Democrat Joe Biden has been elected as the 46th president of the United States of America with 284 electoral college votes.
He surpassed the 270 electoral college votes needed to defeat President Donald Trump (214 electoral college votes) and clinched the White House.
Biden’s lower-key election campaign style contrasted with President Trump’s larger rallies as the Democrat has portrayed himself as more responsible on observing coronavirus measures.
He entered Election Day with multiple paths to victory, while Trump, playing catch-up in a number of battleground states, had a narrower but still feasible road to clinch 270 Electoral College votes.
With the worst public health crisis in a century still fiercely present, the pandemic- and Trump’s handling of it — was the inescapable focus for 2020.
Biden, who was the former Vice President of the US from 2009 to 2017, put Trump’s handling of the pandemic- which has killed more than 231,000 people and left millions more jobless- at the center of his campaign.
He repeatedly accused Trump of giving up in the fight against the disease, and deemed him unfit to steer the nation through the crisis. There was a general consensus that Trump’s handling of the virus would cost him a second term.
Donald Trump is the first incumbent president to lose a re-election fight since George HW Bush in 1992.
It’s Biden’s third attempt for the White House– he ran unsuccessfully in 1987 and 2008. He inherits a nation strained by a pandemic that has killed more than 231,000 people and left millions more jobless, racial tensions and political polarization that has only worsened during the election campaign.
