Counting votes and the potential path for victory for both candidates as we wait to see what happens next, today, wednesday, november 4th, 2020. Announcer from nbc news, this is a special edition of today with Savannah Guthrie and hoda kotb, live from studio 1a in rockefeller plaza. Hi, everyone. Good morning. Welcome to this special edition of today. We are glad youre with us on wednesday morning. We really never left. Weve been on the air all night. Lots of news to cover. I do think a lot of folks at home were up all night. Today comes with something were not exactly used to in the wake of a president ial election. And still a lot of uncertainty. And a lots of votes uncounted, millions of them. Were going to walk you through all of it, do it slowly and take it one step at a time. Heres the count at this hour. According to nbc news, the electoral count is 224 for biden, 213 for the president. Theyre trying to reach 270. Thats the magic number. Now nine states are this morning either too close to call or too early to call, not enough votes being counted yet. Seven of them or the battle grounds weve been focused on for weeks, pennsylvania, michigan, wisconsin, North Carolina, georgia, nevada and arizona. These are tight, tight races. Those are the ones we see in gray. Theres also the ones in the battle for congress to consider. And republicans are clinging to it the majority but several races still undecided. A disappointing night for democrats in the senate who were hoping to have a big moment. Weve got complete coverage and of course Nbcs Chuck Todd is with us. Hell break down the numbers and be over with us at the magic wall in a moment. It was about 2 30 in the morning when we heard from the president last night. Less than five hours ago he finally delivered his remarks. He did something he said he would not do, falsely and prematurely declaring victory. The winning of the presidency has not been determined with several states still unknown. And several states unity sidde e president had helped to flip blue. The president falsely claiming victory. Frankly, we did win this election. Reporter the president making a baseless claims, accusing democrats of trying to steal the election. Millions and millions of people voted for us tonight. And a very sad group of people is trying to disenfranchise that group of people. And we wont stand for it. This is a fraud on the american public. This is an embarrassment to aou country. Repeating his earlier claim on twitter, we are up big and they are stealing the election. Twitter flagged that. It is legal and within voting procedures to keep counting them after the polls close. The president also claiming that his early leads in some battleground states are insurmountable, despite hundreds of thousands of legitimate ballots still outstanding. With 64 of the vote in, its going to be almost impossible to catch me. President donald trump is overperforming candidate trump from 2016, holding on to ohio and florida that democrats had hoped to flip. We won states that we werent expected to win, florida. We won it by a lot. Reporter the president drawing new voters sympathetic to his message. Many of them from rural counties. Among the president s biggest gap gains, with la teens, especially cuban americans in south florida. As for the president falsely declaring victory, that attack on the democratic process was jarring and even irresponsible and thats in the words of some. President s allies. President donald trump saying he would take his case to the Supreme Court but its still unclear how he would do that or on what legal basis. What was notable last night is the Vice President , he spoke a very different tone last night saying he wanted all the votes to be counted, not declaring victory, saying he thinks theyre on the path to victory. Right now its everyones race to have. The president might win, joe biden might win. Talking about losses seems premature. Were going to move up into the biden camp. Kristen welker is in wilmington, delaware. Hey, kristen. Reporter good morning to both of you. The Biden Campaign is striking a defiant note this morning after those remarks by President Donald Trump. The Campaign Manager releasing a statement that echo ed somethin we heard from the Vice President. We repeat what the Vice President said, donald trump does not decide the outcome of this election, joe biden does not decide the outcome of this election and the democratic process must and will continue until its conclusion. Now, biden for his part made very similar comments. Hes sounding very confident that ultimate lily he will prev. With the results in several states too close to call, joe biden projecting confidence overnight that once all the votes are counted, he will come out on top. Im here to tell you tonight we believe were on track to win this election. Reporter biden addressing a drivein crowd in the Early Morning hours saying hes intent on rebuilding the blue wall, which fell in 2016, where both campaigns have spent significant time and money and where ballots are still being counted. Its going to take time to count the votes. Were going to win pennsylvania. Yes ive been talking to folks in filly, allegheny and scranton and theyre really encouraged by the turnout and what they say. Reporter the former Vice President failing to flip two states on the campaigns wish list, reliably red texas and florida, thats despite multiple visits to the Sunshine State by biden and his former boss, barack obama. I need to you cast your ballots. Reporter exit polls show biden underperformed in a key voting group, latinos, including the large cuban American Population of miami dade county, but biden remaining emboldened with a strong showing in arizona, a state that helped send President Donald Trump to the white house four years ago, still too early to call. Biden also closely watching an unexpected battleground, georgia, which hasnt voted for a democrat in a president ial election since 1992. Were still in the game in georgia, although thats not one we expected. Reporter biden trying to set the narrative by addressing the country before President Donald Trump and telling his supporters the election is not over until the final vote is counted. As ive said all along, its not my place or Donald Trumps place to declare whos won this election. Thats the decision of the american people. But im optimistic but this outcome. Reporter now biden has signalled we will likely hear from him again today but no details yet on when or where that may happen. Meanwhile, the campaign has said it has been prepared for legal challenges for quite some time and says its ready to deploy a team of lawyers when and if that may be necessary. Hoda and savannah. Kristen welker for us in delaware. Talking about the lawyers and deploying lawyers on both sides, chuck, you know weve reached that moment we were hoping to not reach. Kasie hunt also joining us. Take us through the map. Wisconsin is something in the last three hours, we got some vote out of milwaukee. You can see here, the vote is trickling in, even in the last 45 minutes joe bidens votes gone from 7,500 to 11,000. The assumption is and its not a guess, most of whats being counted is stuff that was vote by mail and we know statistically thats likely to lean democrat but, again, we heard Gabe Gutierrez say green bay is coming in. I love my packers, its a republicanleaning area but the vote by mail, you dont know. You dont want to make any judgments there. Wisconsin, trust me, were going to get the recount rules going here, i have a feeling. I think you have to request it. I looked it up. Lets go to michigan. You heard Claire Mccaskill has some confidence there. As the numbers have come in, this has really tightened. It was a fourpoint spread when we started at 6 a. M. This morning. Were now down to less than a percentage point. The difference is 45,000. It all mailin vote. We know theres a lot more the orange is the mailin vote, the yellow is the we know theres still over about 850,000 votes to count and its a 45,000 vote difference. This is why democrats feel i would say cautiously confident about michigan. And, by the way, kasie, in case youre wondering, the senate race and president ial race in michigan are starring to align and that is not good news for John James John James is the republican challenger tho go gary peters. It does look like those two will go together. Then weve got pennsylvania. Lets just be honest here. This is a lot of ground for him to make up and yet theres a lot of votes still out there, nearly 1. 8 million uncounted votes. Where are those coming from . Everywhere. I mean, again, its in the mail, so we know due to all the great polling that we all trust these days, were pretty confident that there is a dem lean to the mailin ballots. We dont know by how much. It could be by a great deal. We know that Allegheny County stopped counting and wont start until 10 c 00 this morning. Were all going to get comfortable getting to know pennsylvania a little bit. Theres a lot of vote to make up but theres a lot of vote to go. By the way, maine could come in bidens going to win three of these electoral votes. This lead keeps expanding as it slowly comes in. Let me just show you whats going on here with the Congressional District vote. Hang on here. You have to ask nicely. I know, i know. Its cranky, too. Heres our second Congressional District. Even as this vote has come in, i have not seen this margin shrink that much. Yes, its 15,000 votes but this is a very rural district. We still got a way to go but it looks like trump has a good shot at keeping that. That maine second Congressional District, its rural, working class folks, in some way it matches every other trump area. Can you swing out west . Get to the sunbelt states. Well start out in nevada. This is where weve gotten votes most recently. We talked to jon ralston, our reporter contributor who is the editor of nevada independent, he said the remaining ballots are mailin ballots, theyre from the two big counties, particularly clark county. So it should be, you know, as he said the democratic machine but its a 7,600 vote gap here. Again, whats left appears to be advantage biden, just like we said before and this we havent been able to sort the difference between the same day and the early registration. So this is one where, you know, i trust jon ralston. He knows his stuff but thats a very narrow vote gap. And very quickly, weve got arizona. Lets get to arizona. We havent gotten any new vote in here in a few hours. Thats going to be a while. Theres a reason theres that and georgia we havent gotten any new vote in yet either, but we do expect this to continue to narrow and well see. There are so many contested races. We barely got to spend our time with kasie. Dont worry, weve got hours and hours of coverage. I think we misspoke at the top of the show because in fact democrats seem to have reduced their majority, lost some seats in the house and the senate looks to stay in republican hands, although the votes are still being counted. Weve called the house for democrats. So we believe nancy pelosi still is speaker at the end of the day or at least democrats in control, but this is not what we expected going into the night. We were pretty sure certainly all of my sources were saying both republicans and democrats that democrats were going to add to their majority in the house and overnight while we are still these take a long time to count because of the way we look at them just takes a while so were not going to know how many seats all of my sources are now saying they think republicans are going to pick up a couple of seats. Very quickly, one thing im watching as chuck was going through pennsylvania, i grew up in chester county, which is outside, its a philadelphia suburb thats really switch reasonable doubt from red to blue over the last decade or so. Were expecting potentially to get a big patch batch of votes sources are telling me there around 7 30, 8 00 this morning. Thats a place where if you see a very strong biden margin, he needs it to be very strong in the suburbs to have a coach of ending up winning pennsylvania. Its a wide margin right now. At the moment the president is ahead but there are a lot of mailin votes to cou mailins does scrubbing grease feel like a workout . Scrub less with dawn ultra. Its superior greasecleaning formula gets to work faster, making easy work of tough messes. Dawn is a goto greasecleaner throughout the kitchen, too. Keep a bottle in the laundry room to pretreat greasy stains and keep dawn in the garage to lift grease off car rims. Its even gentle enough to clean wildlife affected by oil. Dawns grease cleaning power takes care of tough grease wherever it shows up. Scrub less, save more. With dawn. Until i found out what itust . It actually was. D me. Dust mite droppings . Ewww. Dead skin cells . Gross so now, i grab my swiffer heavy duty sweeper and dusters. Dusters extends to 6 feet to reach way up high. To grab, trap and lock away gross dust. Nice for dust on my floors, i switch to sweeper. The heavy duty cloths reach deep in grooves to grab, trap and lock dust bunnies. No matter where they hide. No more heebie jeebies. Phhhhew. Glad i stopped cleaning and started swiffering. Were back at 7 17. Its been one long day, the race still remains up in the air. There are a lot of blearyeyed folks. Folks have been you all night. The reason . Because those votes are still being counted. We knew they are going to be tight. We didnt know they were going to be this tight. Weve got reports from three of them. Lets go east to west. Stephanie is in philly in pennsylvania where theyve got a lot more votes to count, but the margins for the president are looking very positive for him. Reporter thats right, savannah. A lot of that is the count from the western part of the state. During president ial elections the mantra used to be florida, florida, florida, but that has clearly changed. Theres a very good chance this entire election could come down to whats happening here in pennsylvania. Overnight Governor Tom Wolf hit back at the president who called for the counting to stop. He said that is a partisan interference in this election. They are still counting. Here in philadelphia its happening a at furious pace, 10,000 to 14,000 votes an hour, but there are places where it stopped. One of those places is the biggest district in this state, Allegheny County, they went home and theyre not coming back until 10 00. Its going to come down to the mailin ballots, 2. 5 mailin ballots have been received, only 1. 5 million of those mailin ballots have been counted. So the message from the governor, please be patient. Its going to take a while. They probably want to be accurate and rested when they count. Wisconsin is another swing state that remains too close to call. Gabe gutierrez with us now from milwaukee. Hey, gabe. Reporter if you believe the pollsters, it wasnt supposed to be this close but it is. Were awaiting absentee ballots from green bay, the absentee ballots give joe biden a very close edge. We have spoken with voters over the past couple of days. They say the coronavirus pandemic a huge issue in wisconsin with the dramatic rise in cases and another huge issue, law and order. We spoke with many Trump Supporters that say that his Campaign Message of law and order have resonated, especially in the ken osha ballots. President donald trump won wisconsin by less than 23,000 votes four years ago. Right now the margin separating joe biden and donald trump is much less than that. Hoda. A real nail biter there. Lets go out west at the great state of arizona, my home state. Phoenix is telling the tale at the moment but all the votes are not in lets put it this way, theyre not counted, right . Reporter thats right. We know a little more about those ballots not counted. Maricopa county Election Officials say they are done counting all of the early votes that came into before election day and the ballots cast on l s election day have been counted but the big chunk left are those dropped off on election day. Joe biden has a sizable lead with 82 reporting. If arizona does go blue, were not talking about a light blue, were talking about the potential for two senators that are democrats from arizona, we are talking about a president ial candidate and were also talking about the possibility of the legalization of Recreational Marijuana in a state of barry goldwater. So there a lot of things going on. But its not necessarily a reflection of the true political demographics here. We still know that the republicans outnumber democrats. This is more of a nudge from the sizable independent population here in arizona. They make up about a third of the electorate, but of course all those numbers are still to be gleaned from those returns that we see. We know they are still counting those returns. We are hearing that there could be another data drop coming at 7 p. M. Tonight but a lot of people are hoping its a lot earlier than that. Back to you guys. Gadi, thank you very much. Lets take a pause. You know what time it is . Its roker time. Thank god. You might not be happy about this either, its Tropical Storm ada. Its 2020 get off my back really . Yes. Moving west at 8 miles per hour, this is tied for the strongest hurricane of the season, third strongest november hurricane on record, it works its way through guatemala and now this weekend could become theta. Look at the spaghetti plots right now. Its all over the map but it looks like well be worrying about this into wednesday. It will be interesting to see whether the election is resolved before this is. Were going to get to your local forecast coming up in the next 30 seconds. Good morning. Im meteorologist kari hall. As we take a look at our high temperatures for today, expect it to reach into the upper 70s for today and more of the same tomorrow. Big changes ahead heading into friday. Much cooler a