Biden Is Projected To Be The President-Elect. Here’s How It All Went Down.

Oh wow, Biden had some pep in his step walking up to the podium! He did a little run.

Harris also mentioned the record numbers that turned out to vote, and, boy, does that look to be the case — we are at about 150 million total votes in the presidential race. But with many votes left to be counted, it looks like this election will set a record for turnout among the voting-eligible population in elections since 1971, when the voting age was lowered to 18. As things stand, just over 62 percent of the voting-eligible population has turned out, but that number will likely climb to 63 or 64 percent in the coming days, especially as California completes its tally. The previous post-1971 high was 61.6 percent in 2008, according to data from the United States Elections Project.

Biden is taking the stage now, and we’ve noted a few times that it’s pretty unusual in the modern presidency for the incumbent to lose. It’s also notable that when this usually happens, it’s someone who represents something new in politics. Franklin Delano Roosevelt came in after Republicans had held the White House for over a decade, when only one other Democrat had been elected president since the Civil War. When Ronald Reagan won the presidency in 1980, he had been in politics for some time but represented a new turn in Republican politics; Republicans won control of the Senate for the first time since the mid-1950s. Bill Clinton entered office after three consecutive Republican terms, a relative newcomer to the national stage and the first “New Democrat” to win the presidency.

With Biden, the situation is different. He was vice president only four years ago, and while he may move left with his party to some extent, he’s not a new figure or someone who represents an emerging faction. This appears to have been a change election, but in an unusual way.