Joe Biden will be the next president of the United States 1:17
(CNN) -
Joe Biden is president-elect, CNN screened Saturday morning, winning with a message of unity and a promise to restore the "soul of the nation" after four years of tumult under President Donald Trump.
Biden rebuilt the "blue wall" of the Great Lakes states where Trump had won four years earlier.
He also had the strongest performance of Democrats in a generation in Arizona and Georgia, leading both states by narrow margins as votes continue to be counted there and in Nevada, where Biden also leads.
Biden, 77, who was one of the youngest men elected to the Senate in 1972, is now the oldest president-elect.
In his third bid for president, Biden's life story of overcoming personal tragedy met the moment of a nation in the grip of economic and health crises.
It built a coalition of people of color, suburban women, voters young and old, and enough independents and disgruntled Republicans to win narrow margins in several battle states where Republican state legislatures fared better than Trump.
And with Biden's victory, his running mate, California Sen. Kamala Harris, has made history.
One hundred years after the United States constitutional guarantee of women's right to vote, she becomes the first American woman, the first black woman and the first vice president-elect from South Asia.
Democrats did not get the results they hoped for in the Senate or House, although they are leading the race to retain control of the House.
And the party is watching Georgia closely, where one race for a Senate race seat is heading into a runoff and another could be, too.
Thus, there would be two high-profile races on January 5 with control of the Senate at stake.
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Here are seven takeaways from the 2020 presidential election results:
Biden rebuilds the blue wall
Biden's ability to rebuild the "blue wall" of industrial states in the Great Lakes region was not just his political argument for Democrats about why they should nominate him.
He's at the center of his identity: a candidate from a working-class family in Scranton, Pennsylvania, who never lost touch with those roots for nearly five decades in national politics and could move areas like this back into the Democratic column.
This has been Biden's political career 2:44
When voters in the party's primaries rejected more progressive candidates and young, rising stars who might have aligned better with their political beliefs in favor of Biden, a figure hardened by the presidential and vice-presidential campaigns, it was because they believed he represented their best. chance to win.
Biden made good on that promise, winning Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania, according to CNN projections, all states that Trump took four years earlier.
Biden's campaign looked to other battlefields in the so-called Sun Belt (Belt of the Sun, the entire south of the country from east to west) and, in addition to winning all the states that Hillary Clinton won four years ago, as long as it remains your advantage in Arizona and Georgia.
But the "blue wall" was his main focus and what ultimately cemented his victory.
Biden spent the last two days of the race in Pennsylvania, and then spent Election Day visiting old places, including his childhood home in Scranton.
"From this house to the White House with the grace of God," he wrote on the living room wall.
Overtime in Georgia
The battle for control of the Senate is entering overtime, and Georgia appears to be heading for two second rounds on January 5 that will determine whether Republicans maintain their majority.
CNN has yet to project winners in the Senate elections in Alaska and North Carolina.
But if the Republican advantages in those states hold up, the Senate would have 48 Democrats and 50 Republicans, meaning the only chance for Democrats to get a majority is a 50-50 split, as Vice President-elect Harris would serve. as a tiebreaker.
The runoff comes due to Georgia's unique requirement that to win in November, the top seed must exceed 50% of the vote.
Although incumbent Republican Senator David Perdue is far ahead of Democratic challenger Jon Ossoff, the presence of a libertarian in that race slightly reduced his total votes, keeping Perdue just below 50% unless something changes in the last minute.
Meanwhile, the "jungle primaries" in the special elections for the other Georgia Senate seat always seemed headed for a runoff.
Democrat Reverend Raphael Warnock and current Republican Senator Kelly Loeffler have qualified for it.
With the highest possible stakes, the runoff will make Georgia the scene of an all-out political battle, with both parties throwing everything they have on organizing and publicity in the state.
Historically, Democrats have underperformed in the Georgia general election, including in 2008, when Democratic challenger Jim Martin finished 3 percentage points behind Republican Senator Saxby Chambliss in the general election, only to lose the second round by 15 points. .
But Democratic candidates have come much closer to winning the runoff in recent years, and organizing efforts led by former Gov. candidate Stacey Abrams have positioned Democrats to be more competitive this year.
Biden himself has a minimal advantage over Trump in the state, who has not run for a Democrat since Bill Clinton in 1992.
The opportunity to unseat Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Kentucky, from his leadership position is sure to motivate Democratic donors to invest money in both races.
Both sides are expected to put everything they have into the second round.
Trump's tantrum
Concession speeches by presidential candidates are an important American tradition, helping to legitimize the winner and affirm the democratic process.
What if the concession speech is not a call to union?
3:42
Trump, however, appears not to be interested in playing a role in that tradition, but is inclined to tear down that process upon leaving the White House.
In conversations with allies in recent days, Trump has said he has no intention of granting Biden the election, CNN's Kaitlan Collins reported Friday morning.
Aides, including his chief of staff, Mark Meadows, have not tried to get Trump to accept what is happening and instead have fueled his baseless claim that his election is being stolen.
LOOK: Trump played golf while Biden was declared the winner of the US election.
Trump's tweets, many of which have received warning tags from Twitter, have complained that the legitimate process of counting absentee votes amounts to stealing the race.
His right-wing media supporters have mobilized, amplifying misinformation about how county and state vote counts are being conducted.
How Republicans in Congress handle Trump's tantrum should be watched in the days and weeks ahead.
Masking their lies about electoral fraud and the vote-counting process with an air of legitimacy could do more lasting damage to the peaceful transition of power, if that damage is not already irreversible.
What if Trump loses and doesn't want to admit defeat?
1:08
Harris makes history
For the first time, the United States has elected a black woman of South Asian descent as its vice president.
The enormous historical significance of Harris's advance could be temporarily lost amid the drama of closed ballot counts in several key states that drag on for several days, amid unsubstantiated complaints from Trump.
But it's likely to come out in the days, weeks and months to come, as the Biden and Harris inauguration on January 20 approaches.
And, as CNN's Abby Phillip pointed out on air, Trump's political career began with the racist "birther" lie intended to discredit the first black president, Barack Obama.
Now it ends with the first black woman in the White House.
READ MORE: ANALYSIS | Kamala Harris breaks another barrier by being the first female vice president-elect, black and of Asian descent
Kamala Harris is the next US Vice President 1:23
Participation skyrockets
The 2020 elections featured the most motivated electorate in recent U.S. history, underscoring how deeply motivated the grassroots of both parties were.
Biden and Trump now got the first and second highest number of votes in the US presidential election, and many states are still counting.
Biden is the first candidate to surpass 70 million votes, and Trump is about to cross that threshold.
Voter turnout appears to be on track to reach the highest level since 1900, when more than 73% of eligible Americans cast their votes.
Top 5 US President Candidates 1:06
Despite his loss, Trump once again topped the polls and increased turnout among his working-class white voter base in rural areas.
Biden saw jumps over 2016 share in urban and suburban regions.
Biden won in cities and Trump in rural areas: the political division in the US is marked on the metropolitan borders
Both parties have data to choose from to determine where they fell short, on a percentage basis, compared to previous years, such as Trump garnering much stronger Hispanic support in Florida's Miami-Dade County, a weakness for Biden than the Democrats will urgently seek correction in future elections.
But that is a challenge of persuasion, not mobilization.
Voters from both parties were more motivated than at any time in modern history in 2020.
A big question now facing Republicans is whether the kind of white working-class participation Trump motivated can be transferred to other Republican candidates or, as the party's losses in the midterm elections suggest, a phenomenon driven exclusively by Trump.
No blue wave
Democrats entered the 2020 election hoping to build on their 2018 midterm winnings, when a big turn in their favor in the suburbs handed over control of the party to the House of Representatives.
This year, Democrats hoped to add that majority in the House, win a decisive majority in the Senate, and change several state legislative chambers to position the party to have a greater say in the 2021 redistricting process, when legislatures draw new maps of congressional districts after the census.
The party even hoped that by breaking fundraising records across the map, including Senate races in states like South Carolina and Kentucky, it would cause some commotion on election night.
It all fell apart
Democrats are on track to lose several seats in the House, although they will retain their majority.
They did not gain ground in key state legislatures, and in some they appear to have lost ground.
And in the end they saw several Senate races slip from their grasp, particularly notorious battles in Maine and North Carolina.
Maine Republican Senator Susan Collins got a boost at confirmation hearings from Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett.
And North Carolina Republican Senator Thom Tillis appears to be staying in his seat after his Democratic rival, Cal Cunningham, was embroiled in a sex scandal.
(CNN has yet to screen in the North Carolina race.)
It all led to a bittersweet election for Democrats, who are delighted to have ended Trump's presidency but must now pick up from the rubble of their failures in state legislative votes.
The first look at that reckoning came in a House Democrat call on Thursday, where progressives and moderates ventured each other.
"Something went wrong here throughout the political world," Illinois Rep. Cheri Bustos, chair of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, told her group, sources told CNN's Manu Raju and Lauren Fox.
“Our polls, Senate polls, (governor's) polls, presidential polls, Republican polls, public polls, participation models, and forecasters pointed to a political environment - that environment never materialized.
In fact, voters this year look much more like 2016 than projected. "
Biden's advance in the south also comes with flaws
The overall result is exactly what Biden wanted: He rebuilt the "blue wall" and, if his current advantages were maintained, he would become the first Democrat in a generation to win Arizona and Georgia.
Even if those states elude him, he will have come closer than any Democrat since Bill Clinton.
And it will have embarrassed the Trump campaign, which insisted there was no way it would lose any of those states.
He shouldn't even be here.
They say I have Georgia ready, ”Trump said at a rally in Rome, Georgia, two days before the election.
But Biden lost states where polls had shown him ahead and where his campaign had pumped in vast resources in the final weeks of the race.
The two most glaring losses are Florida and North Carolina, both presidential battlegrounds where former President Barack Obama won once (North Carolina in 2008) and twice (Florida).
Biden also visited Des Moines, Iowa, on the last Friday of the contest and Cleveland, Ohio, on Monday, indicators that his campaign believed both were at stake.
Trump won both states comfortably.
The Biden campaign never bought Democratic optimism that Texas would become an undecided state this year.
He made proposals, sent Harris to the state the Friday before the election, but never injected the amount of money into Texas that a real battlefield would require, and Biden did not go there.
Still, better performance in the presidential race could have helped Democrats win seats in Congress and the state legislature in a state where they hope a growing and diversified electorate will eventually tip them in their direction.
None of that materialized in 2020.
Elections 2020 United States