In this race, it seems its never over when it looks over. But it is over. But most news networks have now called the race: 306 electoral votes for former Vice President Joe Biden and 216 for President Donald Trump.
Joe Biden will win Georgia, CNN projected Friday, striking at the heart of what has been a Republican presidential stronghold for nearly three decades. The former vice president is the first Democratic nominee to triumph in Georgia since Bill Clinton did it in 1992.
Biden’s victory adds 16 electoral votes to his tally, bringing him to 306 — matching President Donald Trump’s 2016 total. With CNN’s projection that Trump will win North Carolina, the final tally is 306-232, a landslide for the President-elect, who flipped five states and a congressional district in Nebraska from red to blue in 2020.
The symmetry provides the President with yet another bitter pill to swallow. Trump has spent years tweeting and talking up his margin of victory against Hillary Clinton — one that has now been turned on its head in a final, national rebuke of his presidency.In Georgia, Trump had raced out to an early lead in the counting, but Biden surged ahead as the votes from Atlanta and its suburbs were tabulated.
The Democratic ticket’s historic success has been fueled by a grassroots organizing renaissance that rallied a rapidly diversifying electorate and suburbs that are, at once, growing and becoming increasingly inhospitable to Republican candidates. Georgia Republicans have compounded the issue, with state lawmakers refusing so far to expand Medicaid under Obamacare and Gov. Brian Kemp, in 2019, signed a so-called “heartbeat bill,” one of the country’s most restrictive abortion laws.
Biden’s success in a traditionally Republican state is the culmination of slow, steady gains there by the party. Two years ago, Democrat Stacey Abrams fell narrowly short in her bid for governor, losing to Kemp by 1.4 percentage points. Her campaign, and the work she’s done since then, has focused on bringing out Democratic voters who had stayed home in previous cycles. That set the stage for Biden, a moderate, to win big in the counties overlapping and outside Atlanta, a city at the heart of the New South.
Now the questions are: Will Trump concede? Or will he simply announce that he’s running in 2024? Biden basically flipped the 2016 electoral vote — the final vote that Trump for years has touted as his landslide win against Hillary Clinton.
Trump’s day today:
-GA called for Biden
-Lost lawsuit to throw out votes in Detroit
-Lost lawsuit blocking ballots arriving after Election Day in PA
-Withdrew lawsuit challenging ballots in AZ
-Lost Electoral College 306-232 & popular vote by 5.4 million
— Ari Berman (@AriBerman) November 13, 2020
One ex-White House official said Trump asked about self-pardons and pardons for his family. Trump even asked if he could issue pardons pre-emptively for things people could be charged.
"Once he learned about it, he was obsessed with the power of pardons." https://t.co/Xg6Pdpcy1G
— Kyle Griffin (@kylegriffin1) November 13, 2020
Biden 306 Trump 232
As @realDonaldTrump said:
Landslide!— EJ Dionne (@EJDionne) November 13, 2020
306. Landslide. Blowout. Historic. https://t.co/twQzi5tGfU
— Robert Reich (@RBReich) November 13, 2020
All the states have now been called by multiple networks.
Take a look at your final electoral map: Biden 306 – Trump 232. pic.twitter.com/AyGF76VG9T
— The Recount (@therecount) November 13, 2020
.@MaddowBlog: In 2016, President Trump's campaign manager argued that 306 electoral votes constituted a "landslide" and a "blowout."
President-elect Biden has now matched that standard of success.https://t.co/59NBfLWgJh
— MSNBC (@MSNBC) November 13, 2020
Georgia has been called for Joe Biden, bringing the president-elect's final tally to 306 electoral-college votes. It is the first time a Democrat has carried the state since 1992 https://t.co/04FAQ5lVP1
— The Economist (@TheEconomist) November 13, 2020
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.