Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden has secured the largest amount of votes ever received in the US presidential race.
At the time of publication this article, the 77-year-old former vice president earned 69,512,303 votes, according to the Associated Press, outperforming Barack Obama ‘s 2008 popular vote of 69,498,516.
As it stands, Biden is around two and a half million ahead of President Donald Trump in terms of popular vote. However, it is necessary to remember that this does not mean that Biden won the race, since it all boils down to the amount of electoral votes received by each candidate.
The popular vote refers to the total votes cast for each candidate across the whole of the United States. However, all of the popular votes go towards voting in 538 electors, each representing a certain geographical area. The electors then vote on behalf of their state. Each state is given a certain number of electors, calculated on the number based on the number of congressional districts they have. They are also given two additional votes representing the state’s Senate seats.
At the time of writing, the Democratic Party have taken the lead, with 238 electoral votes, while Trump’s Republican Party sits at 213 electoral votes.
In 2016, Democratic Party candidate Hillary Clinton won the highest number of popular votes, with 65,853,514, compared to Trump’s62,984,828. However, she failed to win the electoral college, which is how Trump came to be president. Ever since, there have been calls to ‘make every vote count’ by implementing a fairer (and less complicated) voting system.
