American Elections: Why News Networks Cited Joe Biden’s Election

As Election Day progressed into “Election Week,” it became increasingly clear that Democrat Joe Biden would oust President Donald Trump from the White House. Late counting ballots in Nevada, Pennsylvania and Georgia continued to keep Biden in the lead and offered him multiple paths to victory.

Rather, the questions were these: where would it win, when would it happen and by how much?

On Saturday (US time), Biden took office when he was declared the victor by The Associated Press in his native Pennsylvania at 11:25 a.m. Eastern Standard Time. That earned him 20 electoral votes from the state, pushing him above the 270 electoral vote threshold needed to prevail.

Pennsylvania was the last piece to fit after the former vice president made his way to the White House by reclaiming the “blue wall” from the Democrats, a trio of Rust Belt states (Wisconsin, Michigan and eventually Pennsylvania) that Trump narrowly won. in 2016. Those states had long served as a bulwark against Republican presidential candidates.

But he also made historic strides in the Sun Belt, becoming the first Democrat to win Arizona since 1996. He also held a narrow lead of more than 7,000 votes Saturday in Georgia, where a Democrat has not won since 1992.

Democrats entered Election Day confident that Biden would win. But his hopes for a landslide that would swiftly repudiate Trumpism, something the polls helped amplify, did not materialize.

Florida, the state adopted by the president and one of the largest electoral awards, went to Trump late on election night.

And a promising Biden early lead in North Carolina quickly eroded. Trump still maintains a narrow lead there, although the race is still too early to call and mail the ballots postmarked from Election Day Nov. 3 that can still be counted through Thursday.

On election night, both candidates racked up victories in predictable places. Biden won the West Coast and won the Democratic states in New England and the Mid-Atlantic. Trump won much of the South, Texas, and the rural, sparsely populated states in the western mountains and the Midwest.

Biden’s victory in Pennsylvania was a dramatic, if not unexpected, turnaround after Trump jumped to a 675,000-vote lead in the snap election and prematurely declared that he had won the state.

In the coming days, as local election officials tabulated more ballots, Trump’s lead narrowed dramatically, with Biden winning roughly 75 percent of the vote-by-mail between Wednesday and Friday, according to an AP analysis. .

Another reason late-night voting by mail broke Biden’s path: Under state law, elections officials cannot process mail-in ballots until Election Day.

By Saturday afternoon, Biden’s lead in the state had climbed to more than 34,000 votes, an advantage over Trump of 0.51 percentage points that put him outside the margin for a mandatory recount.

Under Pennsylvania law, a recount is automatic when the margin between two candidates in a state race is less than 0.5 percentage points. Biden’s lead over Trump was on track to stay outside that margin while final votes are counted.

And the slow nature of the vote count? Blame the coronavirus pandemic. The election, in many ways a referendum on Trump’s mismanagement of the virus, led to widespread use of vote-by-mail for the first time in many states.

Although five states held mail-in elections before the pandemic, most did not. Concerns that voters could contract the virus by lining up at crowded polling places led election officials across the United States to fight to swiftly adopt the practice of voting.

But mail ballots also take a long time to verify, process, and count, delaying the count.

Trump, who has refused to concede the race, prematurely declared victory during a press conference at the White House early Wednesday morning, arguing that he was too far ahead in the race.

But as mail-in ballots continued to be counted, they overwhelmingly favored Biden, and their lead continued to grow.

A big reason for that? For months, Trump has discouraged his supporters from voting that way, falsely claiming that voting by mail would lead to widespread electoral fraud.

It is a message that continues to expand.