NEWSJoe Biden Elected President Over Donald Trump After Winning Pennsylvania
Nov. 7 2020, Updated 3:18 p.m. ET
Joe Biden is returning to the Oval Office, the Associated Press projected on Saturday, November 7.
The former Vice President and Senator from Delaware is set to become the 46th President of the United States after defeating incumbent Donald Trump in the electoral college. Biden crossed the 270-vote threshold Saturday after the AP called Pennsylvania for him.
The victory comes almost 96 hours after the first polls closed in the country, and for the past three days, the country has been anxiously awaiting the results out of a handful of states — including Pennsylvania; as well as Michigan, Wisconsin, Nevada, Arizona, North Carolina and Georgia.
The first three states to be called for a candidate from that group were Michigan, Arizona, and Wisconsin. It was good news for Biden right off the bat as he was declared the winner in each of those states. This meant that he only needed to win one more state to pass the 270 votes in the electoral college. Biden also did not have to worry about which state he won at that point either, with any of the remaining four states having enough electoral college votes him past that magic number.
Things then got a bit tense when Arizona was put back in the mix despite the AP and Fox News calling it for Biden. The New York Times also showed a win but later stated that a glitch in the program they were using to analyze returns had misread information that came in from the state.
"Because of an error in an Edison Research data feed of results, the estimate of the counted vote in Arizona displaying on maps and tables is too high. The actual estimate is that 86% of the vote has been counted,' the Times said in a statement.
Biden was down in all the remaining sates but Arizona at that point, but as the mail-in ballots were counted he managed to narrow the gap. Then, early Friday morning, he moved ahead of President Trump in both Pennsylvania and Georgia.
President Trump decided that the best way to combat a Biden victory was by threatening legal action on Twitter, and has claimed that he will be filing lawsuits in a number of these states to check for voter fraud. And while there have been a number of incidents which may have compromised access to a free and fair election, those incidents all involved Trump supporters. Postmaster General Louis DeJoy defied a judge's order when asked to conduct a sweep of postal locations to try and locate 300,000 missing ballots. And in Arizona, hundreds of individuals tried to storm the facility where poll workers are tabulating the final results in Maricopa County.
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As OK! reported, the President held a press conference at The White House on Thursday, November 5, at 6:30 p.m. ET, two days after the November 3 election day — and criticized the system.
“It’s amazing how these mail-in ballots are so one-sided,” said Trump, 74, as he addressed the nation, calling the polls “fake polls” and claiming there is “tremendous corruption and fraud going on.”
Without any evidence, Trump said that all of the leads he had in each state have been “whittled down.” At the time, he added, “They’re trying to rig an election, and we can’t let that happen.”
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President Trump will likely dampen this moment for at least the next week, as he tries to find a path to victory via the judicial system. Biden, on the other hand, will be preparing to make history.
The 77-year-old received more votes than any president in U.S. history, taking the title away from his previous running mate Barack Obama. He will dethrone President Trump as the oldest American to take the oath of office at the age of 78 when he is sworn in this January. The history books will likely pay little attention to those fun facts and instead, focus on the truly monumental achievements Biden allowed to happen when he selected Senator Kamala Harris to be his running mate.
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Harris is the first African American woman to appear on a major party ticket and the first Asian American to appear on a major party ticket. Now she will also be the first woman, first African American and first Asian American to serve as vice president. She will be the first child of immigrants to serve as Vice President.
And, despite how "embarrassing," "insubstantial," or "frivolous" it may be to Peggy Noonan, Harris is also the first politician "to dance in the rain onstage, in Jacksonville, Fla., to Mary J. Blige’s 'Work That'."
