Presidential Election
On Saturday, November 11, 2020, most news organizations declared former vice-president Joe Biden the victor in the 2020 presidential election over President Donald Trump. The US, (and the world), were all in agonizing suspense for almost five days as states scrambled to count their votes. Although Biden won the popular vote, it was an extremely close electoral race. In addition, this presidential election proved surprising in quite a few ways. An example of this was that both Pennsylvania and North Carolina requested a few extra days after the official end of the election to allow late absentee ballots and other votes to be counted. Pennsylvania was the state that officially allowed Biden to win the election. Michigan and Wisconsin were key swing states that Biden also won. During the 2016 election, President Trump won both of these states. Arizona also turned out to be a key state in the election. Although Arizona almost always votes republican, (the last time the state went blue was in 1996 and before that in 1948,) this year Biden was able to win the state by under one percent. In Georgia, the results still aren’t complete for who won the presidency, even after it was declared nationally that Biden was the President-Elect. Although, it appears that Biden is most likely to win the state. With President Trump filing many lawsuits in different states, and some states still in the process of counting or recounting, Biden’s win will be official for a few weeks still, although it is safe to assume that Biden will become the 46th president of the United States.
House of Representatives Elections
Although they lost a net of seven seats, Democrats still control the majority of the US House of Representatives, but with a smaller margin. In New Mexico, Xochitl Torres Small lost to Republican Yvette Herrell in our state’s 2nd Congressional District; however, Democrats Deb Haaland and Teresa Leger Fernandez won in the state’s 1st and 3rd Congressional Districts respectively. Democrats still have the lead overall, but with a smaller majority, it is much harder to claim an overwhelming victory. Republicans were amble to flip seats that were blue in 2018, including New Mexico’s 2nd district seat. While several closes still have not been called yet, the overall results give the democrats a clear but smaller majority in the House of Representatives. See all the results here.
US Senate Elections
Of the 100 US Senate seats, there were a total of 65 not up for election. 35 of these are controlled by the Democrats with the other 30 controlled by the Republican Party. Following the 2018 election, the Republicans held a six seat majority in the Senate. This November, Republicans were able to hold seats in Republican strongholds like Montana and Mississippi as well as several battleground states like Maine and North Carolina. In Alabama, Republican Tommy Tubervile defeated incumbent Democrat Sen. Doug Jones, bringing the GOP to 50 seats. The Democrats held onto all their seats other than Alabama, and managed to flip a seat in both Arizona and Colorado. The fate of the Senate will ultimately be decided by Georgia, a newly contested state where President-Elect Biden won, which will hold two runoff elections in January. The current Republican candidates for both seats are incumbents, and if votes in the runoff fall along party lines, both will be reelected. This would give the Republican Party a four seat majority in the Senate, making it much harder for the Democratsto pass legislation under Biden .