Pennsylvania vote-count status: Biden inching closer to Trump, several hundred thousand ballots reportedly left to tally

As of about 9 a.m. Thursday, the Pennsylvania Department of State election returns site reported Trump with 3,207,795 votes and Biden with 3,031,627 votes — a difference of just over 176,000. Biden has closed the gap considerably, as late Wednesday morning he had just under 2.5 million votes, while Trump at the time had just over 3 million.

If Biden is declared the winner in Pennsylvania — which is allotted 20 electoral votes — that would put him over the 270 electoral votes needed to win the presidency. Biden's electoral vote total as of Thursday morning remained at 253.

The number of ballots left to count in Pennsylvania appears to be a point of contention — and certainly will change as new batches are added to the total. But Julian Routh, the politics reporter for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, has been closely following the Pennsylvania returns and noted just after 1 a.m. Thursday that, by his estimates, there were about 488,000 mail-in ballots left to count.