November 3, 2020: On that day, in my usual blog, Uncle Mike's Musings, I wrote, "This may turn out to be the most important day in American history. Vote like the whole world depends on it. Because it might."
Joe Biden was elected the 46th President of the United States, defeating Donald Trump. It wasn't called for 4 days, because several key States were close. It wasn't certified by Congress until January 7, 2021. It was supposed to happen the day before, but this was one of the few times that it was ever in doubt. And there was an unprecedented attempt to prevent it. That attempt failed. It was finally made official on January 20, Inauguration Day, when Biden was sworn in as President.
Biden won 81,268,924 votes, to Trump's 74,216,154. Biden won 51.3 percent of the popular vote, to Trump's 46.9, and 1.8 for scattered other candidates. Each major-party candidate won 25 States, with Biden also winning the District of Columbia and 1 Electoral Vote in Nebraska; while Trump also won 1 Electoral Vote in Maine. (Maine and Nebraska allow their Congressional Districts to vote separately from the State as a whole.) Biden won 306 Electoral Votes, to Trump's 232.
Biden won nearly all the close States: Arizona by 10,457 votes, Georgia by 11,779, Wisconsin by 20,682, Nevada by 33,596, New Hampshire by 59,277, and Pennsylvania by 80,555. However, if Trump had won all of those States except Pennsylvania, with its 20 Electoral Votes, Biden still would have won.
Trump won the white vote, 58 percent to 41; but lost the black vote, 87-12; lost the Latino vote, 65-33; and lost the Asian vote, 63-36. He won Protestants, 60-39; but lost Catholics, 52-47, despite his opposition to abortion; lost Jews, 76-22; and lost people who professed no religion, 65-31. He lost gay people, 67-30; and straight people, 50-48.
Voting by age was interesting. People old enough to remember the police bashing antiwar demonstrators in the 1960s and 1970s, and old enough to need Social Security and Medicare, would seem to lean Democratic. But many people get more conservative as they get older, and prefer to see police beating up protestors.
So Trump won people age 65 and up, born 1955 or earlier, by 52-47; and people 50-64, born between 1956 and 1970, by the same margin. These were people for whom the defining Republican President was Ronald Reagan. Trump lost people 40-49, born between 1971 and 1980, by 54-44; 30-39, born between 1981 and 1990, by 51-46; and 25-29, born between 1991 and 1995, by 54-43. These were people for whom the defining Republican President was the failed George W. Bush.
Trump lost people 18-24, born between 1996 and 2002, for whom he was the defining Republican President, the only Republican to be in charge of the economy since they were first eligible to go to work, by 65-31.
Kamala Harris became the 1st female, the 1st African-American, and the 1st Asian-American to be elected, and later the 1st of each of those to serve, as Vice President of the United States. The Democrats kept control of the U.S. House of Representatives, and gained a 50-50 split in the U.S. Senate, which becomes a 51-50 majority in the Democrats' favor -- except that 2 Democratic Senators, Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Kirsten Sinema of Arizona, have often stood in President Biden's way when it came to his agenda.
Among the new Senators elected were Democrats John Hickenlooper of Colorado, and Georgia's Raphael Warnock (the pastor at Martin Luther King's church in Atlanta) and Jon Ossoff; and Republican Tommy Tuberville of Alabama.
Tuberville beat Democrat Doug Jones, a civil rights lawyer. Tuberville had been the head football coach at the University of Mississippi, and then at Auburn University. I had figured that he had no chance, because Auburn fans would vote against him because he was a lousy coach, and University of Alabama fans would vote against him because he'd coached Auburn. But Tuberville appealed to religion, guns, and white supremacy, and won.
In the end, Biden didn't win because 250,000 Americans had died from COVID-19 -- a total since quadrupled, though Biden's efforts have held it down to less than it would have been if Trump had stayed in office. He won due to the get-out-the-vote effort in the key States, whose apparatus was already in place before COVID.
Biden won because he was the opposite of Trump. Because, while Trump appealed to bigotry and anger, Biden appealed to what Abraham Lincoln called "the better angels of our nature." Because he wanted to bring America healing, which is what America wanted. Because he spoke to "the soul of America." As he, a Catholic, is a student of St. Francis of Assisi, who is believed to have said:
Where there is hatred, let me sow love.
Where there is injury, pardon.
Where there is discord, union.
Where there is doubt, faith.
Where there is despair, hope.
Where there is darkness, light.
And where there is sadness, joy.
In contrast, as a man named Anthony Citrano wrote of Trump, 2 months before the election, "It's almost impossible to believe he exists. It's as if we took everything that was bad about America, scraped it up off the floor, wrapped it all up in an old hot dog skin, and then taught it to make noises with its face."
Conservatism, still led by Trump, is a darkness. Liberalism, currently led by Biden, is a light. And, for now, America wants light.
The editors of Time magazine usually name the winner of the Presidential election as their Person of the Year. For 2020, they named both Biden and Harris.
Having only James Buchanan before him, Biden is easily the greatest President born in Pennsylvania. He is the only one with a connection to Delaware.
Due to his long political career, actors have played Biden since well before he became President. In 2016, Greg Kinnear -- who has also played the only other Catholic to become President, John F. Kennedy -- played Biden in Confirmation, about the Clarence Thomas-Anita Hill conflict. On Saturday Night Live, he has been played by Kevin Nealon in 1991, as the Thomas-Hill conflict was ongoing; Jason Sudeikis from 2007 to 2017, Woody Harrelson in 2019, John Mulaney in 2020, Jim Carrey in 2020, Alex Moffat in 2021; and, in the 2021-22 season, James Austin Johnson has played both Biden and Trump.
Shortly before the election, an episode of the YouTube series Epic Rap Battles of History featured "Nice" Peter Shukoff playing Biden, and "Epic" Lloyd Ahlquist playing Trump.
UPDATE: On September 6, 2025, Biden announced that his Presidential Library would be built in his home State of Delaware, although he got no more specific than that. The State's largest city, Wilmington, has offered the Daniel L. Herrmann Courthouse as a potential location. From 1916 to 2002, it served as Wilmington City Hall, and New Castle County's Administration Building and Courthouse. It is currently used as offices by a law firm.
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November 3, 2020, like all modern American Election Days, was a Tuesday. The baseball season had ended. Football was in midweek. And, due to COVID pushing things back, both the NBA and the NHL were still closer to the finish of their 2019-20 seasons than they were to the start of their 2020-21 seasons. So there were no scores on that historic day.
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