The history-making 2020 Democratic presidential ticket now can claim another milestone: more than 80 million votes in a presidential election.
President-elect Joe Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris have 80,033,996 votes, and the tally is growing as states record their final absentee and provisional ballots, according to a running count by the nonpartisan Cook Political Report.
That’s a lead of more than 6 million over Trump, who now has 73,878,907 votes.
The batch of votes that put Biden and Harris over the historic benchmark were absentee ballots from Erie County in Buffalo, New York.
An official count from the Associated Press still has Biden and Harris hovering a bit below 80 million.
Biden’s win came amid soaring voter turnout. He got by far the most votes of any presidential candidate in history — and Trump was second.
Biden also won states with 306 electoral votes, comfortably more than the 270 needed to win the White House.
Trump has refused to concede defeat, citing unfounded claims of fraud.
He authorized the federal General Services Administration to start the transition process but insisted Tuesday that he has not thrown in the towel.
“Remember … the GSA does not determine who the next President of the United States will be,” Trump tweeted.
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