This year’s election has been one of the most anticipated and important elections amongst many from past years, as CNBC projects a record-breaking voter turnout with about 160 million projected votes. This would account for about 65% of eligible voters, and result in the highest turnout for voters since the election of 1908, according to foreignpolicy.com. With this high voter turnout, Democratic nominee Joe Biden broke the record for total votes received for one candidate in election history, beating the previous record by about 6 million votes, which was previously held by Obama who had 69,498,516 votes in 2008.

     As of Sunday, November 8th,  Joe Biden has 50.7% of the popular vote and Donald Trump has 47.6% of the popular vote.

     The Associated Press is currently predicting that Joe Biden will be the next U.S president with 290 current electoral votes, while Trump currently has 214 electoral votes. 

     Recounts are occurring in crucial swing states such as Michigan, Wisconsin, and Nevada, where if Joe Biden holds on to his current lead in these states he will most likely be the next president. In Michigan, the votes will automatically be recounted if the margin of defeat of victory is less than 2,000 votes. Otherwise, the candidate who requests a recount must do so on the grounds that there was fraud in mistake in the counting of the ballots. Wisconsin requires the margin separating the candidates to be less than 1% for a full or partial recount to take place. The state of Nevada has no requirement for the terms necessary to call for a recount, all according to MotherJones.com.

     According to Independent.com, Joe Biden will be the first candidate since George H.W Bush (who lost the 1992 election to Bill Clinton) to beat the incumbent president for reelection. 

     Some states that voted red in the 2016 election and were significant in the election of Donald Trump flipped their preference this year, with one swing state in particular Wisconsin completely overturning their 47.2% favor for Trump in 2016 to 49.6% favor for Joe Biden in 2020. Pennsylvania had 48.2% of votes for Trump in 2016, while 49.8% of the vote went to Biden in the 2020 election. Donald Trump won Michigan in 2016 with a 0.3% margin of victory against Hillary Clinton in 2016, while Joe Biden won Michigan with a margin of victory of 2.7% in 2020.