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Joe Biden has won the presidency.
A clear picture of the results of the 2020 election between Donald Trump and Joe Biden came into view on Friday, days after Election Day. Vox’s partner Decision Desk called the election Friday morning. And on Saturday, CNN, NBC, the Associated Press, and Fox News all called the election for Biden.
Trump racked up early victories in Florida, Ohio, and Iowa, but Biden had more paths to 270 Electoral College votes than the president. Biden won three Midwest states that proved pivotal: Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania — the same ones that helped sink Hillary Clinton’s bid in 2016.
Biden’s other paths were favorable, too: He is ahead in Nevada and Arizona. And Biden has taken a very slim lead over Trump in Georgia as the final votes are tallied.
Based on this outlook, Biden projected optimism, saying on Thursday, “We have no doubt that when the count is finished, Sen. Harris and I will be declared the winners.”
Trump, however, has falsely claimed victory and sought to stop vote counting. He says he will take the matter to the Supreme Court, promising again to do so in a Thursday evening speech.
It’s unlikely he could prevail on that front, however: Continuing to count outstanding votes, even now that the election has been called, is a legal and necessary part of the process. Nevertheless, he spent much of Wednesday and Thursday tweeting attacks against election officials in swing states who’ve stated commitments to continuing the count, as well sharing conspiracy theories about improper ballot processing.
You can follow Senate live results here and House live results here. Finally, here’s how Vox (and other media outlets) will be making calls.
Counting all the votes is not fraud
Heading into the election, it was pretty clear that President Trump was poised to engage in some shenanigans to try to cast doubt on any potential unfavorable outcomes to him, and even potentially falsely claim he’d won. And that’s what he did.
In remarks early Wednesday, Trump said he’d already won in Georgia, North Carolina, and Pennsylvania, even though those states have not yet been called. Saturday, he claimed on Twitter to have won the election. And he’s the election reflected “major fraud in our nation.”
Twitter and Facebook wound up having to label his false claims that the election is being “stolen” and that no votes can be counted after the polls close. The Trump campaign’s lawsuits in multiple states are a continuation of this rhetoric.
To be clear, there is not widespread election fraud going on, nor is the election being stolen from the president. Candidates cannot claim states for themselves, as Trump suggested in a Wednesday tweet. States are just counting the votes, as they are legally obligated to do. And they will continue to do so, tallying provisional ballots and working through mail-in votes until their counts are 100 percent complete.
