The 2020 election was arguably the most contentious debate between two candidates ever. With America facing a slew of high profile issues such as COVID, racism, and others, it was imperative that we had the proper candidate to tackle the gargantuan issues in front of us.
On the side of the democrats, we have Joe Biden. 77-year-old Biden has had a lifelong experience with politics including 28 years as a Senator for the state of Delaware(1973-2009) and an eight-year stint as vice president under the Obama administration(2009-2017). Biden selected Kamala Harris as his vice president. Harris has served as the District Attorney of San Francisco for two terms, has been elected twice as the Attorney General of California, and is a current Senator for California. On the Republican side, we have Donald Trump. 74-year-old Trump is the current President of the United States and has spent most of his career as a businessman with the Trump Organization. Trump, on the other hand, stuck with Mike Pence as his vice president. Pence has served as Indiana’s governor for four years(2013-2017), spent six terms as a house member(2001-2013), and is the current vice president under Trump. After both men were elected to be their party’s presidential nominee, they bolstered down on their efforts to win and spent months touring the nation, talking with constituents, and spending millions plastering the internet with ads. Every time I opened YouTube during the month of October, I would be greeted by smiling Trump or a grinning Biden. The effectiveness of their efforts would soon become very clear with the results of the election.
For those unfamiliar with exactly how the election process works, let’s break it down. America utilizes something called the “Electoral College” when selecting the nation’s next president. Each state is granted a certain number of “Electoral Votes.” The number is determined by the following: two votes for the two senators that preside in the state plus an additional vote for every House member that the state has. For example, our state of Arizona has a total of 11 electoral votes(two plus nine). Additionally, the number of house members a state may hold is purely dependent on the population of the state. With California as the most populous state, it makes sense that they hold the most house members with a whopping 55 members. Registered voters may either vote in person or via mail-in voting. With the advent of the virus, many Americans opted for the latter. Americans can start voting weeks before Election Day when the votes are finally tallied up. The candidate with the most votes in each state wins all of the electoral votes. This system holds true in all but two states—Nebraska and Maine— where they split electoral votes.
Election Day was the final day to vote as well as the first day to count through the millions of ballots. This year, America had a record number of voters with over 150 million. Most states with a history of voting for one party were easily able to come up with who would receive their electoral votes. The real decider of this election would be the swing states, the states with a fluctuating voting record. In the beginning, Trump was off to a very strong start with massive pickups in Florida and Ohio which yielded 29 and 18 electoral votes respectively. Additionally, he was leading in five major swing states on the night of the election: WI, MI, NC, GA, and PA. On the other side, Biden won his expected blue states and Arizona, surprisingly. Arizona had been a Republican stronghold but has become more of a swing state. However, the day after Election Day spelled a very different story for the outcome of the election. Biden started to gain a lead in WI and quickly sprouted an advantage in MI as well. Eventually, both turned blue, giving Biden a massive 26 votes. Biden’s advantage snowballed into much more as he gained advantages in both GA and PA. Winning PA would allow him to attain victory, and that’s exactly what happened. Trump went from a 600,000 lead to a 40,000 deficit in PA. The reason for the alternations from red to blue in many of these swing states were mail-in ballots. Most states started to count in-person ballots first before they scanned the mail-in ones. Additionally, Democrats tended to utilize the mail-in ballots far more than their Republican counterparts which lead to huge advantages for Biden when the states finally started to sift through the millions of mail-in ballots. On November Eighth, Biden won over PA and thus the election. It’s remarkable that Biden is returning to the White House as the 46th US president after his previous eight-year tenure as vice president. What’s more incredible is Harris’s new position as the vice president-elect. She will become America’s first female, first Asian-American, and first African American vice president in our nation’s history. Her monumental win is truly astounding and reaffirms the belief that America is a land of opportunity for everyone regardless of gender or race. While they were celebrating and giving a speech in Biden’s hometown of Wilmington, DE, Trump and some fellow Republicans have been filing lawsuits over the validity of the votes in certain swing states. Only time will tell if Trump will come out on top of all those lawsuits. As for now, Americans all over the nation can finally take a breather after watching the nail-biting election process unfold.
