Arizona’s governor said late Tuesday that it’s too early to call the state for Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden after Fox News projected a win for Biden.
“It’s far too early to call the election in Arizona. Election Day votes are not fully reported, and we haven’t even started to count early ballots dropped off at the polls,” Gov. Doug Ducey, a Republican, said in a statement.
“In AZ, we protected Election Day. Let’s count the votes—all the votes—before making declarations.”
President Donald Trump campaign adviser Jason Miller called Fox “a complete outlier in calling Arizona, and other media outlets should not follow suit.”
Over one million votes have yet to be counted, Miller said.
“We pushed our people to vote on Election Day, but now Fox News is trying to invalidate their votes!” he said in a tweet.
“We only need 61% of the outstanding, uncounted Election Day votes in Arizona to win. These votes are coming from ‘our counties,’ and the 61% figure is very doable based on what our other Election Day votes are looking like. @FoxNews should retract their call immediately,” he added.
Richard Baris, a data journalist, said the Fox call after the vote count was frozen in Maricopa County was akin to something seen in third-world countries.
“Fox is playing a role,” Baris said in a tweet
Arnon Mishkin, the Fox News decision desk director, said during an appearance on the network that he was 100 percent confident in the call.
“We made it after basically a half hour of debating, ‘is it time yet?’ Because it’s been clear for a while that the former vice president is in the lead in Arizona and was most likely to win the state,” he added.
No other organizations have called the state.
According to Decision Desk, with between 75.7 and 91 percent of the votes counted in Arizona, Biden was ahead with 53.1 percent, to Trump’s 45.5 percent.
Libertarian nominee Jo Jorgensen had about 31,000 votes.
Arizona is a crucial battleground state that delivers the winner 11 electoral votes.
Trump won the southwest state in 2016 by nearly one million votes over Democrat Hillary Clinton.
The state also went for the Republican nominee in the 2008 and 2012 elections.
