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Joe Biden has won the 2020 election with a current total of 279 electoral votes, surpassing the 270 needed to take the presidency.
In American elections, Americans vote for candidates called “electors” in their state who support the candidate they want to become president; this process is called the Electoral College.
The more people live in a state, the more voters there are for that state. So California, for example, with a population of 38.8 million, has 55 votes, while Delaware, (population 936,000), has only three votes.
There are currently 538 total electors, corresponding to 435 Representatives (congressmen and women) and 100 Senators, plus the three additional electors from the District of Columbia. The Constitution prohibits any federal official, elected or appointed, from being an elector.
The candidate with the most electors wins all the votes in the state electoral college and the first candidate to win enough states to reach 270 electoral votes is elected to that office.
Follow the 2020 U.S. Election Results Live
Who can become president?
The President of the United States can be a man or woman of any race or religion, but must:
- be at least 35 years old
- being born in the United States
- have lived in the U.S. for at least 14 years
The rules also state that a person can only be at work for a maximum of eight years. (The only exception to this was Franklin D. Roosevelt, who was elected to a third special term at the height of World War II.)
The two presidential candidates in the 2020 election were Donald Trump, who represents the Republican Party, and Democrat Joe Biden, who was vice president during the Obama administration from 2009 to 2017.
What is the Electoral College?
The Electoral College elects the President of the United States. When an American citizen casts his vote, he is not directly electing a presidential candidate. Instead, they are electing an official, who will represent them in the “college.” The word college translates to a large group of people (elected officials) who are tasked with electing the president, and this role takes place within weeks of the election day results.
