Biden's Projected PA Win Will Give Him The Presidency

PENNSYLVANIA — Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden is the projected winner in Pennsylvania, according to The Associated Press and CNN. The win will allow him to capture the state's 20 Electoral College votes and defeat President Donald Trump for the presidency.

Biden has so far earned 273 Electoral College votes, surpassing the 270 needed to clinch the presidency. In Pennsylvania, Biden currently has 3,339,500 votes to Trump's 3,308,548, according to the latest vote tallies from the Associated Press.

The projected win came on the fourth day of intense scrutiny on the Pennsylvania vote count, after an influx of mail-in ballots tipped the race to Biden.

Trump took an early and significant lead over Biden in Pennsylvania on Election Day Tuesday. But as mail-in ballots in the largely Democratic areas of Pittsburgh, Philadelphia and the adjacent suburbs were counted, Biden chipped away at that lead and overtook Trump just before 9 a.m. Friday.

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As Trump's lead in Pennsylvania dwindled, he sought to sow doubt over the validity of the election with claims widely panned as baseless. During a press conference Thursday evening, the president doubled down on unfounded allegations of voter fraud. Some networks, including MSNBC, cut away from the 20 minute news conference.

Afterwards, leaders on both sides of the aisle in Pennsylvania condemned his words. Among them was Pennsylvania's Republican U.S. Sen. Pat Toomey.

"I saw the president's speech last night and it was very hard to watch," Toomey said on the Today Show early Friday morning. "The president's allegations of large scale fraud and theft of the election are just not substantiated."

Trump's campaign on Wednesday sued to stop the counting of votes in Pennsylvania. The campaign wanted to halt the counting of votes over concerns about "transparency," attempting to intervene in existing Supreme Court litigation over Pennsylvania's three-day extension for mail-in ballots and filing suit to challenge an extension of the deadline for mail-in and absentee voters to provide proof identification.

Mail-in ballots received as late as Friday can be counted in Pennsylvania, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled last month, upholding a September state court ruling. The U.S. Supreme Court declined to rule on a lawsuit by Trump's re-election campaign, the Republican National Committee and several GOP Pennsylvania congressmen asking the state to be barred from permitting mail-in votes.

On Friday, Pennsylvania Republicans asked the U.S. Supreme Court to issue an order that all ballots received after Tuesday be separated amid the legal dispute. However, Pennsylvania Secretary of State Kathy Boockvar has already said such ballots would be segregated.

"Given the results of the November 3, 2020 general election, the vote in Pennsylvania may well determine the next President of the United States—and it is currently unclear whether all 67 county boards of elections are segregating late-arriving ballots,” according to the GOP filing, as reported by Politico.

The Keystone State's 20 electoral votes are tied for fifth-most, and Pennsylvania was one of three traditionally blue states that propelled Trump to victory in 2016.

Trump was the first Republican presidential candidate to win Pennsylvania since George H.W. Bush in 1988. But Trump's margin of victory over Hillary Clinton was minimal. More than 6 million votes were cast in Pennsylvania and Trump won by 44,000 — or less than 1 percent.

Trump and Biden zeroed in on the critical battleground state last week, with Trump and his daughter, Ivanaka, making multiple appearances in the state, including four on Saturday alone. Biden, with a large lead in polls in Pennsylvania, made one.

Biden last week marked the moment of the 200,000th coronavirus case in Pennsylvania to blast the president's handling of the worst American health crisis in a century.

"The news that Pennsylvania has passed the grim milestone of 200,000 confirmed COVID-19 cases is a tragic reminder that President Trump has failed at his most basic and essential duty, to keep Americans safe," Biden said.

"Rather than working to contain the spread of the virus, President Trump continues to peddle the lie that America is rounding the corner on this pandemic. President Trump's actions have cost thousands of lives and hundreds of thousands of jobs."

The election brought former President Barack Obama to the campaign trail for the first time in Philadelphia recently to condemn Trump's tactics. Obama excoriated Trump for his handling of the pandemic, his racial unrest response and his lack of fitness for the office and urged people to vote for Biden.

"This election requires every single one of us to do our part. What we do these next days will matter for decades to come," Obama said at a drive-in rally of about 300 cars. "The fact that we don't get 100 percent of what we want right away is not a good reason not to vote."

Recent polling had Biden with a substantial edge over Trump in Pennsylvania and two other battleground states, Wisconsin and Michigan. The poll was conducted by YouGov and was overseen by the University of Madison-Wisconsin Elections Research Center in collaboration with the Wisconsin State Journal.

A Franklin & Marshall University poll released last week showed Biden with a 50 percent to 44 percent edge over Trump among likely Pennsylvania voters.

After returning to the campaign trail following his contraction of the coronavirus, Trump campaigned in Pennsylvania and pleaded for women to vote for him. "Suburban women: Will you please like me?" he asked during an October rally in Johnstown. "Please. Please. I saved your damn neighborhood, OK?"

His pleading with women voters came after a recent survey in The New York Times indicated that Biden had a 15-point lead among females.

This article originally appeared on the Pittsburgh Patch