Democratic challenger Joe Biden has won Wisconsin’s 10 electoral votes, according to the Associated Press. But with the vote count within one percentage point, Donald Trump’s campaign said Wednesday that it’s requesting a recount.
The Associated Press projected that Biden will carry the Badger State, giving him 248 electoral votes to Trump’s 214, as the two candidates continue their race to 270.
Trump’s presidential campaign, meanwhile, said it will ask for a recount “immediately.”
“Wisconsin has been a razor thin race as we always knew that it would be,” said Bill Stepien, Trump 2020 campaign manager in a statement. “The President is well within the threshold to request a recount and we will immediately do so.”
According to the state’s recount procedure, if the election margin is under one per cent, the defeated candidate has the option to request a recount. During a presidential election, the request has to be made by 5 p.m. on the first business day after the full results are announced.
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Biden narrowly defeated Trump by roughly 20,000 votes, according to the Associated Press.
Meagan Wolfe, Wisconsin Elections Commission Administrator, told reporters Wednesday that the counting process is going as planned and that all but one jurisdiction, a township with fewer than 300 voters, has submitted its results.
Trump won the state by less than one percentage point in 2016 and Biden has pushed to return the state to the blue column this year.
Biden’s campaign, meanwhile, expressed confidence earlier Wednesday that the former vice president would carry the Badger State, as well as Michigan and Pennsylvania.
“We are going to win Wisconsin, recount or no recount,” Biden campaign manager Jen O’Malley Dillon told reporters on a call.
More than 1.9 million people voted early in Wisconsin, either by mail or in person, amid the coronavirus pandemic.
Those ballots take longer than regular ones to process, and the counting could not begin until the polls opened Tuesday, delaying the reporting of results.
— With files from The Associated Press