2020 Nevada election results by county, NV electoral college votes
Nevada only has 6 electoral college votes but is now pivotal this tight race.
LAS VEGAS, Nevada -- A tight vote margin and large number of ballots that have yet to be counted made the Nevada race between President Donald Trump and Democratic challenger Joe Biden too early to call Friday.
No Republican presidential candidate has won in Nevada since 2004 but it remained a highly contested battleground. While it only has six electoral college votes, it is proving to be pivotal in this tight presidential race.
*Counties are colored red or blue when the % expected vote reporting reaches a set threshold. This threshold varies by state and is based on patterns of past vote reporting and expectations about how the vote will report this year.
As of 6:20 p.m. ET Friday, Biden had 632,558 votes and Trump had 609,901. The fresh batch of results Friday afternoon are among 63,000 mail ballots that Clark County Registrar Joe Gloria said his workers were starting to process earlier in the day.
Under state law, ballots postmarked by Election Day will still be counted if they arrive by Tuesday, Nov. 10. Clark County said Thursday it did not expect to complete counting the bulk of its mail votes until this weekend.
Officials said they expect most mail-in ballots to have been counted and reported by Saturday or Sunday.
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The number of outstanding mail ballots is difficult to estimate because Nevada opted to send ballots to all 1.7 million active registered voters this year due to the pandemic, and it's hard to predict how many will choose to return them.
Nevada, once a swing state, has trended toward Democrats in the past decade. In 2016, Trump fell just short of winning the state. He campaigned hard this year hoping to prevail on his second try.
Bush was the last Republican to win there, in 2004.
Democrats and Biden's campaign said that while they have been successful in recent elections in Nevada, they weren't taking anything for granted this year.
Both parties reported seeing high enthusiasm in recent weeks, an observation that was reflected in turnout results. More than 1 million ballots were cast by mail or via in-person early voting before voting centers opened on Tuesday morning; that number eclipsed the state's total voter turnout in 2016
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
