Joe Biden Has Now Received More Votes For President Than Any Other Candidate In American History

Disclaimer: This is a developing story and the numbers reported in the article are subject to change.

Presidential candidate Joe Biden has now received more votes for president than any other candidate in U.S. election history. Biden has now eclipsed former President Barack Obama's 2008 popular vote numbers. The former Vice President had 70,470,207 (50%) votes on Wednesday afternoon, with many states including Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Arizona still tallying results, reported CBS News. Barack Obama secured 69,498,516 votes in the 2008 Presidential election while defeating Senator John McCain. Biden's numbers were hugely boosted by the increased voter turnout, the highest since 1908 when 65% of eligible Americans voted. It is estimated that 160 million votes have been cast in the Presidential election, putting the eligible turnout at 67 percent.

The latest updates had Joe Biden leading the popular vote against Donald Trump, who has amassed 67,280,936 votes (48%) as of Wednesday afternoon. With Trump and Biden's fight for the White House narrowing down to fine margins in crucial swing states, there is a possibility that Trump could also surpass Obama's total vote tally from 2008. Another reason for the record turnout has been people resorting to mail-in voting to cast their vote on account of the Coronavirus pandemic. While Hillary Clinton won the popular vote in 2016, she couldn't secure the 270 electoral votes which installed Donald Trump as President. At the time of writing this article, the New York Times reported Biden securing 253 electoral votes with Trump winning 214 votes. Joe Biden is leading in Arizona and Nevada which would give him the votes needed to cross the 270 mark.

While Trump held a press conference from the White House claiming victory, Biden stopped short of claiming victory even though he was confident of it. The Democratic Presidential nominee called for all votes to be counted before declaring victory. "Every vote must be counted. No one is going to take our democracy away from us. Not now, not ever," said Biden, from the Chase Center in Wilmington, Delaware, reported CBS News. "America's come too far, America's fought too many battles, America's endured too much for that to happen. We the people will not be silenced. We the people will not be bullied. We the people will not surrender." Biden, who was accompanied by his running mate Kamala Harris, concluded, "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."

Earlier in the day, Trump falsely claimed victory at the White House. He accused the Democrats of stealing the election even as the votes were being counted. “I want to thank the American people for their tremendous support. A very sad group of people is trying to disenfranchise that group of people, and we won’t stand for it. We will not stand for it,” said Trump in the East Room of the White House. “This is an embarrassment to our country. We were getting ready to win this election, frankly, we did win this election. We want all voting to stop, we don’t want them to find any ballots at 4 o’clock in the morning and add them to the list. It’s a very sad moment. We will win this, and as far as I’m concerned we already have won,” he added, despite the counting being underway at key swing states including Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Michigan. The President had been leading Biden in all three states at the time but it was estimated that the mail-in ballots would give Biden the edge.

At the time of writing this article, prominent news networks including CNN and NBC News had called Michigan for Biden. Trump threatened to take the matter to the Supreme Court and repeatedly said the election was being stolen. Twitter flagged the President's tweets for misinformation.