November 7, 2020

Joe Biden Just Won Pennsylvania—and the Presidency

Mother Jones illustration; Bebeto Matthews/AP; Luis Santana/Tampa Bay Times/AP

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Former Vice President Joe Biden is projected to win the state of Pennsylvania, according to multiple news outlets, securing his victory over Donald Trump as the 46th president of the United States.

Pennsylvania’s 20 electoral votes bring Biden’s Electoral College total up to 273, more than the 270 needed to win the presidency—even as Georgia, North Carolina, Arizona, Nevada, and Alaska are still counting ballots. In 2016, Hillary Clinton’s loss in Pennsylvania marked a turning point at which it became clear that Trump would win the presidency. Democrats attribute Biden’s ability to flip the state to turnout among Black voters in cities like Philadelphia and increased support from working-class white voters in places like Scranton, Biden’s birthplace.

This is a breaking news story and will be updated.

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WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We can’t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

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