Joseph Robinette Biden has been projected to win the 2020 presidential election according to the Associated Press. With this win, Biden and his campaign have achieved a number of historical accomplishments. Most notably, Biden’s running mate, Kamala Harris (D-Ca.) is the first Black, Asian American, woman vice president in United States history. The Biden-Harris ticket is also only the fifth campaign to defeat an incumbent president in the past 100 years, and it is the first in the past 28 years.

On election night, most polls showed Biden with a moderate lead, but as the votes began to come in, these predictions seemed less and less accurate. By midnight on Nov 3 Biden was behind in nearly all of the key battleground states, and various election  statistics began to favor Trump. One of the first major decisions of the race was Florida, called for Trump by the Associated Press at 12:34 a.m. on Nov 4 With this victory, Trump’s path to victory looked much more feasible, but Biden maintained a lead with victories in states previously won by Hillary Clinton in 2016. 

As votes continued to trickle in, the scales began to tip more towards Democrats in what is called the Blue Shift. The Blue Shift is a swing towards Democratic candidates as more votes are counted. This shift is largely due to the large numbers of Democrat mail-in votes as compared to Republican leaning in-person votes. This year, the Blue Shift won Biden at least four key states, with Georgia and Arizona also leaning blue at the time of this article. Wisconsin, which Trump won in 2016, shifted blue about a day after votes began to be counted, and it was quickly followed by Michigan. By flipping these two states, Biden reclaimed the Democrats’ ‘Blue Wall’ in the Rust Belt region. 

As vote counting began to slow, and Biden inched towards victory, the main focus of election watchers turned to Georgia, Nevada, Arizona, and Pennsylvania. Arizona had already been called by some outlets, but by, and at the time of this article, remained undecided. Georgia, which has not voted for a Democratic nominee since 1992, was leaning heavily red, and only shifted blue with less than 5% of votes left to be counted. Biden has a narrow lead as the state heads to a mandatory recount. Pennsylvania was the true story of the election. Similar to Georgia, a Biden win looked unlikely until over 90% of votes were counted. The remaining votes were almost entirely mail-ins coming from urban areas including Pittsburgh, Pa. and Philadelphia, Pa. These heavily favored Biden and eventually propelled him to a win by less than 1% of votes, flipping the state blue after Trump won there in 2016. 

The 2020 presidential election has been tumultuous, unconventional, and hotly debated. The aftermath has been just the same. Early into the vote counting process, the Trump campaign declared victory, and the president began to make claims about voter fraud, and repeatedly asked for the vote counting to stop. Trump’s campaign has filed numerous lawsuits, most of which have already been thrown out, and he says they will take their cases to the U.S. Supreme Court. Even in the unlikely event that these cases reach the Supreme Court, Trump would need tens of thousands of votes to be overturned to change the result of the election, which is essentially impossible given that most of the suits being filed are based on slivers of evidence or even hearsay. Joe Biden has claimed victory and said that although he ran as a proud Democrat, he will be an American president, reinforcing themes of unity that were prevalent in his campaign. Trump has yet to concede the election and has not guaranteed a peaceful transfer of power. He has also falsely claimed that Biden has actually lost the election and cites the fact that no states have been certified to back up his point. While it is true that no states have been certified, never in American history has a state been projected one way and then certified another. Trump also cites mandatory recounts in states like Georgia as a possible path to victory, but typically these change less than 1,000 votes, which will not be enough to swing any states. 

In the end, a lot of uncertainty remains, but things are more clear now than before Biden’s election. We do not yet know whether Donald Trump will concede the race and peacefully transfer power or if his cases will reach the Supreme Court or what the implications of this election will be for the future. However, despite attempts by the president and some of his supporters to undermine the democratic process, it is clear that Joe Biden has been elected the 46th President of the United States.