Blake Fox
Israel Editor
After four long days of waiting, the news media was finally able to project Joe Biden, the President-elect of the United States, and Kamala Harris, the Vice-President-elect, on the afternoon of Saturday, November 7th. This projection came following the state of Pennsylvania being called for Joe Biden, which put him over the 270 electors needed to win the Electoral College vote.
Election night, which occurred on Tuesday, November 3rd, ended without any clear winner, with the significant battleground states of Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Georgia, Arizona, and Nevada all too early to call. However, other contested states, including Ohio, Texas, and Florida, were all won by President Donald Trump. In contrast, the states of Minnesota and New Hampshire, and Nebraska’s 2nd Congressional District, were called for Joe Biden. Nebraska’s 2nd Congressional District, an area that encompasses Omaha, Nebraska, went to Trump in 2016, but when it was called for Biden on election night, it was the first significant signal that momentum was going in the former Vice-President’s direction.
Early on the morning of November 4th, Donald Trump falsely claimed that he had won the 2020 Presidential election, as he had leads in the major swing states of Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania. However, millions of mail-in ballots that heavily-leaned Democratic, remained uncounted. By the afternoon of November 4th, Biden received a considerable boost when the states of Michigan and Wisconsin, which were both won by Trump in 2016, were declared to have been won by Joe Biden. On November 7th, a batch of votes from Philadelphia put Biden ahead by greater than 0.5% in the Keystone State, and he was declared the President-elect.
Biden’s win was seen as a landmark victory for many people. His running mate, Kamala Harris, will be the first Black person and first woman to serve as the Vice-President of the United States. Biden will be the first President since James Buchanan, who was inaugurated 163 years ago, to be born in Pennsylvania, and the first President in United States history to be a resident of Delaware. Harris’ husband, Doug Emhoff, a well-respected entertainment lawyer, will also be the first Jewish person to be the spouse of either the President or Vice-President.
Although the Presidential win was a major victory for the Democrats, many Congressional positions were filled by new or incumbent Republicans in the House of Representatives. Republicans won key seats, largely due to votes from the Latino community in Florida. In South Florida, Republicans defeated incumbent Representatives Debbie Mucarsel-Powell and Donna Shalala. Other Democratic incumbents, such as Max Rose of New York, Kendra Horn of Oklahoma, and Joe Cunningham of South Carolina, were all defeated. Many of these wins came as shocks to the Democratic party’s supporters, but some Representatives like Jim Clyburn and Cedric Thorton blame the widely misinterpreted “Defund the Police” movement on the party’s struggles to retain House seats.
The race for the United States Senate remains too close to call at the moment as the Republicans lead the Democrats by 50 seats to 48 seats, according to the New York Times. Democrats Mark Kelly, an astronaut, and John Hickenlooper, the former Governor of Colorado, were able to knock off incumbent Republicans in Arizona and Colorado. However, Democratic Senator Doug Jones of Alabama was defeated by Tommy Tuberville, a former college football coach. The races in Alaska, between Dr. Al Gross, an Independent supported by the Alaska Democratic party, and incumbent Dan Sullivan, a Republican, and in North Carolina, between Cal Cunningham, a Democrat, and incumbent Thom Tillis, a Republican, took more than a week to be called, but both went to the incumbent. However, the race for the Senate will come down to the two runoff elections in Georgia between incumbent Republican David Perdue, a business executive, and Democrat Jon Ossoff, a documentary film-maker, and incumbent Republican Kelly Loeffler, a business executive and women’s sports team co-owner, and Democrat Raphael Warnock, the Reverend and Pastor of the Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta.
The entire political world turns its head to Georgia for the January 5th runoff election, as control of the Senate will determine whether Democrats will control the White House Senate and House of Representatives.
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