‘Good Progress for the President’: Trump ‘in Line’ To Overtake Biden in Arizona, Data Firm Says | Eastern North Carolina Now

Publisher's Note: This post appears here courtesy of the The Daily Wire. The author of this post is Tim Pearce.

    President Donald Trump is "still in line" to overtake Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden in what may be a crucial win in the battleground state of Arizona.

    Arizona election officials are continuing to tabulate outstanding ballots, which the Trump campaign has said should cut in favor of Trump and give the president the boost he needs to overcome his deficit to Biden. If Trump can get the votes he needs to overtake Biden and secure Arizona's 11 electoral votes, Trump's pathway to reelection is on much steadier footing, though still likely an outside shot.

    Arizona officials were continuing to release data on ballot counts early into the morning on Thursday. After the last dump of counted ballots, the Phoenix-based data analytics and survey research firm Data Orbital said that Trump was still on track with their model to overtake Biden. The data firm released numbers coming from several counties in Arizona with comments on how the updated vote count aligned with the firm's projections.

    In a Twitter thread beginning early in the evening on Wednesday and ending early Thursday morning, Data Orbital said:

• Pima County — 5,614 ballots 50.8/47.3 Trump to Biden. Overall, this is a strong County for Biden. Good sign for Trump.
• Maricopa County 74,547 ballots. 57.6/40.7 Trump to Biden. President nets 12,644. A bit below our 14,000 projection but good progress for the President. #AZ
• ...
• Maricopa County (final update for the evening) — 57.9/40.5 Trump to Biden total ballots counted 62,002. Net gain of 10,783 for President Trump. Trump is still in line with what he needs to catch up statewide. #Election2020 #AZ #ElectionTwitter

    Garrett Archer, a data journalist for ABC 15 Arizona, backed up Data Orbital's read of the data, saying that the fresh data puts Trump on track to overtake Biden's lead, though narrowly. Arizona is still either side's state to take, he noted.

    "While on the surface good, this drop is a 'tread water' for what Trump would need to flip the state. As we get closer to the end, the ballots get less friendly (ballot drop off uni will have a lot more Independents in them)," Archer noted after the latest drop of data early Thursday morning.

    "Trump now needs 68,390 to catch Biden. There are approximately 430k or so ballots left in the state," Archer said, providing a rough overview of the state of Arizona's outstanding ballot count.

    The next dump of ballots is expected to come around 9 p.m. EST. The counting may last through the end of the week before a winner of the state is clear despite the fact that The Associated Press and Fox News have already called the state for Biden. FiveThirtyEight election forecaster Nate Silver called on The Associated Press and Fox News to rescind their calls for Biden based on the trajectory of the outstanding ballot count that could swing the state for Trump.

    "I don't know, I guess I'd say that Biden will win Arizona if you forced me to pick, but I sure as heck don't think the state should have been called by anyone, and I think the calls that were previously made should be retracted now," Silver wrote in a comment on Wednesday night on FiveThirtyEight's live election blog.