Joe Biden defeats Donald Trump to become the 46th President of the United States - Full details
- IndiaGlitz, [Saturday,November 07 2020]
The long-awaited results of the United States' 2020 Presidential Election have been declared and Democratic nominee Joe Biden has defeated incumbent President Donald Trump to become the 46th President of the United States of America. The victory was confirmed after CNN and NBC projected Biden's win in the state of Pennsylvania with 20 more electoral votes. Biden's running mate, Senator Kamala Harris of California, will become the first woman to serve as vice president of the United States.
Joe Biden took on Republican Party's nominee and President Donald Trump with California Senator Kamala Harris as his running mate. Biden claimed the victory after leading Trump in the overall Electoral college vote tally with a total of 284 votes so far, with 270 being the minimum number of electoral votes (out of 538) required for a candidate to win the presidency. The fate of the election, following the election night, ultimately came down to battleground states Wisconsin (10 electoral votes), North Carolina (15), Georgia (16), Michigan (16), Nevada (6), and Pennsylvania (20), which became crucial in determining the winner of the White House after Trump and Biden were neck and neck when the counting process was finished in 42 states.
Based on a projection made by the Associated Press, by the end of the election night, Trump had captured Alabama (9), Arkansas (6), Florida (29), Idaho (4), Indiana (11), Iowa (6), Kansas (6), Kentucky (8), Louisiana (8), Mississippi (6), Missouri (10), Montana (3), Nebraska (4), North Dakota (3), Ohio (18), Oklahoma (7), South Carolina (9), South Dakota (3), Tennessee (11), Texas (38), Utah (6), West Virginia (5), and Wyoming (3).
Early Wednesday, Biden had claimed victory in California (55), Colorado (9), Connecticut (7), Delaware (3), District of Columbia (3), Hawaii (4), Illinois (20), Maine (3), Maryland (10), Massachusetts (11), Minnesota (10), Nebraska (1), New Hampshire (4), New Jersey (14), New Mexico (5), New York (29), Oregon (7), Rhode Island (4), Vermont (3), Virginia (13), Washington (12).
Voters were encouraged to vote early this year, especially through mail-in ballots, in order to avoid queues amid the COVID-19 pandemic. Trump, who initially led marginally in key swing states, started to lag behind when the mail-in ballots (predominantly democratic-leaning) were being counted. Soon after the turn of events, Trump appeared in the East Room of the White House early on Wednesday morning and prematurely declared victory on election night and said he would petition the Supreme Court to demand a halt to the counting. We were getting ready to win this election. Frankly, we did win this election. Most importantly, we're winning Pennsylvania by a tremendous amount of votes. We're coming into good Pennsylvania areas where they happen to like your president. We're winning Michigan. We're winning Wisconsin, Trump had stated. Claiming that the election was a fraud on the American public, he had added, We'll be going to the US Supreme Court. We want all voting to stop.
In response to Trump's reckless statement, which was in blatant disregard of the nation's democracy, Biden had said, It's not my place or Donald Trump's place to declare the winner of this election. It's the voters' place. It ain't over till every vote is counted. Slamming Trump's remark, Biden's campaign manager called the president's statement outrageous, unprecedented, and incorrect. Describing Trump's speech as a naked effort to take away the democratic rights of American citizens, Jen O'Malley Dillon had mentioned in a statement, The counting will not stop. It will not stop until every duly cast vote is counted. Because that is what our laws — the laws that protect every American's constitutional right to vote — require.
After winning Michigan (16) and Wisconsin (10) the subsequent day, which further improved his prospects of reaching 270 electoral votes, Biden said in a speech at an event center in Wilmington, I'm not here to declare that we've won, but I am here to report that when the count is finished, we believe we will be the winners. Here, the people rule. Power can't be taken or asserted. It flows from the people. And it's their will that determines who will be the president of the United States, and their will alone. Adding that every vote counted, the democratic nominee concluded, No one's going to take our democracy away from us. Not now, not ever. I will work as hard for those who didn't vote for me as I will for those who did vote for me. My friends, I'm confident we'll emerge victoriously. But this will not be my victory alone or our victory alone. It will be a victory for the American people, for our democracy, for America. And there will be no blue states and red states when we win — just the United States of America.
While he was trailing in the results, Trump filed lawsuits in the states of Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Georgia, alleging voter fraud and accusing the Democrats of attempting to steal the election. State court judges dismissed the lawsuits on Thursday, stating that there was no evidence that the ballots in question were invalid. I have no basis to find that there is a substantial likelihood of success on the merits, a state judge in Michigan reportedly said. Slamming Trump for raising doubts on the US election, New York Attorney General Letitia James said, Regardless of Trump's inflammatory, misleading, and divisive rhetoric, Americans across the country should be assured that this election was administered fairly and securely by state officials of both major political parties. Election workers around the nation are hard at work counting all legal votes, just as they have done in every election before.
Additionally, Joe Biden has broken former President Barack Obama's Popular Vote record to win over 74.1 million votes, the highest number of votes garnered by any president in the history of the US, in comparison to around 69.9 million votes won by Donald Trump. According to reports, the popular vote is the total number of votes cast for each candidate across the whole of the United States. The candidate with the most votes in the nation is said to be the winner of the popular vote. However, winning over the majority of voters in the US doesn't essentially guarantee a candidate's election win.
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