After an exhausting wait, the news: Joe Biden is the new president of the United States of America. He managed to secure more than 270 electoral votes, the number required to gain access to the White House. This closes a chapter that will remain in world as well as American history — the presidency of Donald Trump — and opens a new, unprecedented one that all of humanity is preparing to read.

Biden wins the 59th United States presidential election, becoming the 46th American president, the most influential leader in the world, on whose decisions the future of all of us also depends. At his side, the first female vice president: Kamala Harris, a progressive prosecutor with a Jamaican father and an Indian mother.

What kind of president Biden will be, in his own words

"I ran as a Democratic candidate, but I will be an American president. The president represents everyone. He has a duty to every citizen. I will work hard for those who voted for me, as well as for those who did not vote for me. There were no red states or blue states, only the United States." These are the words Biden spoke even before learning the final result. If at first he could seem a challenger lacking in energy, in his most recent speeches he began to take on a "statesman-like" tone, contrasting composure and warmth with the impulsiveness and swagger that have always characterised Trump as a figure.

The states where the Democratic Party candidate won

Biden triumphed on the West Coast: unsurprisingly in California, Oregon and the state of Washington, but also in two states that in 2016 had voted for Trump, such as Arizona and Pennsylvania (decisive); and further in Colorado, Nevada and New Mexico, through to Hawaii. On the East Coast he secured Maine, Vermont and New Hampshire; Massachusetts, Rhode Island and Connecticut; New Jersey, Maryland and Delaware, of which he was senator from 1973 to 2009. He won the District of Columbia, where the capital is located, the state of New York and Virginia. Finally, he earned Minnesota, Illinois and key states such as Wisconsin and Michigan, which in 2016 had voted for his opponent.

African Americans and young people chose Biden, Latin Americans divided

According to exit polls, nationally around 87 per cent of African Americans voted for Biden, and only 12 per cent chose Trump. As many as 91 per cent of African American women reportedly expressed their preference for the former. These figures reported by the Washington Post are extremely significant in light of the protests that reignited across America following the suffocation of George Floyd by a police officer.

According to the broadcaster CNN, Trump received more votes this year than in 2016 from the Latino community, which delivered him some notable percentages especially in Texas and Florida. In the state of Arizona, however, Latino Americans voted two to one for Biden. And Biden was also the favourite among younger voters, those under thirty; particularly in the Midwest.

US election 2020: the records Biden set

Biden is the candidate for the White House who has received more votes in history, over 74 million. He also broke the previous record held by Barack Obama, who in 2008 had obtained 69.5 million. This means that Biden earned 50.5 per cent of the "popular vote": in the United States, the candidate who receives the most votes is not guaranteed to win, since success depends above all on which states one wins. This time, he managed it. Also making headlines was turnout, the highest since 1908. Nearly 160 million people voted, equal to 66.4 per cent of the voting population. This demonstrates how closely these elections were followed by Americans, who became aware of the importance of their vote.

A divided country, as Congress demonstrates

The 2020 race was an unprecedented electoral campaign, conducted largely during a global pandemic that struck the United States harder than any other country, causing more than 200,000 deaths. And it concluded in an even stranger fashion: initially without a president, then, after long hours spent "being patient" during which journalists, analysts and the entire world held their breath, the verdict finally arrived and all of us emerged from the depths of uncertainty to come back to the surface and breathe at last. A conclusion that was certainly not welcomed by the outgoing president, who is threatening not to "concede victory" and who, upon learning of his opponent's lead, had already filed legal challenges in several states demanding that votes be recounted, pointing the finger at ballots that had arrived by mail and alleging "electoral fraud". Georgia will in all likelihood carry out a second count because the margin between the two candidates is very slim.

All the same, Trump achieved very strong results in this election. So much so that he even proclaimed himself the winner. Something one could certainly have expected from him, it is true, but he had probably announced it genuinely believing he was in the lead. Many citizens wanted him to be re-elected. Speaking of Congress: the House, whose members were renewed as happens every two years, would appear to have remained in Democratic hands, but the Republicans made up ground. The Senate, where 35 new senators are being elected, risks remaining under a Republican majority or being split in two. It has been since 1989 that a president has not taken office with full control of Congress. This could make things very complicated for him, jeopardising the approval of the changes he intends to introduce, especially the more progressive or costly measures such as expanding access to healthcare or stepping up efforts to bring the country to carbon neutral status.

In all likelihood, members of Trump's party will seek to continue giving space to his policies. Ideas that are diametrically opposed to those of Biden, demonstrating that America is still a divided country, where some see things in black and others in white. And where social inequalities are still far from being smoothed over. On one side there are the world's wealthiest men, the big hi-tech companies, progress. On the other there are the homeless, the Native Americans confined to the margins of society — fortunately this year saw a record number of indigenous women elected to Congress —, the people who can't make ends meet; especially now that millions of people have been left unemployed as a result of the economic crisis stemming from the health crisis. And yet, the American cultural identity should unite all those who share it, as Biden has said. The hope is that he will be able to heal at least some of the wounds tearing the nation apart.

Who is Joe Biden

Joe Biden was born in 1942 in Scranton, Pennsylvania, into a modest Catholic family. He earned a degree in Political Science from the University of Delaware in Newark, and another in Law from Syracuse University in the state of New York. He was admitted to the bar in 1969, before being elected senator three years later, when he was barely thirty years old. He lost his first wife and his daughter in a car accident, and one of his sons several years later to cancer. In 2009 he became Vice President of the United States of America and remained at the side of Barack Obama until 2017. One curiosity: Biden has suffered from a stutter in the past, which occasionally resurfaces.

His plan for the climate

In October, young Swedish activist Greta Thunberg had come out in favour of Biden, issuing an appeal to Americans: "I have never been involved in politics. But the upcoming US election goes far beyond politics. In terms of the efforts to combat climate change, we are still very far from where we need to be […]. So organise and make sure everyone votes for Biden," she urged, arguing that Trump does not believe in global warming and has done nothing but dismantle the environmental legacy of his predecessor Obama.

First and foremost, Biden has promised to bring the United States back into the Paris Agreement, reversing Trump's decision to withdraw from the most important international treaty for reducing emissions and temperatures. He has also put forward a climate plan with which he intends to promote the clean energy revolution and climate justice. In his view, by harnessing the talents that populate the United States and the country's unparalleled capacity for innovation, it will be possible to transform the threat of global warming into an opportunity to revitalise the energy sector and drive economic growth, which has been threatened by the recession caused by coronavirus.

A new society

On the subject of human rights, he wants to give every citizen the opportunity to choose a public healthcare option as well as a private one. He wants to fight the gun lobby, the racial discrimination that persists and that has driven large crowds to protest in recent months; and among his objectives is a programme to combat violence against women. He believes that immigration is essential to defining the identity of the United States. In the hope that this identity can become more inclusive, finally managing to embrace the sections of the population that feel excluded, giving them too the chance to live the American dream. Because, as the writer Daniel Pennac used to say, if we truly want to dream, we must wake up. We must face our problems head on and work out how to solve them. The people who have mobilised in recent times — for the climate, for civil rights, for the right to abortion, for democracy or to seek help during this difficult moment in history — have shown that they are ready. The time to act is now.