Presidential election results 2020

Georgia is a must-win state for President Donald Trump, and -- with a relatively quick vote count expected there —it could offer an early window into how Election Night will unfold. 

Like Florida and North Carolina, it's a state Joe Biden has invested heavily in, and a place where his campaign is bullish. But unlike those states, it has not voted for Democrats in recent presidential elections. 

Georgia has long been a Republican stronghold, with the GOP currently controlling every statewide office and the state legislature. Democrats haven't won a major statewide race in the last two decades, but have had a series of close calls —a 2017 special election for a House seat; the 2018 governor's race — in Georgia during Trump's presidency. 

This year in Georgia, the stakes are especially high: Two Senate seats are up for grabs in “jungle primaries,” which go to one-on-one runoffs if no candidate finishes above 50% of the vote. Jon Ossoff is challenging Republican Sen. David Perdue, while Rev. Raphael Warnock is the leading Democratic candidate against Republican Sen. Kelly Loeffler, GOP Rep. Doug Collins and other contenders in a special election that’s almost certain to head to a runoff. 

Biden chose Georgia to deliver what his campaign billed as its closing argument with a speech last Tuesday. His running mate, California Sen. Kamala Harris, campaigned there Sunday. And Biden dispatched former President Barack Obama to Atlanta on Monday. Trump, meanwhile, campaigned in Georgia on Sunday night, underscoring his campaign's recognition of its competitiveness. 

If Donald Trump has any chance of winning the presidency, he can’t stand to lose his home state of Florida.

The President carried the state in 2016 by just over 1 percentage point, but recent polls have found a narrow race in the state, with a series of surveys showing the race between Trump and Joe Biden within the margin of error. Both candidates have blanked the state of late, with both Trump and Biden headlining events in the state on the Thursday before the election.

Florida is a remarkably diverse state with a series of key areas. Trump and his campaign have hopes of cutting into Biden’s expected margin in Miami-Dade and Broward County with a stronger than expected showing with Latinos, particularly Cubans, in South Florida.

The area around Tampa is also central to a Trump win: The President unexpectedly carried Pinellas County in 2016, a swing that signified it would be a tough night for Democrats. And then there was Duval County, which includes all of Jacksonville, a population center Trump won in 2016, but swung back to Democrats two years later when the party’s gubernatorial candidate carried the county.

Turnout will be key for Biden in Florida. A surge of rural voters propelled Trump to victory in 2016, an outpouring that was strengthened by a lack of turnout among Black and Latino voters four years ago. Democrats saw warning signs in early vote numbers from areas with large Black and Latino populations, so the ability for the party to get both key demographics out on Tuesday could prove critical.

CNN's John King explains:

As exit polls trickled in early on Election Night, viewers who support either candidate should be prepared for both ups and downs, CNN political commentator Van Jones warned 

"We are on a little bit of a roller coaster here, a little bit of a seesaw," said Jones, acknowledging some of the early exit polls had worried him, while he'd found other data points encouraging. 

Former Republican Sen. Rick Santorum, a CNN senior political commentator, expressed the same sentiment moments later, suggesting he had already experienced multiple emotions. 

"I'm gonna agree with Van that I was feeling much more confident with these early exits," he said.  

CNN's Anderson Cooper, who was moderating the exchange, then predicted in jest that both commentators might be "basket cases" by the end of the night.

President Trump will win Indiana, CNN projects.

There are 11 electoral votes at stake in Indiana. It takes 270 electoral votes to win the 2020 presidential election.

Who won in 2016: President Trump carried the state and won the general election.

Polls are closing in some states voting tonight. Here's where polls are closing at 7 p.m. ET: 

Follow along here and CNN's Election Center for full coverage.

Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden is now at his home in Wilmington, surrounded by his family, waiting for returns to start coming in at any moment.

For now, a friend says, he’s trying to take in the weight and history of it all,

It’s a day of nostalgia for a man who could be the oldest president ever elected – should he win. His first bid for the presidency came three decades ago when he was the youngest candidate.

He visited his late son Beau’s grave today and went to his boyhood home in Scranton, where he wrote on the wall: “From this house to the White House, with the grace of God.” 

He loves an election night, a friend says, and this is the biggest of a lifetime of them. 

He has a speech prepared – for either outcome – and the transition is already well underway. But he knows that what unfolds over the next few hours will determine if he will deliver that speech or launch that transition.

Some presidents take a zen-like approach to Election Day, viewing their work as finished as voters vote. Barack Obama played basketball with Scottie Pippen in 2012; George W. Bush worked out on his elliptical trainer in the residence gym. 

President Donald Trump has adopted a somewhat less relaxed attitude. He has spent most of the day in his third-floor residence, where televisions are set to election coverage, on the phone and speaking in person to family members and advisers about the current state of play. 

He has asked for updates on key battlegrounds, asking how turnout is looking and inquiring what his people on the ground are reporting back to headquarters, people familiar with the matter say. 

He has appeared particularly focused on Pennsylvania. “How’s Pennsylvania looking?” he has asked multiple times over the course of the day. He has repeated to his advisers his frustration at a court decision that will allow extended counting of mail-in ballots, saying he believes it will cost him. 

Over the last several weeks, Trump has been making similar calls from Air Force One as he conducted his frenzied rally schedule. Aides provided him reams worth of printouts showing polls (public and private), maps, early voting data and more that piled up on his desk. 

Advisers have been careful about what data to provide the President. They have largely stuck with only the most positive pieces of information, leaving out anything that might make him angry. Often that meant printing out a favorable opinion column or news article instead of actual numbers or data. 

Early returns could suggest a strong night for either President Trump or former Vice President Joe Biden.  

But this year more than most, it's important to emphasize that these returns are early. And the mail-in votes, a larger portion of votes in this pandemic year, could prove decisive in each of these states. 

Election officials in some Pennsylvania counties won't even start processing mail-in ballots until Wednesday. Republican-controlled portions of the state legislature objected to changing the rules and processing the vote faster, compounding the problem.

But we’ve seen this in other races in recent years. In Florida in 2018, mail-in votes made the governor's race tighten substantially in the days after Election Day. In Arizona, another close battleground state, the 2018 Senate race saw a decisive lead change after Election Day and Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, a Democrat, won the race.

This phenomenon, known as the "blue shift," is common in recent US elections and it's a big reason why Trump, despite election law and common decency to the contrary, has argued that whoever appears to have won on Election Night should be crowned the winner. That's not the way it works, of course. Ballots in North Carolina and Pennsylvania can arrive in the days after Election Day as long as they have a November 3 postmark.

See how all the states count ballots here.

In a call with reporters, the Trump campaign expressed confidence that Election Day turnout would boost their vote count despite a lead for Democrats among early voters, with campaign manager Bill Stepien pointing to Florida as an auspicious sign for the campaign. 

“We, very much are of, we don’t agree with the Biden campaign on very much, but we do agree with their assessment of the way the election, the pre-election day vote has broken down, most notably Florida at nearly a dead heat heading into election day,” Stepien told reporters.

“Where we, where we disagree with the Biden campaign is their view of what is happening on election day. They believe that election, and the makeup of voters who are voting today on Election Day, will resemble those who voted on election day in 2016. Where their theory breaks down, is that the Biden campaign cannibalized their votes, something you've heard a lot of over the course of the last week, something we've been saying and predicting quite a bit over the last couple of weeks. They simply moved those who traditionally vote on election day to vote early. Congratulations.”

The idea that Democrats are “cannibalizing” their own votes was one they hit hard, and one that they credited to their stronger ground game. “They very much were hoping to slam the door shut on Pennsylvania and Florida and Wisconsin and Arizona before elections, before Election Day even started, that simply hasn't happened,” Stepien said. “With the lack of a round game on the Biden campaign side, they left a ton of votes on the table. And we are driving turnout today, very much making up whatever advantages Democrats built up heading into Election Day.”