Donald Trump challenged election results in key states but can he win them back?

 

In order to reverse last week's results and get the 270 electoral votes needed to win the White House, Trump would need to move at least three of those states into his column.

President Donald Trump’s challenge to the 2020 election results runs through six battleground states, five of which he won in 2016. This time, major media outlets have declared Democrat Joe Biden the winner in all of them with five-digit vote leads. With some counting continuing, Biden’s margins in the six states range from barely 10,000 in Arizona to almost 160,000 in Michigan.

In order to reverse last week’s results and get the 270 electoral votes needed to win the White House, Donald Trump would need to move at least three of those states into his column. He’s trying to achieve this through some combination of lawsuits and recounts that he hopes can flip the results. Experts say that would be a long shot in any one of the states and a virtual impossibility in several of them.

And, so far, none of those gambits are working. Several of the suits filed by the Trump campaign and its allies have been dismissed or withdrawn, and the ones that are still before the courts don’t appear to challenge enough votes to affect the race. Meanwhile, Georgia’s hand recount is due to wrap Wednesday, with no indication the results will change significantly, as the state races to become the first of the battlegrounds to certify its results on Friday.

Here’s where Trump’s efforts stand in each of the six battleground states:

Pennsylvania (20 electoral votes)

Biden‘s lead at midday Wednesday (votes reported): 82,217 (>98%)

Legal challenges: Pennsylvania, the biggest prize among the battleground states with close vote tallies, has been a particular focus of suits seeking to challenge Biden’s win. The Trump campaign sued in Pennsylvania federal court seeking to block certification of the state’s election results but recently shifted the focus of its claims from 680,000 mail-in ballots it claims it couldn’t adequately monitor for fraud to a seemingly narrower category of “defective” ballots that it says shouldn’t have been counted. A ruling is expected shortly, following a colorful Tuesday hearing at which Rudy Giuliani appeared for the Trump campaign.