Where votes are still being counted

After days of uncertainty, Joe Biden has become the president-elect of the United States. In a year with record-breaking turnout, there are still millions of votes left to be counted.

[2020 turnout is on pace to break century-old records]

Those outstanding votes are not projected to change the allocation of electoral college votes or allow President Trump to overtake the former Vice President. Control of the Senate and the party composition of the House, however, remain in the balance.

It is typical for ballots to be counted for days after the election. In fact, it happens every year. Even with many votes not counted, experts use pre-election polls, election exit polls, party registration and initial and historic results to project a winner in most states.

With this year’s unprecedented mix of mail, early and in-person voting, estimates of turnout have been adjusted continuously since Tuesday, changing the projections for the number of ballots left to be counted. Some counties are done and others have piles left to count.

Each state sets its own laws for processing and handling mail ballots and provisional ballots, although almost all have at least a week to finish counting. Many states do not need to certify their election results until December.

Daniel Hoerauf, Armand Emamdjomeh, Emily Liu, Danielle Rindler and Kevin Schaul contributed to this report.