohio going for Trump. The only electoral vote to officially flip thus far has been in Nebraska’s Omaha-based 2nd District, where Biden won.

Here’s the latest count with the swing states left as undecided. Biden is at 227 electoral votes, while Trump is at 216:

(Official results still have Alaska and Maine undecided, but they aren’t expected to be competitive when all votes are counted.)

Two other states appear likeliest to go in Biden’s column. One is Arizona, where Biden currently leads by five points. The other is Nevada, where Biden leads narrowly but where much of the uncounted vote is mail ballots (which have gone heavily for Democrats) in Las Vegas-based Clark County (which is the Democrats’ big county).

Here’s what it would look like if we gave Biden these states:

This would put him at 244 electoral votes — 26 shy of the magic number of 270.

At that point, the race would come down to five states — Georgia, Michigan, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. Biden would very likely win by carrying two of them, while Trump would need four of the five.

The fewest electoral votes Biden could get from winning two of those five states is 269, which would result from winning North Carolina (15 electoral votes) and Wisconsin (10). In that case, we would face the prospect of a 269-269 electoral college tie, though Biden could still win if he carried Maine’s 2nd Congressional District, which has yet to be called:

Given that North Carolina is looking tougher than the others for Biden, though, a more likely scenario is Biden winning Michigan (16) and Wisconsin (10). In both states, late-counted mail ballots in urban areas have him surging and looking like a slight favorite. (Biden now leads in Wisconsin, and he has drawn close to even in Michigan thanks to Detroit-based Wayne County, where many votes still have yet to be counted.) Winning both would put Biden at exactly 270.

This might be his most logical path at this point:

The last immediate scenario to consider is Biden winning Georgia (16), which is very tight and where late-counted votes in the Atlanta area give him a pretty good shot at victory — possibly even making him a slight favorite.

If Biden wins there, he’s at 260 electoral votes and needs any of the four other states for a win:

Trump, as noted, very likely needs to win four of these states (again, assuming he can’t pull a late upset in Arizona or Nevada). That’s not impossible, as the close results show. But were he to pull it off, it would arguably be an even bigger assist from the electoral college than he got in 2016, when he carried three states by less than one percentage point.