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Erie County Goes Blue with PA Poised to Follow
Final local vote tallies see Biden leading by a slim margin
November 6, 2020 at 3:52 PM
Since Tuesday evening, all eyes have been on counting votes. In particular, the focus has been on a handful of swing states. One of those, of course, is Pennsylvania, with its hefty 20 electoral votes. One of those counties swing counties within the swing state? Why, Erie County, of course.
Most Erieites will remember in 2016 that Erie "went red," for Donald Trump. As the dust settles on our final vote tallies here, it's apparent that Erie has "gone blue" this time around.
This wasn't the case on election day. Not by a long shot.
Of the votes cast in person on Tuesday, Nov. 3, nearly twice the amount were cast for Trump. That day, Biden walked away with 30,638 votes to Trump's 54,414.
Then the mail-in ballots started coming in. Keeping with the national – and especially statewide – trend of Democrats employing mail-in ballots, the balance slowly began to shift. The county site updated and updated, until it was clear that Biden had the edge.
Erie County's final Election Summary Report had Biden with 67,265 and Trump with 65,834. The margin was slim, consisting of 1,431, but was enough to designate Erie as favoring Biden.
Out of Biden's votes, 32,923 were from mail-in ballots and 3,687 were from absentee ballots, with 17 provisional ballots.
For Trump, 9,270 mail-in ballots were cast, with 2,124 absentee ballots, and 26 provisional ballots.
In Erie County, more Democrats voted by mail than did at a traditional polling station. Democrats favored the mail-in option by a more than three to one ratio to Republicans. This would come as little surprise, however, after Trump derided the process several times during the course of the 2020 campaign.
Erie's story echoed that of its home state as well. While as of this writing, Pennsylvania's final vote total is unknown, all signs indicate that things will tip to Biden by a narrow margin – currently with a margin of around 15,000 votes.
This article is about a current event with evolving information and data likely to come.