Saturday November 7, 2020
By Meg Wagner, Fernando Alfonso III, Melissa Macaya, Melissa Mahtani, Veronica Rocha and Amanda Wills
CNN PROJECTION: JOE BIDEN WINS THE PRESIDENCY
Former Vice President Joe Biden with Sen. Kamala Harris in Wilmington, Del. (Carolyn Kaster / AP Photo)
Joe Biden will become the 46th president of the United States, CNN projects, after a victory in the state where he was born put him over the 270 electoral votes needed to win.
With Pennsylvania's 20 electoral votes, Biden now has a total of 273 electoral votes.
Before becoming the Democratic presidential nominee, Biden served as vice president under former President Barack Obama. He is also Delaware's longest-serving senator.
Throughout his campaign, Biden has argued that the "soul of the nation" is at stake, and has promised that he would seek to heal a country fractured by Trump's presidency.
Kamala Harris will be the United States’ next vice president, CNN projects.
She will be the first woman to hold the office. She will also be the nation’s first Black and South Asian vice president.
Harris, who has represented California in the Senate since 2017, is the daughter of Jamaican and Indian immigrants, and she grew up attending a Black Baptist church and a Hindu temple.
She was the first Indian-American and second Black woman to serve as a senator.
Sen. Kamala Harris is the first woman to become vice president of the United States. Mark Makela/Getty Images
These are the Presidents who have lost reelection
From CNN's Adam Levy
President Trump’s reelection defeat makes him the 11th sitting president in US history to lose the White House in a general election campaign.
Ten of those were outright reelection bids. Gerald Ford, who ascended to the presidency following Richard Nixon’s resignation, also lost his campaign to remain president in 1976.
The last president to lose a reelection bid was George H.W. Bush in 1992.
Grover Cleveland lost his reelection campaign in 1888 but won back the White House four years later by defeating sitting President Benjamin Harrison. He is the only president to have served two nonconsecutive terms.
This list does not include sitting presidents who did not receive their party's nomination for the next general election.
10 elected presidents lost their reelection campaigns:
John Adams (1797-1801; lost to Thomas Jefferson in 1800)
John Quincy Adams (1825-1829; lost to Andrew Jackson in 1828)
Martin Van Buren (1837-1841; lost to William Henry Harrison in 1840)
Grover Cleveland* (1885-1889; lost to Benjamin Harrison in 1888)
Benjamin Harrison (1889-1893; lost to Grover Cleveland in 1892)
William H. Taft (1909-1913; lost to Woodrow Wilson in 1912)
Herbert Hoover (1929-1933; lost to Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1932)
Jimmy Carter (1977-1981; lost to Ronald Reagan in 1980)
George H.W. Bush (1989-1993; lost to Bill Clinton in 1992)
Donald Trump (2016-present; lost to Joe Biden in 2020)
1 non-elected president lost in the following general election:
Gerald R. Ford** (1974-1977; lost to Jimmy Carter in 1976)
*Cleveland later won a second, nonconsecutive term
**Ford was not elected vice president or president