President-elect Biden (a few historic tidbits)
As everyone on earth knows by now, Joe Biden has won the election and will be the 46th president of the United States. Pennsylvania became the deciding state. He is on track to winning 306 electoral votes, if he ultimately wins Georgia.
Here are a few historic tidbits about the election:
- Biden received the most votes of any presidential candidate in history. That is partly due to the unusually large turnout this year, and efforts to make participation easier for people during the pandemic with early voting and vote-by-mail.
- Biden won a majority of the votes cast, which Trump never has.
- Trump became the 10th U.S. president to lose reelection. You can see a short list of the previous losing incumbents here.
- Biden becomes the oldest president-elect in history, at age 77.
- If he goes on and wins Georgia, Biden will be the first Democrat to win that state since Clinton in 1992, and the first non-Southern Democrat to win Georgia since JFK in 1960.
- If Trump doesn’t concede, he will be the first loser not to do so in modern history. The modern understanding of a public concession can be traced to 1896, when William Jennings Bryan sent opponent William McKinley a cordial telegram.
- And of course Kamala Harris makes history as the first Black woman and first person of Asian descent elected vice president.
Tiny correction. Joe Biden had a birthday a couple of weeks ago and is now 78.
Thanks. I have edited the post!
Oops. Re-edited. His birthday isn’t until November 20th.