State-by-state maps and results
US 2020 election results bar
Joe Biden is to become the next President of the United States of America after beating Donald Trump in the final key battlegrounds of the election, marking the end of a tense but protracted race for the White House.
The Democrat and former Vice President to Barack Obama has now amassed 279 electoral college votes in the 2020 election – taking him over the 270 threshold for victory and putting him officially on the path to the presidency. That compares to Trump’s total of 214 electoral votes thus far.
Victory for Biden comes after clinching Pennsylvania and Nevada, where vote counts have been ongoing after election night failed to deliver a clear winner.
Geographical US election map
The key swing states of US election
Confirmation of Biden’s win bookends an election that went down to the wire in key swing states, after neither Biden or Trump delivered a knock-out blow early on in the night. Results night began as expected, with both candidates racking up wins in safe states like New York and Vermont for Biden and Tennessee and Kentucky for Trump. Yet hopes of the race yielding a definitive result soon faded away as Trump won the swing state of Florida, a key indication the sitting President’s support was holding up better than expected.
US 2020 election table
Likewise Biden failed to win in Republican strongholds tipped to flip in 2020 like Texas, which Trump won with a margin of six per cent. This represented the final nail in the coffin for hopes of a Biden landslide, which had been suggested by some pre-election forecasts.
US 2020 election treemap
Instead America tensely waited days to hear who their next President would be as a handful of key battleground states began to count.
Confidence of a Biden win first emerged after he took the Rust Belt states of Wisconsin and Michigan, which were both key to Trump’s victory in 2016. The two states together put Biden tantalisingly close to the 270 electoral college votes needed to win.
US election county results – by population
Meanwhile Biden also appeared to be performing strongly in Arizona, a previously red state that the Democrats have been trying to turn blue since the 1990s. Fox News and Associated Press called the state for Biden on election night itself, but tightening margins led other outlets, including The Telegraph, to hold off while the outcome was so uncertain.
But the key moment for Biden came as he overtook Trump in the remaining battleground states of Pennsylvania, Arizona, Nevada and Georgia. After a drawn-out count process that had seen Trump ahead since results night, Biden inched in front and his overall lead slowly increased, granting him enough electoral college votes to put him over the winning threshold.
How election day played out
US election panel
The main takeaways of the 2020 election
The 2020 US election was already set to smash records, with 100 million Americans voting early either in-person or by mail before polling stations opened on November 3.
This has translated to the highest ever turnout, with over 155 million Americans casting a vote.
US national elections turnout
66.4 per cent of eligible voters turned out or cast mail-in ballots, according to the US Election Project: the highest rate since 1900.
This high level of turnout has helped boost Biden into the record books, with the highest total number of votes ever received by a presidential candidate in US history.
Electoral college and popular votes in US presidential elections
In terms of the direction of the race, early indications suggest the polls may have underestimated the Hispanic support Trump could wield, and dented Biden’s hopes of a landslide.
The 2016 election saw 28 per cent of Hispanic men vote for Trump, but according to exit poll data that number rose to 36 per cent this year, while support among Hispanic women remained steady.
One in three Hispanic men voted for Trump
But while Trump’s base four years ago was cemented among white men, his support among the demographic appears to have waned this year.
In 2016 62 per cent of white men voted for Trump, while exit polls suggest that number has fallen to 58 per cent this year.
Among white women, however, the President appears to be more popular, with his vote share in 2016 of 47 per cent rising to 55 per cent.
The influence of the Hispanic vote is borne out in county-level results for Florida, which was a turning point on election night when it was declared for Trump.
How Florida voted
Aside from demographic battles, the coronavirus pandemic loomed over the entirety of the election campaign.
One of the key differences between the ways in which Trump and Biden sought the votes of Americans is the extent to which they were willing to campaign in person.
While Biden opted for a more virtual presence, Trump still held in person rallies, particularly in the key swing states.
2020 presidential campaigning (Trumps rallies have focussed on the rust belt)
This division between Democrats and Republicans was also reflected in the final results.
In the key swing states, those who report ‘never’ or ‘rarely’ wearing a face mask were more likely to vote for Trump, with positive correlations visible between the share of such respondents and the size of red margins in counties.
Trump results vs mask use
Congressional results
Alongside Biden’s tighter-than-expected win came a disappointing night for Democrats in their effort to take full control of the US Congress.
Americans were not just voting for their next president – also on the ballot across the country were the 435 seats of the House of Representatives as well as 35 of the 100 seats of the Senate.
US Election 2020 Congress
Democrats appear to have retained control of the House majority that they first gained in 2018. The Senate race remains close, with the Republicans and the Democrats both on 48 seats with four seats left to call.
One Senate race runoff on January 5 will take place between Republican Senator Kelly Loeffler (26 per cent) and Democrat Raphael Warnock (32.9 per cent).
Both were unable to reach the 50 per cent threshold required to win the seat.
The Senate race in Georgia between Republican Senator David Perdue (49.8 per cent) and Democrat Jon Ossoff (47.8 per cent) now appears to be headed for a runoff on January 5 too.
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