In the US presidential elections, Democratic challenger Joe Biden is already ahead in 253 of the 538 electoral college votes. He just needs 17 more to seal the deal. His opponent, US President Donald Trump, would need 56 more electoral votes to cross the magic number of 270.

But with millions of mail-in ballots yet to be counted, the race is far from over. One of the key states, where a close contest is on is Arizona. Trump had clinched the seat four years ago by nearly 100,000 votes.

As things stand, the 77-year-old Democrat has won 50.7% of the total votes counted, a total of 1,444,213, according to a New York Times tally. Trump is just 3 points behind at 1,365,040 votes.

With just 86% of the votes counted, the race is wide open in the south-western state. Much of the delay has resulted from a flood of mailed-in ballots due to the coronavirus — and those types of votes have tended to favor Democrats, according to an AFP report.

How Donald Trump won the US Presidential elections in 2016

https://public.flourish.studio/visualisation/4221317/

In Arizona, there are about 600,000 ballots yet to be counted, Arizona Secretary of State Katie Hobbs told CNN. 340,000 of these pending votes are in Maricopa County, the state’s most populous county.

The votes are delivered at the counting centre twice a day – once at 12.30am ET and then at 7pm. This will continue till all the votes have been counted, Hobbs said.

Hobbs said she does not have any specific timing on when most of the votes will be counted. “We’ll have a more solid answer about that tomorrow or Friday,” she said.