The 2016 US presidential election had 47 million ballots cast before Election Day. On Oct. 22 of this year, that number was broken, and by Election Day, it was more than doubled. That being said, Tuesday’s presidential election painted a scene of just how divided the nation is.
When Nov. 3—Election Day—rolled around the corner, Trump and Biden were locked in a tight race. With Biden slightly ahead in electoral votes, Trump was right around the corner.
While some people thought it would be a close race, others didn’t quite expect voting results to be as tight as they were.
“Before Election Day, I kind of had this idea that it was definitely going to be close,” said Max Castro, a senior who voted in this year’s election with a mail-in ballot. “A lot of people were saying that it could go either way, but I kind of expected Trump to take it, similar to how he did in his first election.”
“The results are so close, and I kind of expected that just because there are many states where I was like ‘Oh, I knew that was going to be red’ and other states were I was like ‘Oh, I knew that was going to be blue,’” said senior voter Maya Paustenbaugh, who also voted with a mail-in ballot.
“I didn’t think it was going to be so close,” said AP US History teacher Leif Peterson. “Knowing that there were already so many people that had voted with mail-in ballots, and that being such a huge number, my thoughts about it were that it would really tip the scale in one direction.”
On the night of Election Day, Biden gave a short speech to supporters in Wilmington, Delaware while votes were being counted.
(Photo Taken from The Mercury News)
“We believe we’re on track to win this election,” said Biden. “We’re going to have to be patient until the hard work of tallying the votes is finished, and it ain’t over until every vote is counted. Until every ballot is counted.”
Taking a different approach, Trump prematurely declared victory the night of Election Day while millions of votes were still in need of counting. He also called for a halt to the counting of ballots.
“We were getting ready to win this election. Frankly, we did win this election,” said Trump, claiming the results were due to voter fraud. “We’ll be going to the US Supreme Court. We want all voting to stop. We don’t want them to find any ballots at four o’clock in the morning and add them to the list.”
“It’s up to the states. The states determine how their ballots are counted, when their ballots are counted,” said AP Gov. teacher Thomas Bloomquist. “I think what he’s saying is, whatever the rules are in the states, we need to observe those rules. If the rules are saying that you should sign [your mail-in ballot] and you don’t sign it, that could be that ‘voter fraud’ that he always alludes to.”
AP Gov. held a schoolwide poll to get an understanding of where students at Sage Creek stand.
Out of 689 total responses, Biden received 63.3% of the votes, Trump received 28.6% of the votes, and third party candidates got 8.1% of the votes.
With more votes going to Biden, the school results are similar to the 2020 election results that came out Saturday; Biden received 290 electoral votes while Trump received 214. President-elect Biden will become the 46th president of the United States, and vice president-elect Kamala Harris will become the first female, first Black and first South Asian vice president in US history.