Joe Biden beats Donald Trump, set to be the 46th President of the United States

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

Joe Biden is now, officially, the President-Elect of the United States of America. With the final results from Pennsylvania coming in, Biden surpassed the requisite 270 electoral college votes and is set to become the 46th President of the United States. It was 20 electoral votes of Pennsylvania, the state he was born in, that carried him across the finish line. Kamala Harris becomes the first woman and Black person to become the Vice President-elect. The Democrats managed to flip Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania to cinch the Presidency.

The results come after a tense four days of ballots being counted across the country. In crucial battleground states like Pennsylvania and Georgia, mail-in ballots could not be processed until Election Day, resulting in a tremendous backlog. A record 100 million-plus voters voted by mail this year owing to the pandemic. Although President Trump had a significant lead in swing states on Election Day, as Republicans largely voted in-person, once the tallying of mail-in ballots started, Biden began closing in on the margins and eventually leading in key states like Arizona, Nevada, Georgia, and Pennsylvania. Despite the races being too close to call, it became clear that Joe Biden was on track to win the race with a clear majority and an unprecedented popular vote count.

Since Tuesday night, all of Joe Biden's press conferences saw a very calm Democratic Presidential candidate thanking his supporters and asking people to remain patient while votes were being counted. On Friday evening, Biden and Harris spoke to the American people from the Chase Center in Delaware, stating that while votes were still being counted, it was clear that they would be winning the race. "My fellow Americans, we don't have a final declaration of victory yet, but the numbers tell us it's clear. Tell us a clear and convincing story. We are going to win this race," Biden said, as Harris stood on stage with him, reported USA Today. He reiterated that although he was running on a Democratic ticket, he was committed to being "a President for all Americans." Biden also reassured Americans to trust the ballot-counting process, despite the Trump campaign's attempts to disrupt it. "No one is going to take our democracy away from us. Not now, not ever," said Biden from his campaign headquarters in Wilmington, Delaware on November 4, according to 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." said the now president-elect. 

In contrast, Trump appeared in front of the press twice and consistently posted on his social media platform to stop the counting of votes, alleging mail-in votes were fraudulent and that Democrats were deliberately corrupting the electoral process. As reported by CNN, this is not true. On Tuesday night, Trump declared from the White House, “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,” even as crucial states including Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Michigan were still counting ballots, reported HuffPost. “This is an embarrassment to our country. We were getting ready to win this election, frankly, we did win this election,” Trump had said. In fact, several news outlets cut away from the broadcast of the president's second address from the White House on Thursday evening. Trump's claims, however, emboldened his supporters to protest against "election fraud" across the country, according to The Guardian. The Trump campaign's attempts to pursue legal action against the election outcomes in Georgia and Michigan were swiftly dismissed by judges, reports Associated Press.

This year's presidential election has seen the highest voter turnout since 1908; an estimated 160 million votes have been cast. As reported earlier, Joe Biden also received the highest number of votes for president in US history, surpassing former President Barack Obama's 2008 record. By Wednesday afternoon, the former Vice President had received over 70 million votes, as compared to Obama's 69,498,516 votes in the 2008 election. Trump's primary support came from White men (58%) and women (55%). An overwhelming majority of young voters in the range 18-29 voted for Biden.

The Trump White House has been mired in controversy since taking office in January 2017. His first two years in office were dominated by Robert Mueller's investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election. The investigation, which was consistently characterized by Trump as a "witch hunt", did not find any evidence of collusion with Russia but was unable to fully exonerate the president either, reported PBS. In December 2019, he was impeached by the United States House of Representatives following an investigation into the misuse of power of his office. However, in February 2020, the Senate voted to acquit the president after a contentious trial, reported USA Today. The presidency also saw the rapid escalation of racial tension in the country, with Donald Trump leveling accusation at Black Lives Matter activists, calling them "dangerous."  

When the Coronavirus pandemic hit the United States in March 2020, Trump initially labeled the pandemic a hoax, then played down the virus, claiming that the pandemic would be over soon. Despite the staggering number of cases being reported across the country, Trump, against the counsel of Dr. Anthony Fauci, reopened the economy. The president's lackadaisical attitude towards the virus, including his failure to consistently wear a mask or socially distance himself, has persisted even after he and first lady Melania Trump tested positive for the virus last month, reported CNN. However, merely a day after Americans cast their vote, a record 100,000 new cases in a day were reported, per The Washington Post. The United States has seen the loss of over 240,000 people due to the Coronavirus. Meanwhile, throughout his campaign, Joe Biden promised to pay heed to scientists in order to navigate the pandemic that continues to ravage the country. On Friday, he affirmed that he and his running mate were gearing up to tackle the Coronavirus pandemic as soon as they take up office come January 2021, after meeting with health officials on Thursday to discuss strategy. “We’re going to work on day one to put our plan into action,” Biden said. “We don’t have any more time to waste on partisan warfare.”