Joe Biden has become the first U.S. presidential candidate to garner more than 80 million votes, and his record number of popular votes is likely to rise as ballots continue to be counted across the country, according to a media report on Wednesday.
President-elect Biden won more than 80,011,000 votes as of Tuesday, while President Donald Trump got more than 73,800,000 votes. Trump’s votes make him the candidate to win the second-highest number of popular votes in U.S. history, CNN reported.
Biden, a Democrat, has obtained 306 electoral votes, while Trump, a Republican, has 232. The winner in the White House race must obtain at least 270 electoral votes from the 538-member Electoral College. Americans voted by mail in record numbers this year to protect themselves from exposure to the coronavirus amid a global pandemic, and experts had warned for months that there would be a lengthy vote count that could extend for days after Election Day on November 3.
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The new record set by Biden reinforces his decisive victory over Trump, who has yet to concede the election even as his administration has begun the formal presidential transition process after the General Services Administration acknowledged the victory on Monday.
President Trump finally agreed to allow the formal transition process to begin on Monday, nearly three weeks after the presidential election.
However, he still refuses to admit defeat, repeating unsubstantiated claims that the vote was “rigged.”
Trump’s efforts to challenge the results in key states in court have so far failed. On Tuesday, Pennsylvania and Nevada officially certified Biden’s victory, a day after the same result was announced in Michigan.
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