Joe Biden Projected Winner In Close Wisconsin Race

Holding a razor-thin lead over President Donald Trump, former Vice President and Democratic challenger Joe Biden is the apparent winner in Wisconsin and is projected to capture the state's 10 Electoral College votes, according to projections made by The Associated Press and NBC News.

Biden led Trump by just over 20,000 votes in Wisconsin on Wednesday, appearing to have flipped the state that Hillary Clinton lost in 2016 with about as narrow of a vote margin. State election officials said all but just a small number of unofficial vote totals have come in from the Badger State in the 2020 presidential race. The state is a critical part of the math for either candidate's path to 270 Electoral College votes.

Wisconsin was the first of the so-called states part of the "blue wall" that Biden took back for Democrats. He was also declared the winner in Michigan, another traditional Democratic stronghold that Trump won in 2016.

The Trump campaign said it will immediately request a recount, as one can be asked for if the race is within 1 percent of the winner's total.

According to the latest aggregate vote totals provided by The New York Times and others, Biden has 1,630,389 votes to Trump's 1,609,879. Trump was leading Biden in Wisconsin for most of Tuesday night once polls closed, but mail-in ballots that were counted into the early morning hours have put Biden slightly ahead.

"All of the ballots have indeed been counted," Meagan Wolfe, the state's chief election official, told NBC News on Wednesday. "So the ballots are back from the local precincts, they've counted the Election Day votes and every ballot that arrived by 8 p.m. yesterday was counted at the central count facility or at the polling place yesterday."

"We're not seeing that there's any counties that haven't posted their results on their website," Wolfe continued.

She also clarified that there's never an official aggregate from the state on election night.

The Wisconsin Election Commission said Wednesday that, to the best of its knowledge, just two small towns — with about 600 votes — had not reported unofficial results. Since Wisconsin does not have a statewide system for reporting election results, unofficial vote totals are provided by individual county clerks.

The next step in certifying the vote begins Nov. 10 on the county level. The deadline to certify results is Dec. 1.

While there is no automatic recount in Wisconsin, if the election is within 1 percentage point, the candidate who comes in second can request a recount. After the recount or if there is no recount, the third step of the certification process begins.

In a statement, the Wisconsin Election Commission said that its counting and reporting of unofficial results has gone according to law.

"Our municipal and county clerks have worked tirelessly throughout the night to make sure every valid ballot is counted and reported accurately," the commission said in a statement Wednesday.

No winner was projected in the overall race on Election Day itself, a scenario that many had anticipated with the counting delays owing to the surge of mail-in ballots and in Wisconsin; election officials had said final results would come in by early Wednesday morning.

Trump won the critical battleground states of Ohio and Florida, while projections from The Associated Press and Fox News have Biden winning Arizona. Biden is also projected to have won the one Electoral College vote given by Nebraska's 2nd Congressional District.

While polling averages had Biden with a comfortable lead in Wisconsin, the race is much tighter than those estimates.

Stay updated with the latest election results and news in Wisconsin. Subscribe to free real-time news alerts and newsletters from Patch.

Trump narrowly won Wisconsin in 2016 over Hillary Clinton by a margin of just about 23,000 votes.

Both Trump and Biden visited Wisconsin in the final days of the campaign, with Biden making a stop in Milwaukee and Trump holding a campaign rally in Kenosha late Monday.

At Trump's rally in Kenosha — the city that saw days of violent protests and unrest following the police shooting of Jacob Blake — Trump emphasized "peace and order." The crowd chanted ''back the blue" as Trump claimed that Democrats were "waging war on the police." Biden's final event in Wisconsin was much smaller due to precautions taken around the coronavirus pandemic.

Wisconsin has been hit hard by the pandemic, with the state reporting very high disease activity in all but two counties in the state. Overall, the state is reporting a seven-day positivity rate of over 30 percent, an all-time high. The state also reported another all-time high of daily case counts with 5,771 cases reported Tuesday and 52 deaths.