Biden’s popular vote margin against Trump tops 6 million
President-elect Joe Biden's lead in the popular vote continues to climb as mail-in ballot counting continues across the nation
The presidential race was called for Joe Biden after his electoral vote count surpassed the needed threshold, but the Democrat’s popular vote margin is still rising as mail-in ballot counting continues across the nation.
Biden is now 6 million votes ahead of President Donald Trump in the popular vote in what was the largest election turnout in recent memory, according to a tally kept by CNN. The former vice president scored the most votes for a U.S. presidential candidate in history with nearly 80 million ballots cast, compared to Trump’s 74 million, a record for a losing candidate.
In the Electoral College race, which decides the presidency, Biden has collected 306 to Trump’s 232 out of the 538 awarded by 50 states. The Electoral College is set to meet in less than a month, which is when the presidential electors will cast their states’ respective votes. A candidate needs a majority, or 270 votes, to win the White House.
READ MORE: Trump’s refusal to concede election leads to threats for those involved in vote-counting process
Previously, the most popular votes in American history was for former President Barack Obama, who received 69,498,516 votes in 2008 for his first term when the Democrat ran against late Republican Sen. John McCain, according to CBS News. Biden served as Obama’s vice president for two terms.
Although Trump received more votes than he did in his 2016 victory, this is also the second-consecutive election in which he lost the popular vote. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, his challenger in 2016, lost the Electoral College count 306 to 232, the same margin that Biden won by this cycle. Clinton received nearly three million more popular votes than Trump that year, according to The New York Times.
READ MORE: Georgia Secretary of State certifies election for Biden
Despite Biden’s win and growing margin of victory, President Trump still refuses to concede the election. Although he has filed lawsuits to investigate his baseless claims of voter fraud in the key states of Pennsylvania, Michigan and Arizona, the New York Times reports that he has lost them all due to lack of evidence.
Trump repeatedly stated publicly that mail-in votes would be fraudulent, both prior to and after the Nov. 3 election.
As previously reported by theGrio, Trump reiterated those claims on his Twitter page, stating the only reason Biden won is “because the Election was Rigged.”
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