Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden’s lead in Arizona dwindled with the latest updates from county elections officials on Saturday.
President Donald Trump gained a net of 9,288, or 56 percent of the votes, upon the submission of a new batch of results from Maricopa County and Pinal County.
The unofficial statewide count now has Biden with 1,607,430 votes, compared to Trump’s 1,579,368 votes.
The margin is 0.61 percent. If it narrows to within 0.1 percent or less, an automatic recount will be triggered.
Biden led by nearly 44,000 votes on Friday morning.
Republicans believe Trump will ultimately prevail in Arizona, though Biden and his campaign have voiced similar sentiment for the Democrat.
“One of the things I’m especially proud of is how well we’ve done all across America. We are going to be the first Democrat to win Arizona in 24 years. We are going to be the first Democrat to win Georgia in 28 years,” Biden said Friday night.
Maricopa County, with about two-thirds of the state’s population, said the Saturday morning update was “the last large release of results.”
The rest of the ballots require additional time to process, including duplicating military and overseas ballots, damaged ballots, and large-print ballots.
Maricopa County plans to issue more results on Saturday evening.
The Arizona secretary of state’s website lists all precincts as reporting but there are still tens of thousands of mail ballots left to process, primarily in Maricopa County.
Katie Hobbs, the secretary of state, said Thursday that there were between 250,000 and 270,000 ballots left to count.
Arizona delivers the winner 11 electoral votes.
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