Joe Biden on the verge of taking the presidency after pulling ahead in Pennsylvania as Georgia announces recount
The winner of the election is determined through a system called the electoral college. Each of the 50 states, plus Washington DC, is given a number of electoral college votes, adding up to a total of 538 votes. More populous states get more electoral college votes than smaller ones.
A candidate needs to win 270 electoral college votes (50% plus one) to win the election.
In every state except two – Maine and Nebraska – the candidate that gets the most votes wins all of the state’s electoral college votes.
Due to these rules, a candidate can win the election without getting the most votes at the national level. This happened at the last election, in which Donald Trump won a majority of electoral college votes although more people voted for Hillary Clinton across the US.
This table shows an estimate for the amount of votes remaining to be counted in each state where the winner is not yet known, and the number of votes separating the current leading candidate from the second-placed party (the margin). Taken together the two things suggest how much scope there is for the positions to change in the final count.
| State | Votes left to count (est.) | Current margin | Current leader | |
| % | votes | |||
| Georgia | 1% | <50,000 | 1,538 | Biden |
| North Carolina | 1% | <50,000 | 76,673 | Trump |
| Pennsylvania | 2% | <150,000 | 14,742 | Biden |
| Nevada | 13% | <200,000 | 20,137 | Biden |
| Alaska | 50% | <200,000 | 54,610 | Trump |
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