Biden Beats Trump to U.S Presidency

U.S President elect Joe Biden

November 7, 202//-Democrat Joe Biden has won the 2020 US election, according to BBC projections. He will become president in January, pending the outcome of any legal challenges.

The result was called after Biden overtook incumbent Donald Trump in the state of Pennsylvania. Winning the state gives Biden more than the 270 Electoral College seats needed for victory. In a statement he says he is “honoured and humbled” and that it was time for America to “unite”.

The Trump campaign says the election is not over, and the president does not intend to concede. Trump had earlier declared himself the winner, before all the results were declared.

At the age of 77, Biden will be the oldest president in American history. His running mate, Kamala Harris, will be the first ever female vice-president

Trump statement: ‘This election is far from over’

We have a statement from Donald Trump, who was apparently golfing at his Virginia resort when news broke that Joe Biden is projected to have won the presidency.

“We all know why Joe Biden is rushing to falsely pose as the winner, and why his media allies are trying so hard to help him: they don’t want the truth to be exposed,” the written statement begins.

“The simple fact is this election is far from over,” it says, correctly pointing out that the vote counts have not yet been certified by election officials and remain projections by news media.

However we should point out that this is normal after an election – the media projects a winner based on an analysis of the votes that have been counted.

Trump vows that “beginning Monday, our campaign will start prosecuting our case in court to ensure election laws are fully upheld and the rightful winner is seated”, in a reference to legal challenges that have already been filed – and many rejected – in several states.

Trump claims, without evidence, that the Biden campaign “wants ballots counted even if they are fraudulent, manufactured, or cast by ineligible or deceased voters”.

“So what is Biden hiding? I will not rest until the American People have the honest vote count they deserve and that Democracy demands.”

Election observers and officials overseeing vote counts have repeatedly said that no widespread irregularities have been seen in the process.

Singing, hugging and celebrating outside the White House

Laura Trevelyan, BBC World News America presenter reports: 

The atmosphere is jubilant here at BLM Plaza in Washington DC. People are singing, hugging, celebrating. “Donald Trump is gone, praise the Lord,” shouts one woman.

“We won, hey hey hey, we won – nah nah nah nah, nah nah nah, hey hey, we won!” chant the crowd. People are taking selfies in front of the White House, the mood is ecstatic.

“Good trouble”, one man’s t-shirt reads – a reference to the late congressman and civil rights leader John Lewis.

“How can we support Joe Biden when he supports abortion?” asks one man with a loud hailer. “Jesus wants us to think about that, folks.”

But the crowd ignores him. There’s whooping, yelling, clapping – “Yeah, yeah, we did it!” people shout.

Biden supporters

Jill Biden: From teacher to next first lady

Jill stood beside her husband as he dropped out of the presidential race in 1987
Image caption: Jill stood beside her husband as he dropped out of the presidential race in 1987

It took five marriage proposals before Jill Biden, a former English teacher from New Jersey, agreed to accept Joe’s request.

She is his second wife, after his first wife and daughter died in a tragic car crash in 1972.

Mrs Biden, 69, has spent decades working as a teacher.

As well as a bachelor’s degree, she has two master’s degrees, and a doctorate of education from the University of Delaware in 2007.

Prior to moving to Washington, DC, she taught at a community college, at a public high school and at a psychiatric hospital for adolescents. She gave her address at the Democratic Party’s convention this year from her old classroom at Delaware’s Brandywine High School, where she taught English from 1991 to 1993.

While her husband served as vice-president, Mrs Biden was professor of English at Northern Virginia Community College.

“Teaching is not what I do. It’s who I am,” she tweeted in August.

Could Trump challenge Biden’s win in court?

Over the past few days, as vote-counting has continued, Donald Trump has made unsubstantiated claims of election “fraud” and vowed to go to the Supreme Court.

What he means is unclear. He and his campaign have filed lawsuits in a number of key states – including Michigan and Pennsylvania – calling for a stop to counting, but judges rejected them.

One challenge in Pennsylvania centres on the state’s decision to count ballots that were postmarked by election day but arrived up to three days later. Republicans are seeking an appeal.

Matthew Weil, director of the Bipartisan Policy Research Center’s elections project, told the BBC he was most concerned about this dispute as the nation’s top court had been deadlocked on it before the election – and before Justice Amy Coney Barrett joined the bench.

“They did indicate in some of their dissents that they would be interested in taking it after. So I do think there is a risk that some of those [postal] ballots that were cast by election day and not received until Friday may be discarded. I think that would be the wrong result, but I think that is a legally possible result.”

But Weil added that the election would have to be “very, very close for that to matter”. We have projected the Biden win based on his lead in crucial Pennsylvania, where he is ahead by 30,000 votes.

Biden wins prize of a lifetime, but now hard work begins

Anthony Zurcher, BBC North America reporter reports

Joe Biden’s projected victory after four days of painstaking vote-counting is the denouement of an extraordinary campaign, conducted during a devastating pandemic and widespread social unrest, and against a most unconventional of incumbents.

In his third try for the presidency, Mr Biden found a way to navigate the political obstacles and claim a win that, while perhaps narrow in the electoral college tally, is projected to surpass Mr Trump’s overall national total by at least four million votes.

With his projected victory, Joe Biden becomes the oldest man ever elected to the White House. He brings with him the first woman vice-president, whose multi-ethnic heritage carries with it numerous other firsts.

Mr Biden can now begin the arduous task of planning the transition to his new administration. He will have just under three months to assemble a cabinet, determine policy priorities and prepare to govern a nation facing numerous crises and sharply divided along partisan lines.

Joe Biden has been dreaming of the White House for most of his 50 years in the public arena. With this prize of a lifetime, however, come the challenges of a lifetime.

How Biden won the White House

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By winning Pennsylvania, Joe Biden has won the vote to become the next president, pending any legal challenges.

Our projection of his win in the crucial state gave him 20 electoral college votes, bringing his total to 273 and surpassing the 270 needed to win the election.

Under the US system, voters in each state pick electors, who then gather a few weeks after the election to decide the winner.

Each elector equals one electoral vote, and the number of electoral votes per state is roughly in line with its population – so bigger states like Texas (38) and California (55) have more, while smaller states like Delaware (3) and Idaho (4) have fewer. In total there are 538 electoral votes, and a candidate needs 270 to win.

Pennsylvania was enough to get Biden over that halfway line. With leads in Georgia, Arizona and Nevada, he may well end up winning far more than needed – taking those three states would give him a total of 306.

BREAKINGJoe Biden wins US presidential election

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Democratic challenger Joe Biden has won the US presidential election.

The BBC projects that he has reached 273 electoral college votes, meaning that he’ll become the president in January, pending the outcome of any legal challenges.

Pennsylvania has just been projected as a win for Biden.

And that’s it, after a long wait, he is now over the threshold of the 270 electoral college votes needed.

Biden’s lead narrows in Arizona

A supporter of US President Donald Trump carries a cardboard cutout of Trump during a protest about the early results of the 2020 U.S. presidential election, in Phoenix, Arizona, November 6, 2020.
Image caption: Trump protesters have been demonstrating in Arizona

You might have noticed that some news organisations have already projected Arizona as a win for Joe Biden. The BBC still considers it too close to call.

The latest from the state, after new results came in from Maricopa County (home to the city of Phoenix):

  • Biden is leading by 20,573 votes with 97% of ballots counted, according to the latest data. But his lead has decreased by more than 7,000 votes since the last update
  • Trump supporters have been protesting in Phoenix, as ballot counting continues. Some carried pro-Trump banners as they chanted “four more years” on Friday and echoed the president’s unsubstantiated claims of election fraud
  • Arizona’s Secretary of State Katie Hobbs said in a tweet on Saturday: “My office has been putting out information for months about how election processes work in the state & all we do to ensure security & fairness. If you haven’t been paying attention, that’s on you, but don’t show up when you don’t like the result & scream fraud w/no evidence”
  • We don’t know yet when we’ll have a clear result in the state

    Who is going to control the House and Senate?

    While much of our attention is on the presidential race, results from Congress are still trickling in. The House and Senate are the two national legislative bodies, and whichever party controls them can significantly affect how much a US president is able to achieve.

    In their best version of election night, Democrats hoped to expand their majority in the House and take the Senate from Republicans (and, of course, win the White House).

    That did not happen, and Democrats actually lost at least five seats in the House of Representatives.

    CBS also projects that Democrats are still likely to lose several more races, including two in Florida, leaving them with a thin majority.

    In the Senate, initial results appeared to show that Democrats had failed to gain the necessary four more seats to give them a majority.

    But now two races in Georgia could change that.

    On Friday it became clear that Republican Senator David Perdue had fallen short of the votes required to win re-election against his Democratic challenger Jon Ossoff. A candidate must get at least 50% to win.

    It is now likely to go to a run-off vote in January.

    The other race which will go to a run-off is between Republican Senator Kelly Loeffler and Democratic Raphael Warnock – who are vying to fill the seat of now-retired Republican Senator Johnny Isakson.

    Two other races, in North Carolina and in Alaska, have not yet been called but Republicans are leading in both.

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