Blue Wave Trumps Red Wave as Biden Wins Presidency
by Shelton Jackson
Nov. 10, 2020
After days of waiting for the ballots to be counted and the results to come in, former Vice President Joe Biden was named the president-elect Saturday morning, defeating incumbent Donald Trump by taking back the blue wall states with help from a blue wave that came in the form of mail-in ballots.
Biden was able to reach the 270 electoral college votes needed to win the election as the 20 electoral college votes he received by winning the state of Pennsylvania put him over the top to win. In the 2016 presidential election, Donald Trump managed to defeat Hillary Clinton by winning Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania-- which are considered the “blue wall” states because they have been traditional democratic states.
Joe Biden managed to achieve victory in all of those states back by overwhelmingly winning the mail-in ballot margins. Along with taking back the states that Hillary Clinton lost in 2016, Biden also managed to flip Georgia and Arizona from red to blue.
Trump supporters would show up to the polls on election day. Statesboro citizen Mathew Smith who voted in-person on election day said that the main reason he voted was to re-elect the president.
Trump jumped out to big leads in key battleground states such as Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Georgia as those states would count in-person election votes
Numbers from the Associated Press
first according to CNN. As states began to count the mail-in ballots, Trump’s lead in those states quickly diminished and Biden overtook Trump to win those electoral college votes.
According to CNN, in the bigger urban areas like Atlanta, Detroit and Philadelphia, Biden was winning the mail-in vote by more than 65 percent which helped him overcome those big leads in those states.
Voter turnout was up across the country as more people voted in this election than any other. According to CNN, Joe Biden gained more than 75 million votes-- the most votes a presidential candidate has ever received. Donald Trump managed to receive more than 71 million votes which is the second most in U.S. history.
Numbers from the Associated Press
The coronavirus pandemic has forced the election to be done differently this year by offering different ways of voting to reduce the crowds at polling places and keep voters safe.
Along with voting in-person on election day, voters could vote early in-person or by mail which is what the Biden-Harris campaign has been urging voters to do throughout this election process.
Meanwhile, Donald Trump and his campaign said that mail-in ballots would lead to fraud and encouraged voters to show up at the polls on election day during the pandemic.
Statesboro resident Jackie Merrill, who voted in-person at the fairgrounds on election day, said that the pandemic was not an issue to her and it wasn’t a big deal pertaining to the health and safety of voting in-person.
In the end, it was Biden’s blue wave of mail-in ballots that overwhelmed Donald Trump’s red wave of in-person election day votes.