A data error revealed late Wednesday morning shows that the undecided presidential race in Arizona has more uncounted votes than previously thought.
New York Times editor Patrick LaForge said Wednesday morning that 86 percent of Arizona’s voted had been counted, and not 98 percent as previously reported.
The discrepancy occurred due to a data feed error from Edison Research, and research organization. The NYT and other news organizations use Edison’s data for their election maps and projections.
An error was found in the data feed from Edison Research (used by @nytimes and other news organizations) for Arizona results — 86 percent of ballots have been counted, not 98 percent. NYT has not called the state for Biden, though he still leads. https://t.co/mPDkiKsExQ
— Patrick LaForge (@palafo) November 4, 2020
Arizona’s own vote tally lists Democratic candidate Joe Biden leading with 51.0% of the vote for a total of 1.4 million votes, while President Donald Trump has 47.6% of the vote for 1.3 million votes.
Trump currently holds the lead in 10 of Arizona’s 15 counties.
The Arizona Republic estimated that at least 400,000 ballots were left to be counted as of Wednesday morning, nothing “the number is likely much higher,” due to a lack of data gathered from the state’s counties.
Fox News and the Associated Press declared overnight that Biden had won Arizona. The early calls have been criticized due to the sizeable outstanding vote and the fact that Trump won the state in 2016 by four percentage points.
Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey tweeted around the narrow race, saying, “Not so fast. The race has narrowed in #AZ considerably. 130,000 votes separate the candidates, with hundreds of thousands of votes yet to be counted, from all over the state. I’ll say it again: Let’s count the votes, and let the people decide rather than making declarations.”
Not so fast. The race has narrowed in #AZ considerably. 130,000 votes separate the candidates, with hundreds of thousands of votes yet to be counted, from all over the state. I’ll say it again: Let’s count the votes, and let the people decide rather than making declarations. https://t.co/1WYhjChrtm
— Doug Ducey (@dougducey) November 4, 2020
The Trump campaign said Wednesday morning that they were confident Trump would win Arizona.
Trump advisor Jason Miller highlighted the data error in Arizona’s vote count in a tweet on Wednesday morning.
— Jason Miller (@JasonMillerinDC) November 4, 2020
In another tweet, he affirmed the campaign’s confidence in winning the state.
Exactly. https://t.co/o1MaCLByEW
— Jason Miller (@JasonMillerinDC) November 4, 2020
The Biden campaign has not appeared to address the ballot error. In an overnight statement, however, Biden campaign managers Jen O’Malley said, “The counting will not stop. It will continue until every duly cast vote is counted.”
NEW from @jomalleydillon: pic.twitter.com/m2uTPVouPf
— TJ Ducklo (@TDucklo) November 4, 2020
Biden campaign adviser Bob Bauer said, “We are winning the election. We’ve won the election. And we’re going to defend that election.”
Bob Bauer, of the Biden campaign, said bluntly: “We are winning the election. We’ve won the election. And we’re going to defend that election.”
He said Pres Trump’s mission is to “attack the democratic process” and their commitment is to “successfully defend it.”
— Yamiche Alcindor (@Yamiche) November 4, 2020
Aside from Arizona, six states remained unaccounted for as of Wednesday early afternoon: Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Nevada, North Carolina, and Wisconsin.
