Press "Enter" to skip to content

Biden in Total More Than 4 Million Votes in Favour of Trump

The battle for the American presidency is still taut, but the popular vote has already been won by Democratic candidate Joe Biden, writes The New York Times.

 

Friday morning (local time), Biden was already more than 4 million votes ahead of sitting President Donald Trump, according to the newspaper.

According to the paper, this means that in seven of the eight past elections, more Americans voted for the Democratic candidate than the Republican candidate. Only in 2004 candidate, George W. Bush won both the most electoral votes and the most votes. Depending on the outcome of this year’s election, the presidency actually went to the Democrats only four or five times.

The American electoral system ensures that the presidential candidate who gets fewer votes nationally than his or her rival can still become president. That’s because in the US it is an electoral college that appoints a president.

In total there are 538 electors to be distributed and each state may supply a number, depending on the size of the state. In the vast majority of states, the electoral votes are elected based on the ‘winner takes all’ principle: the candidate who has more than half the vote gets all the electors.

A candidate who has 80 percent of the vote in a state thus gets as many electors as if that candidate had only received 51 percent of the vote. For example, if Biden gets a large majority of the votes in a relatively small state and Trump a narrow majority in a large state, Biden may have more votes in total at that point, but fewer electors.

Biden also received the highest number of votes ever in this election. To date, 73.7 million votes have been cast for the Democrat, according to The New York Times. The old record was held by Barack Obama, of whom Biden was vice president for eight years.

Obama received nearly 69.5 million votes in 2008. Four years later he has re-elected thanks to the support of just under 66 million Americans. Voter turnout this year was higher than usual. Not all votes had been counted on Friday.

Be First to Comment

Leave a Reply